Henry James' The Turn of the Screw: Inspirations, Critical Interpretations, and a Deep Literary Analysis

Like other exemplars of the five respective genres of literary horror (Frankenstein/ Monsters, Dracula/ Vampires, Jekyll and Hyde/ Shapeshifters, Haunting of Hill House/ Haunted Places), The Turn of the Screw – literature’s most highly respected Ghost Story – has a fascinating genesis.

Mary Shelley and Robert Louis Stevenson were both inspired by horrifying nightmares, and Shirley Jackson blended a photograph of an ominous-looing mansion with her own mental health struggles, but Henry James – the writer of the ultimate literary ghost story – was perhaps predictably motivated by nothing quite so Gothic: it was, rather, brought to mind during a polite conversation shared over a crackling fire.

James had suffered a staggering humiliation when one night he attended the opening of one of his plays, Guy Domville, which failed hideously. One writer calls it “the great professional trauma of James’ life.” Speechless with embarrassment, his mind went to grave places, and he only accepted an invitation to return to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s rural residence for tea and warmth.

E. W. Benson – the Archbishop – recognized the distress in his friend’s demeanor, and tried to relieve his malaise with light banter, but the morose atmosphere was impenetrable, and their conversation gradually turned to ghosts and the afterlife. Benson was an excellent man to turn to for such a topic, as he was a great lover of spook tales (three of his sons would eventually rank among the best ghost story writers in the language: R. H., A. C., and E. F. Benson).

Trying to warm the January chill from their bones, the two men began to swap legends that they’d heard from schoolmates, relatives, and acquaintances. Shortly after, James wrote down a tantilizingly brief summary of the Archbishop’s most captivating story. It was:

…the story of the young children (indefinite in number and age) left to the care of servants in an old country house, through the death presumably of parents. The servants, wicked and depraved, corrupt and deprave the children; the children are bad full of evil to a sinister degree. The servants die (story vague about the way of it) and the apparitions figures return to haunt the house and children to whom they seem to beckon, whom they invite and solicit, from across dangerous places – so that the children may destroy themselves, lose themselves, by responding, getting into their power.

Three years later, he had written a reworking of the story and it became serialized in an American periodical before being published as a hardcover in a collection called The Two Magics. Contemporary praise was enormous.

One reviewer called it “[one] of the most engrossing and terrifying ghost stories we have ever read… would make even Hawthorne envious on his own ground.” Another glowed that “the reader is bound to the end by the spell, and if, when the lids of the book are closed, he is not convinced as to the possibility of such horrors, he is at least sure that Mr James has produced an imaginative masterpiece,” and Oscar Wilde himself noted that “it is a most wonderful, lurid, poisonous tale, like an Elizabethan tragedy. I am greatly impressed by it.”

Unlike many masterpieces that went ignored and mistreated until a more receptive generation relocated it, The Turn of the Screw was an instant success – and rightfully so.

LITERARY INFLUENCES

Other than Benson’s story, there are many discernable influences in James’ writing. It is unmistakably Gothic, for one thing, a fascinating choice for the posterboy of realism – a literary school which was, by definition, a spiteful reaction against the melodrama of romanticism and Gothic fiction. Realism delights in the everyday, the mundane, the relatable. Haunted mansions are not quite on that list, but James deftly avoids sentimentalism, sensationalism, and horror, sticking, rather, to vague descriptions of the ghosts, and spurning any ghoulish details.

Here there are no glowing visions, chattering skulls, or bloody sheets – just two pale-faced visitors who refuse to speak when they appear at random. And yet, both the writing and the in-text references point to James’ profound love of the Gothic novel. The governess demonstrates a taste for 18^th century fiction, and specifically alludes to works by Henry Fielding and Ann Radcliffe. One scene which describes her reading such a book is itself a pastiche of the Gothic novel:

One evening—with nothing to lead up or to prepare it—I felt the cold touch of the impression that had breathed on me the night of my arrival and which, much lighter then, as I have mentioned, I should probably have made little of in memory had my subsequent sojourn been less agitated. I had not gone to bed; I sat reading by a couple of candles. There was a roomful of old books at Bly—last-century fiction, some of it, which, to the extent of a distinctly deprecated renown, but never to so much as that of a stray specimen, had reached the sequestered home and appealed to the unavowed curiosity of my youth.

