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Heidi Babin
Dr. Zeigler
English 2883-002 American Literature
27 April 2014
Dont Turn Your Back: Ghosts and Stupid Social Standards
Often described as one of the best ghost stories ever written, Henry James The Turn of
the Screw would be a great modernist text to assign for the OU Summer Reading Program. Using
a series of unreliable first person narrators in a syntactically complex frame story characteristic
of modernist American literature, the complicated form of the novella tests the intelligence of
readers. Moreover, the ambiguity of evidence presented as certainty leaves readers to decide
whether the governess is sane or whether, as psychoanalysts at the time it was published may
have believed, she has been driven mad by her repressed sexual desires and is in fact seeing
ghosts that do not exist. All of these aspects of The Turn of the Screw invite students to consider
the subjectivity of perception as well as the intelligence of the late nineteenth century norms of
family dynamics and social class, making this short but engaging story perfect for the OU
Summer Reading Program.
The modernist movement in America is marked by experimentation and deviation from
tradition, and modernist literature, according to M. H. Abrams A Glossary of Literary Terms,
contains a breaking up of the narrative continuity, departing from the standard ways of
representing characters, and violating the traditional syntax and coherence of narrative language
(167), all of which are present in the structure of The Turn of the Screw. The governess
narrative, for instance, is framed by the story of Douglass, who reads her manuscript to an
unnamed narrator. James employs this structural technique to complicate the plot and to distance
the reader from the story, isolating the governess in a few layers of emotional storytelling. In
spite of the narrator swap when Douglass begins to read the manuscript, Henry James dense,
intricate syntax pervades all levels of the story. His sentences, some of which consists of seventy
words, nine prepositional phrases, two different types of parentheticals, three commas, a
semicolon, and dashes, contain, in true modernist form, almost as many twists and turns as the
story itself, requiring for their comprehension a certain level of intelligence of readers, though
they are not indecipherable.
Despite the consistently complicated sentence structure, which gives readers a misleading
sense of the narrators common composure, the governess first-person manuscript only offers a
uniquely limited point of view. Unlike the first-person narratives of the previous literary
traditions, which usually served to align readers perspective with the authors, the governess
manuscript, in its dearth of definitive detail, instead functions to conceal James true intentions.
Clearly distraughtif not hystericalover the subject matter of her story, the governess presents
her many assumptions as facts deduced by keen intuition. When she asserts that the ghost of
Quint is looking for little Miles, she describes herself as possessed by a portentous
clearness and simply explains, I know, I know! when pressed by Mrs. Grose for an
explanation (James 144), believing her perception to be clear and infallible even though she has
no evidence to go on. This uncertainty leaves readers to decide whether the governess is in fact

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insightful or whether she is instead insane. The first-person narration of this modernist story
differs from that of earlier literature, which used the protagonists perspective to determine the
audiences views, and gives readers a more active role in determining how the events described
truly unfold. The ambiguity generated by the modernist elements of the form of The Turn of the
Screw thus engages the intelligence of readers and encourages them to think about the
intelligence (or lack thereof) of the traditional ideas presented in the content of the story.
In the growing industrial world of the late nineteenth century, for example, the people of
the modern world became increasingly obsessed with their work. The master of Bly, who
becomes responsible for the care of his niece and nephew after his brothers and parents' death, is
"a lone man without the right sort of experience or a grain of patience" to raise the children
(James 119). Besides, he has to attend to his business in the city, and "his own affairs [take] up
all his time" (James 119-120). Unable to take on guardianship as a second job, he delegates this
occupation to a governess. However, even though he has great worry anda series of blunders
in his initial attempts to look after his niece and nephew himself (James 119), Miles and Flora
continually ask when they will see or hear from their uncle. For all of the constant joy they
experience in their time with the governess (James 136), their lives are incomplete without his
love.
Though she considers it "charming work" (James 136), the class distinctions prevalent in
the time period place the governess of The Turn of the Screw, who is now the main authority over
the childrens education, beneath her charges socially. She regards them as a pair of little
grandees, of princes of the blood (James 131). Miles in particular, being an upper class male
and likely heir to her employer, is "in a position to say to [her]: 'Either you clear up with my
guardian the mystery of this interruption of my studies, or you cease to expect me to lead with
you a life that's so unnatural for a boy" (James 181). The governess' lack of a familial connection
to the children and her lower social class considerably undermine her authority over them and
contribute to her alienation, one of the main motifs of modernism.
The governess social class, moreover, also determines the impossibility of any sort of
romantic relationship with her master, whom she describes as a bachelor in the prime of life
gallant and splendidhandsome and bold and pleasant (James 119), which only augments her
alienation. Claiming that the way in which a man pays the highest tribute to a woman is apt to
be but by the more festal celebration of one of the sacred laws of his comfort (James 177), she
is flattered by his trust in her ability to take care of the children so that he does not have to. When
alone, she often imagines that Some one would appear therebefore [her] and smile and
approve (James 132). While the text does not explicitly identify this Someone as her employer,
one can easily surmise that it is his approval that she desires. However, she never receives any
sort of contact from him after her arrival at Bly, for he is a hardworking upper class man who has
employed her to remove two small complications from his life, leaving her fantasies unfulfilled.
For him, interpersonal relationships are superfluous, a waste of time that he could use instead to
manage his own personal business.
Her desire for him is thus futile, which, as some critics have argued since 1934, drives her
mad. One afternoon, while daydreaming about the man she loves, she has a vision in which her