We may with great confidence wonder if this is the governess speaking, or James himself, who – for all his realist credentials – harbored a lurid taste for Gothic fiction. These novels (Ann Radcliffe, M. G. Lewis, and Hugh Walpole were the major authors) frequently featured innocent virgins or children who were taken to frightful, lonesome castles which housed a series of vulgar temptations (usually their lustful, aristocratic, male owners), supernatural terrors, and moral lessons.

The governess certainly seems – at some points – to imagine herself in one of “Monk” Lewis’ bodice-busting, Gothic novels about terrifying ghosts, lust-crazed nobles, and positively-pure maidens. Many commentators have also noticed the undeniable influence of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, which also features a poor governess who is taken on to tend to the ward of a single, childless, eccentric aristocrat who at first seems smitten with high-society women, but ultimately makes the “right” choice and turns to his “poor Jane” for comfort and love.

While Brontë’s work is not overtly supernatural, it too features moments of great sublimity and sentiment, several of which are hinted at being genuinely preternatural – moments when the laws of nature are violated by the force of human passion. Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey was also highly influential to James, and while this is a Gothic satire, it nonetheless helped to shade James’ Austenean balance of the everyday and the horrible, leaving that most rare of rarities: a work of Gothic realism.

And of course, as with all of his supernatural works, we feel the purposeful hands of Nathaniel Hawthorne (particularly a la The House of the Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter) and Edgar Allan Poe (a la “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “Metzengerstein,” “Ligeia,” “Morella,” “William Wilson,” and “The Oval Portrait”) steering the mood.

GHOST LITERATURE IN 

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Ghost stories began to enter the scholarly realm in 1820 when Washington Irving published “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” “The Spectre Bridegroom,” and “Rip Van Winkle” in The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. All three were essentially satires of the Gothic genre, and none were meant to be taken seriously. Irving followed this up with Tales of a Traveler which included a collection of similarly tongue-in-cheek supernatural tales, most notable amongst which are “The Adventure of the German Student” and “The Devil and Tom Walker.”

The tone of Tales was notably darker, and – in spite of several stories which were clearly the results of drink, dreaming, or illusions of grandeur – worked less hard to make them ambiguous: several were clear-cut horror stories.

Before Irving, the ghost story was a piece of anti-intellectual rubbish that educated men avoided like the plague, concerning themselves with witty satire and bildungsroman novels (a la Voltaire, Tobias Smollett, Henry Fielding, Daniel Defoe, Swift, Richardson, and Irving himself, a master of satire and dry humor). But Irving was a card-carrying member of the Romantic movement which was more concerned with regional folklore, rural settings, and the lower classes than the Classical mythology, urban locales, and aristocratic personae of the Enlightenment Era.

Irving was a tremendous influence on Charles Dickens (his proto-Christmas Carol story, “The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton” is a pastiche of “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and his scene of English Christmas celebrations in A Christmas Carol were directly lifted from The Sketch-Book), and while most of his ghost stories retained the light, satirical tone of Irving’s early work (“The Lawyer and the Ghost,” “The Bagman’s Uncle,” and “The Baron of Grogzwig” – itself a play on “The Spectre Bridegroom” – are positively Irvingian), his later tales developed a dark and existential tone that Irving had used in Tales of a Traveler and Bracebridge Hall.

Dickens moved the ghost story into the mainstream by publishing them annually in his Yuletide periodicals, and while he wasn’t yet a master of the genre until he wrote the truly unnerving “The Hanged Man’s Bride,” “A Confession Found in Prison,” and “The Mother’s Eyes” (which Poe later adapted into “The Tell-Tale Heart”), he proliferated the far more ghoulish work of writers whom we today recognize as true masters of the English ghost story: Mrs Oliphant, Mrs J. H. Riddell, Rhoda Broughton, Wilkie Collins, Bulwer-Lytton, and Elizabeth Gaskell among others.

Their stories reached Dickens’ middle class audience, and elevated the spook story from the realm of maids’ gossip and laborer’s legends to a respectable genre of bourgeois fiction. Dickens himself would truly come to his own when he wrote his three staggering masterpieces of supernatural fiction: “To Be Read at Dusk,” “To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt (The Trial for Murder),” and “The Signal-Man.” By the 1890s, nearly every respectable writer from Kipling to Hardy, from Twain to Crane, was practicing the supernatural tale with varying degrees of seriousness. Enter Henry James.

James – as we now know if we did not already – was writing supernatural fiction almost from the very beginning. Although they are few in number, several of his short ghost stories (viz., “Romance of Certain Old Clothes,” “The Ghostly Rental,” “Owen Wingrave,” “The Real Right Thing,” and “The Jolly Corner”) are still widely published today in anthologies of the supernatural. And yet it was The Turn of the Screw that made his reputation as a supreme supernaturalist, and cemented the ghost story in the highest echelons of scholarly study – even Irving and Dickens had failed to do that.

Many universities will teach “Rip Van Winkle” as a gender piece, a satire, or a piece of quaint folklore, some will study Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Body-Snatcher,” and a limited number will yield attention to W. W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw,” but The Turn of the Screw is the one of only a handful of ghost stories in the English language that have attracted universal acceptance by the academy (scorn unto them for it!).

Even A Christmas Carol is almost entirely ignored by academics as a piece of sentimental, politically incorrect genre fiction, but Turn is a staple of American literature courses, and is de rigueur for classes focused on American Realism, taught alongside Daisy Miller, “The Open Boat,” “To Build a Fire,” and Huckleberry Finn. So we must pose the question: what is so captivating about this particular ghost story that has allowed the prudish academe to loosen their stringent rules against supernatural fiction?

The brief answer is that “The Turn of the Screw” is so deliciously ambiguous that one reader can feel that their interpretation is textually supported to the point of un-deniability while another reader may just as easily use the same very same text to discredit the other’s point of view with just as much confidence. This has caused a violent reaction in the academy, whereby respectable critics have ruthlessly torn apart one another’s arguments but have never been able to decisively argue their point. In short, it is a literary puzzle of the most tantalizing sort.

One perspective is as easy to hold as another. In fact, the two dominant camps have even adopted neologisms to define their positions: Apparitionists and Non-Apparitionists. The former have viewed the story as a supernatural narrative about evil spirits undermining a credible narrator, and find support in James’ own letters where he calls the tale a straight-forward ghost tale, while the latter have brutally argued back that the novelette features one of literature’s most incorrigibly unreliable narrators – a woman who is alternatively insane, deluded, imaginative, or even murderous.

There are, of course, other, smaller camps that sit between the two dominant groups, not unlike independent political parties in the United States. Among the most interesting are those that see the tale as a blend of Apparitionist and Non-Apparitionist beliefs (they believe the ghosts are real, but that the governess’ actions are fueled by her subjective viewpoint, and that she fatally misses the point) and those that – most controversial of all – believe that the story is an allegory written by a completely sane, now-middle-aged governess to a grown, living Miles (the character Douglas, who matches Miles’ description almost entirely) as an encoded confession of her unrequited, inappropriate lust.

CHARACTER ANALYSES

THE GOVERNESS

Like so many of the most interesting characters in this narrative, the governess is enigmatic and carries with her a suggestive, tantalizing, yet sparsely detailed background. We know that she is twenty, that she is the daughter of a country parson, that she has brothers whom she admires keenly, that there is (at the time of the action) trouble occurring at her home – trouble which necessitates disturbing news that she would rather not ponder – and that this is her first assignment after a respectable education.

We know – after the action – that she continued to work as a governess (she wasn’t imprisoned or committed or hanged – an important detail to remember), that she may have had a love affair with the brother of one of her wards (Douglas, ten years her junior, whom some controversially identify as a grown Miles), that this young man is struck by her gentleness, intelligence, charm, beauty, and – so it would seem – pathos (although his infatuation acts as a bias), that she never married, and that she died about twenty years previous to the night written about in the prologue – roughly, aged forty-five or fifty.

I will note here that – in my opinion – not nearly enough scholars spend time examining her biography post-Bly, so I encourage you to mull these details over when attempting to muster a personal interpretation of the action.

The governess has always been a figure of great controversy. This is particularly notable since the story was published in a time period where unreliable narrators were relatively uncommon except in farces (e.g., the comic tales of Irving, Voltaire, Twain, etc.), and unreliable female narrators were practically unheard of, especially well-educated ladies.

The scholar Raúl Valiño Siota of the University of the Basque Country succinctly describes the divisive critical reception that this character has received:

‘The main body of criticism can be divided into two groups. On the one hand, the so-called apparitionists have defended a reading in which the governess’s state of mind has little or no weight at all. They offer a more radical interpretation of the symbolism present in the characters, elements and events that take place in the story, so that the religious allegory they support is free of any inconvenient psychic references to the governess’s mind: “we can not account for the devil by treating the governess as pathological; we must seek elsewhere an explanation of the story’s hold” (Heilmann, 1960).