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imagination [has], in a flash, turned real. He did stand there! (James 132). Though she at first
seems overjoyed, the governess soon realizes that the man who [meets] her eyes [is] not the
person [she] had precipitately supposed (James 133). Though Mrs. Grose identifies the horror
she describes as the deceased Peter Quint, the old woman also affirms that his clothes are the
masters (James 142), suggesting that the apparition does, in fact, as Edmund Wilson first
postulated in The Ambiguity of Henry James, represent the governess repressed sexual desire
for her employer. If Wilsons interpretationgreatly influenced by Freuds theories on sexual
repression and uncanny events in literatureis correct, the ghosts that the governess sees are
not ghosts at all, but visual expressions of her alienation created by her subconscious. The fact
that only the governess can see the apparitions serves to further her isolation and provides
additional evidence that they exist only in her head. As his brother, William, was one of the
founders of the study of psychology, Henry James could easily have had some knowledge of
Freuds theories and applied them to his works before those theories became known well enough
for critics to suggest this alternative interpretation.
Whether the ghosts inhabit only the governess mind or whether they occupy the physical
world as well, they exist because of James contempt for the social conditions of the late
nineteenth century, which are reflected in the story. Taking the metaphysical stance in which
the ghosts are real, the apparitions are the malicious spirits of Quint and Jessel, both infamous
with everythingbetween them (James 152), according to Mrs. Grose, who implies that
Jessels real reason for leaving might be unwed pregnancy or something equally dreadful
(James 153). It was not just in his relationship with Jessel that the living Quint took more liberty
than his class should allow, however, but he was too free with everyone (James 145), including
Miles. These suggestions of sexual impurity exemplify of a key component of avant-garde
modernism: hitherto neglected, and sometimes forbidden subject matter intended to shock the
sensibilities of the conventional reader of the time, usually to advocate social change (Abrams
168). Jessel and Quint would never have been able to affect the children so negatively had the
master actually fulfilled his responsibilities as their proper guardian. A society in which one can
delegate the care for ones own kin to servants and refuse a part in the childrens upbringing
fosters corruption among masters, servants, and children alike.
Readers can still recognize a similar message from a psychoanalytical reading of The
Turn of the Screw, in which the governess self-induced hysteria results not only from her own
foolishness, but also from that of the social conditions of the day. Quint and Jessels relationship,
forbidden because of the differenceof their rankhe so dreadfully below her (James 152),
reflects the governess desire for a relationship transcendent of social class with the master. She
comes to believe that Miles and Flora interact with the ghosts, that they see in these
interactions things terrible and unguessable that spring from dreadful courses of intercourse in
the past (James 176), suggesting her suspicion that there may be something sexual in nature
going on between the deceased servants and the children. Wanting to shield her charges from the
evil that will surely befall them if they are allowed to deal with these imaginary entities, she feels
an irresistible desire to press them to [her] heart and wonders if it betray[s] too much (James
158, 159). With no chance of the reciprocation of her sexual desire for the master, she redirects

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her lust toward the children, especially toward Miles, whom she desires to posses and whose
kiss she meets while [folding] him for a minute in [her] arms (James 169). This sort of
behavior is just as immoral as that of which she accuses her imagined adversaries, and if those
adversaries are, in fact, merely figments of her imagination resultant of her sexual repression,
then the governess presence at Bly and occupation as caretaker is just as dangerous to the
children as her predecessors. In spite of the contrast between her good intentions and their
supposedly depraved dispositions, no servants affection for the children will be enough without
the love of their uncle.
The Turn of the Screw contains ample evidence for the existence of the ghosts, as well as
ample evidence for the insanity of the governess, all presented in the complex modernist form,
making this challenging yet short and thrilling novella a good way for first year college students
to exercise their minds without feeling mentally fatigued. James terrifying tale is sure to spark
some fascinating conversations about whether or not the ghosts are real and whether that fact
even matters to the themes of the story. These discussions will show students that college is
about forming ones own opinions, providing evidence to support them, sharing them with
others, and listening to their peers ideas as well. Henry James The Turn of the Screw as a
modernist text would thus make the first OU Summer Reading Program a success.

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Works Cited
Abrams, M. H. "Modernism and Postmodernism." A Glossary of Literary Terms. Seventh ed.
Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College, 1999. 167-69. Print.
James, Henry. "The Turn of the Screw." The Turn of the Screw, The Aspen Papers, and Two
Stories. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2003. 115-217. Print.