Thus, the archetypal struggle between Good and Evil fits this theory better. On the other hand, the so-called non-apparitionists have defended another reading in which the governess’s mental state seems to be the only meaningful aspect of the whole work. They rationalise the governess’s sexuality in excess by focusing on the psychoanalytic evidence “washed clean of all queerness as by exposure to a flowing laboratory tap” (Goddard, 1960), so that all the supernatural phenomena vanish into thin air. Under  their  shadow  there  lies  a  broad  array  of  different  theories,  ranging  from  the  governess’s Marxism theory to sex-related theories that include homosexuality, bisexuality, or paedophilic attitudes towards the children. According to one theory Henry James is even accused of being a misogynist.’

As such, the governess has alternatively been described as a protective and maternal woman beset by supernatural saboteurs; a sexually-frustrated, deeply-repressed nymphomaniac who conjures the spirits in a fit of psychological constipation; a lecherous (but otherwise stable) guardian torn between desire and duty; a madwoman plagued by hereditary, degenerative insanity; or some combination thereof.

The ghosts are thus either entirely real, deceitful inventions, allegorical codes, the hallucinations of madness, or… some combination thereof. Her approach to the children can also be seen in a variety of ways – she is insightful (picking up on subtle deceits, hidden behavior, and carefully crafted personae), she is paranoid (falsely inventing motives, backstories, and corruptions through a series of dearly-held delusional fantasies of grandeur), or she is insane (confused by the imaginary visions of a diseased mind).

James brilliantly fills her narrative with ambiguity, coming to conclusions that can be supported by the text, but are never proven by the text – she reads into behaviors that may or may not be accurately interpreted, supposes motives that are never explicitly expressed, appears to tell lies, and omits scenes of action which could corroborate her theories.

All in all, she could be entirely harmless, deeply conflicted, or violently homicidal – and the text simultaneously supports and discourages all such readings! She is ultimately a fascinating character who will in one stretch of action attract tremendous ire and annoyance (her illusions of grandeur, hopeless crush on the master, and moral convictions have famously earned the vitriol of critics), and in the next be either victoriously vindicated (as she is when Grose witnesses Flora fly into an unexpected fit of abusive, vulgar language) or heartbreakingly humanized (as when she all but admits that her love for the Master is hopeless).

Her relationship with Miles is perhaps the most interesting of the book: he certainly seems to represent something to her, and both appear to be oddly attracted to the other. Many have read her affection towards him as having a pedophilic nature, and have interpreted it as the expression of her own repressed sexuality (towards the Master, towards her handsome brothers, towards Quint, towards Mrs Grose, towards Miss Jessel, towards her father, etc., etc.) onto a vulnerable subordinate.

This reading views their relationship as a struggle between class, power, gender, and rank: Miles – unlike the Master – is her inferior for now, but he is destined to surpass her once he comes of age (by dint of his gender, class, and education), so – the theory goes – while he is still under her power – while he is still her inferior – she takes advantage of their relationship and begins making a play for his affection, one which stands a much better chance of consummation than her ultimate hope: the Master.

Because of the various readings of this relationship, she has been seen, alternatively, as a maternal protectress, a frustrated nympho, a murderous psychopath, or an oppressed, poor female eking out a life in a world dominated by rich men. As in all things with this character, vagueness and ambiguity have caused her to be the epicenter of critical debate.

MILES

Miles is perhaps the most ambiguous figure in The Turn of the Screw—a child whose identity constantly wavers between innocence and corruption, victim and aggressor. James deliberately resists fixing Miles in any single category. Is he a precocious boy merely imitating adult gestures of charm—calling the governess “my dear” and kissing her on the lips—or is he reenacting patterns of abuse learned from Quint, whose presence haunts the household?

When the governess suspects that Miles has been expelled for “things he said to boys he liked,” we cannot tell whether these were harmless flirtations, troubling sexual advances, or inventions of her own paranoia. The text sustains this uncertainty, allowing Miles to occupy multiple interpretive possibilities at once: he is at once the innocent schoolboy poised on the threshold of manhood and the uncanny child whose intimacy feels prematurely adult, even predatory.

Grose’s role in this web of confusion heightens the ambiguity by repeatedly blurring Miles with Quint and even with the absent Master. At one moment, when the governess remarks that the Master “seems to like us young and pretty,” Grose agrees as though the comment might apply just as well to Miles or Quint, collapsing distinctions between employer, child, and ghost. Elsewhere, Grose confesses her fear of being left alone with “him,” but James leaves the referent destabilized: is she afraid of Quint’s ghostly intrusion or of Miles himself, already “trained” in corrupt habits?

These moments of slippage suggest that the boundaries between boy and man, victim and abuser, living presence and spectral return are deliberately porous. James makes Miles the locus of projection—of Grose’s evasions, the governess’s sexual anxieties, and perhaps the Master’s absent authority—so that he becomes not only a child in crisis but the very site where the novel stages its drama of moral and erotic uncertainty.

Miles was chummy with Quint, who had a reputation as a rake, and the governess fears that Miles was molested by the valet, or at least tutored in carnal knowledge. The governess pitches back and forth in her interpretation of Miles’ modesty, initially finding him blooming with the “positive fragrance of purity,” but later fearing and resenting his apparent loss of innocence.

Many critics have argued that it is the governess’ unrealistic expectations that cause him to appear monstrous to her, and that – had she been more worldly or cynical – his acting out would have raised no red flags, but – as it is – her worldview is wholly dichotomous, and when Miles admits that he is not always good (“when I’m bad, I AM bad!”), she takes him to be wholly corrupted, even possessed demonically.

The climax of the novella drives these ambiguities to their most unsettling pitch. Miles’ final cry—“Peter Quint—you devil!”—is the only explicit naming of Quint in the boy’s mouth, and yet even here the line resists clarity. On the one hand, Miles’ exclamation could be read as the moment of catharsis: he recognizes Quint’s corrupting influence, expels him with an act of spiritual resistance, and dies freed from possession.

But equally plausible is the opposite: that the governess, in her desperate insistence that Miles name the evil, has pressed the words into his mouth, collapsing Quint’s identity with Miles’ own. If Miles is “possessed,” it is not in the clear theological sense of demonic inhabitation, but in the murkier psychological sense of being made to embody the fears, suspicions, and desires of those around him.

In this light, the echoes of Grose’s earlier conflations gain greater weight. By confusing Miles with both the Master and Quint, Grose foreshadows the final scene, where Miles himself cannot be disentangled from the ghostly predator. The governess, too, has earlier described Miles with language that makes him sound alternately like a child, a gentleman, and a seducer.

Thus, when Miles dies in her arms at the moment of naming Quint, the boy has become an unstable compound of all three figures: the absent Master whose authority is never present, the spectral Quint who embodies sexual corruption, and the boy himself, standing uneasily at the threshold of adulthood. James’ refusal to clarify what precisely happens—whether Miles is saved, destroyed, or simply crushed under the weight of others’ projections—ensures that the “devil” named in the final line could just as well be Miles’ own self, or the governess’ intrusive interpretation, as much as it is Quint.

It is worth noting that Miles’ name recalls the symbolism of Owen Wingrave, whose first name is Welsh for “young soldier” – Miles is, likewise, Latin for “soldier”. Like Owen, Miles is a young, male orphan filled with promise – an unquestionable prodigy – who nonetheless brings trouble to his family name.

Also similarly, Miles had a father in the military who died in Asia (we are not sure whether – like the Wingraves – it was a bloody death), and he is (spoilers) mysteriously killed in a nondescript way during a confrontation with ghosts that may or may not exist. 

FLORA

Flora is eight years old, a charming girl who has far less of a personality than Miles, and – like Hawthorne’s Pearl – is something of a flower child (as her name implies) of instinct and caprice. Also like Pearl, she is fascinated by nature, and given to emotional outbursts of rage when confronted with hypocrisy.

This powerful range in emotion (from angelic to demonic, from young to “an old, old woman”) make her hard to peg. She seems to be the very soul of innocence, but – in one of the most notable events in the novel – she is last seen raging unspeakable curses and insults at the governess for accusing her of seeing Jessel.

This causes us to wonder if her angelic persona is a carefully controlled act, and if she is not a more richly complexioned character than her cherubic appearance would suggest. Flora’s most sinister moments involve deceit and hidden knowledge: she colludes with Miles to trick the governess into witness Miles “being bad,” steals away into the woods (where Quint and Jessel are implied to have conducted their affair) without her hat (even though she is outdoors – the sign of a prostitute), preternaturally seems to age into a crone during her rage (a suggestion of demonic possession), and demonstrates her understanding of the physics of lovemaking by impaling a vaginal boat with a phallic mast.

The governess’ cries of “she KNOWS!” and “she SAW” upon witnessing this last instance would have been perfectly understood by Victorians, and the seemingly harmless construction of the boat is about as graphic as James could get about the molestation of a little girl before censors would have shut him down.

But the novel remains characteristically elusive on this point: is Flora a bad, conniving girl, or is it merely the governess’ interpretation of a child’s natural acting-out? Incidentally, although the mythological Flora was the goddess of flowers and springtime, (evocative of girlhood, rebirth, and youth) she was also a fertility deity: a goddess of sex, and a symbol of love, lust, and eroticism.

In some stories Flora is a human courtesan who left a massive legacy (made, of course, from her success as a prostitute) to the city of Rome, which deified her in thanks for the cash (yet another example of deception, narrative-shifts, entendre, hidden pasts, and dual natures).

MRS GROSE

Mrs Grose (whose name is homophone for “gross” – as in earthy, common, the salt of the earth, the every-woman) is the illiterate housekeeper who is at the mercy of the Quint during his reign – and at the mercy of the governess during hers. Grose, fittingly, has learned to be adaptive, and much of her personality could be interpreted as a frightened woman’s attempt to keep her volatile superiors happy and calm.

Grose is implied to have been sexually harassed or even assaulted by Quint, and has a great pity for Jessel whom she supposes to have been damned along with him. Grose is constantly berated, underutilized, and spoken down to by the governess who views her illiteracy and lack of education as a character flaw (in her mind, Grose is loyal like a dog, but – also like a dog – she requires a tight leash, constant monitoring, and discipline).

The governess sometimes suspects Grose (whom she calls “a receptacle of lurid things”) and views her protectiveness of the children as a hindrance to her spiritual mission, but ultimately finds her to be a loyal ally and an attentive (if gently skeptical) sounding board. As one analyst puts it,

“The governess frequently attempts to seize moments alone with Mrs. Grose so that she can try out her latest speculations. Mrs. Grose is usually skeptical of these speculations, but the governess takes Mrs. Grose’s incredulity for astonished belief. Like the reader, Mrs. Grose is willing to hear the governess out but doesn’t necessarily agree with her logic or conclusions.”

Grose is her chief source of information (which should cause us to deeply scrutinize her potentially biased interpretations of Quint, Jessel, the Master, and the children – none of which are ever independently verified), and though she is less apt to leap to conclusions, she is not nearly as dim as the governess supposes – perhaps just prudent (as we mentioned, she has learned not to rock the boat, and to be adaptable).

PETER QUINT

We know surprisingly little about the novel’s chief antagonist, the valet (a man’s personal, attending servant) Peter Quint. Though a menial (low ranking servant), he has a shocking amount of authority in the house, and while uneducated, he is massively charismatic. He was inappropriately close to the Master (some have credibly implied that the two shared a homosexual relationship, along with Miss Jessel), wearing his clothes in the Master’s absence, and refusing to wear a hat out of doors (a symbol of shamelessness and a lack of gentility since hats were worn out of doors by men and women of all social classes as a sign of respectability).

Quint was known to have seduced, harassed, or assaulted many members of the household (it is implied of both genders), but had a special relationship with Miss Jessel, whom he may have impregnated. Quint is the best physically-described character in the story: he has a satyr-like face and red hair (two traits traditionally associated with a high sexual appetite), androgynous features, and expressive, penetrating eyes.

He dies in a mysterious manner, falling on the ice after walking home one night in liquor, but foul play is implied since the fatal injury is described as a “blow to the head.” Some have inferred that Quint was expanding his sexual territory to the nearby village and that he was killed by a jealous husband or lover.

He appears to the governess as a ghost in a variety of suggestive manners: from the top of a phallic tower, peering voyeuristically in through the schoolroom window, and creeping up the stairs out of the shadows (symbolic of lustful urges emerging from the unconscious mind into consciousness – manifesting in sexual action).

I argue throughout the notes that Quint -- ghost or not – can be seen as a symbol of the governess’ repressed Animus or Id – her stereotypically “masculine” sexual appetite, and that his appearances can be timed with surges in her lust for the Master or Miles.

MISS JESSEL

Like Quint, Miss Jessel is poorly sketched in (intentionally, it should be noted), leaving us with a great deal of speculation and theorizing rather than a substantial body of biographical information. What we do know is this: she was a veritable lady (probably higher ranking than the governess, herself – a country parson’s daughter), a beautiful woman like the governess, and one who unfortunately was involved in a scandal with the lascivious Quint.

At some point she was said to have left Bly to return to her home and died before returning. While this is Grose’s report, we have several literary clues to piece together the omitted details. Jessel is called “infamous,” and her sex acts with Quint were apparently witnessed by several servants, he ultimate death is strongly implied to have either been suicide or murder, and to have occurred not at her family home, but in Lake Bly where her spirit is wont to haunt (most film versions have played along with this idea, depicting her with wet, stringy hair, overtly describing her suicide, or having her rise from the lake).

The implication is that Jessel was impregnated by Quint during a romp in the woods near the lake, and that she either killed herself out of shame or was killed by Quint during a midnight assignation. Some have also argued that she died from a failed abortion (the real reason for her “return home”), or killed herself out of despair after the abortion.

While James is vague about her fate, British folk songs, legends, and fiction have long featured the trope of the woman impregnated out of wedlock who is either drowned by an nervous lover or drowns herself in shame (even the Decemberists song “The Bachelor and the Bride” describes such a tragedy). Most British readers would immediately catch the scent of this popular cautionary tale.

Aside from theories, Jessel’s ghost is pale, miserable, and tragic – not sinister or demonic like the governess so clearly wishes her to be – and is seen weeping and looking forlorn. Jessel is often interpreted as a warning to the governess (“but for the grace of God, there too go I,” sort of warning about her love of the Master, who may or may not have been in cahoots with Quint), and her curse of “you terrible, miserable woman!” has often been seen as ambiguous (possibly referring to herself when looking at Jessel).

The name “Jessel” evokes “Jezebel,” the name of the wicked Biblical queen who worshiped Baal, a god to whom children were slain as sacrifices by their own parents. Jezebel has become a name synonymous with wicked, unnatural women, especially those who are cruel to children and those with rampant, inappropriate sexual appetites.

THE MASTER

The Master is perhaps the most enigmatic of all the characters, a man who is barely seen, yet whose absence inversely dominates the plot (he is defined by his absence in the way that most characters are defined by their presence). Uncle to Flora and Miles, he was given control of them when they were orphaned in India.

He is charming, attractive, and has a charismatic personality, but his request never to be bothered on any account starts the novel on a sinister note: the request is, all things aside, illegal, and we know from the preface that he was never seen again by the governess (meaning that even Miles’ death wasn’t enough to lure him away from his cosmopolitan activities).

He is strongly hinted at being a rogue and a lady-killer, sharing with Quint (and Miles, apparently) a taste for pretty, young women, and being very adroit at ensnaring their desire. He appears to have had a remarkably odd relationship with his manservant, Quint, wherewith Quint shares his clothes, has a strange amount of power over the other servants, and rejects social norms with complete immunity.

Many critics have suggested – with good cause – that the two were lovers; some that they conspired to cover up Jessel’s suicide (or murder); and others that Quint, Jessel, and the Master shared a ménage a trois. This has always reminded me of the relationship between the aristocratic Dr Jekyll and the vulgar Mr Hyde, and other critics have noticed this as well, claiming that Quint is the Master’s symbolic alter-ego – his lower-born evil twin. T

he Master’s sexual allure overwhelms the governess, who accepts the nerve-wracking assignment mostly due to her instantaneous infatuation, which causes her to constantly daydream about earning his approval (along with an implied invitation to his bed). In this manner, the Master is a Freudian symbol of the Electra Complex – what we today popularly term “daddy issues” – with his flirtatious-but-withholding personality, and his mixture of affection and indifference.

Withal, some have noted his resemblance to an eligible, divorced father who chooses to lavish time on his harem of girlfriends and one-night-stands while diplomatically spurning his daughter with facile excuses, feigned attentiveness, and empty promises.

DOUGLAS

Douglas presents the governess’ narrative in the framing story, claiming that it was written by his sister’s governess – a woman whom he found mentally sound and physically attractive. While several of the characters in the opening infer that Douglas was in love with her, I believe there is sufficient evidence that the two had openly and unambiguously exchanged vows of love, and I would even argue that Victorian euphemisms are present which imply that the two consummated a love affair, likely the first of Douglas (or the governess’) life:

“I was much there that year—it was a beautiful one; and we had, in her off-hours, some strolls and talks in the garden—talks in which she struck me as awfully clever and nice. Oh yes; don't grin: I liked her extremely and am glad to this day to think she liked me, too. If she hadn't she wouldn't have told me. She had never told anyone.”

Douglas receives the manuscript of The Turn of the Screw from her, holds onto it until he is forty (roughly her age at the time of her death), then presents it to his friends as nothing more than a curious ghost story. Douglas later dies, and the unnamed narrator writes the framing story as its preface creating a “telescopic” effect which slowly draws us into an event that seems to have taken place forty years or more before the narrative was produced (a technique favored by M. R. James and H. P. Lovecraft among others).

Douglas is highly defensive of the governess, calling her a lovely woman, and his emotions are very protective and tender towards her. He and others remark on her excellent penmanship (an indication of mental soundness and education), and yet he never claims that it is a genuine ghost story, remaining fairly neutral on all points other than her sanity.

This has led some critics (most influentially, Louis D. Rubin) to argue the most controversial theory in this very controversial book: Douglas is the grown Miles (the ages and C.V. match perfectly, even down to having a younger sister), and that the entire story is an encoded allegory written by the governess to explain her love for him – a love that was socially impossible.

Such a reading interprets the two ghosts as symbols of his awakening lust and her pedophilic desire, respectively, threats which – her allegory concludes – both must resist at all costs. The governess dies a spinster, and if this is an accurate reading, then “Miles Douglas” is probably so tender towards her because he realizes that she hopelessly pined after him for the rest of her life.

POPULAR CRITICAL INTERPRETATIONS:

EIGHT LITERARY ANALYSES

APPARITIONISTS

(ANTI-WILSONIANS). 

Critics in this camp emphasize James’ own description of The Turn of the Screw as “a mere ghost story,” granting the governess the benefit of the doubt and reading the tale as a struggle between good and evil. If this approach sometimes appears naïve or simplistic, it is largely because non-apparitionist readings have dominated academic circles for nearly a century; even high school curricula often prime students to look for signs of the governess’s mental instability and sexual repression.

For apparitionists, the governess is a beleaguered heroine whose failure stems not from madness but from inadequate social supports—chiefly the absent master. This interpretation has lent itself to both Marxist and feminist adaptations: the governess becomes a representative of the lower classes and of women trapped in patriarchal neglect.

Apparitionists insist that the ghosts are real, though this does not mean they accept every detail of the governess’s narrative at face value. Many concede that she may be infatuated with the master, suffer from some degree of nervous instability, or narrate events in a self-serving light.

What distinguishes them is the conviction that Quint and Jessel exist as supernatural presences, not hallucinations or mere metaphors. Yet even then, the ghosts need not be demonic. Some apparitionists argue they function as neutral catalysts, and that the governess projects her own romanticized notions of heroism onto them—casting them as forces of possession to be resisted.

Others even suggest that Quint and Jessel attempt to warn the governess of herself, which explains why she so often mirrors them and why their appearances resemble eerie extensions of her own figure (a reading that appeals to structuralist critics). A small minority of critics still read the novella “straight”—as a literal tale of ghosts threatening innocent children—but this view has become rare in the twenty-first century.

NON-APPARITIONISTS

(WILSONIANS). 

Non-apparitionists regard the governess as the quintessential unreliable narrator, and their name derives from Edmund Wilson’s famous 1934 essay, “The Ambiguity of Henry James.” Wilson argued that “the young governess who tells the story is a neurotic case of sex repression, and the ghosts are not real ghosts at all but merely the governess’s hallucinations.” While the idea was not new—critics had long suspected that the ghosts might be products of her imagination—Wilson’s celebrity ensured its wide adoption.

Wilson’s interpretation is distinctly Freudian: the governess, sexually repressed and infatuated with her employer, unconsciously fabricates apparitions to dramatize her sense of moral mission and prove herself worthy of the master’s trust.

Whether she does so deliberately or through unconscious delusion remains debated among Wilsonians, but most agree that she is, in some sense, inventing the ghosts to bolster her position. This reading recasts the novella as a psychological case study rather than a supernatural mystery.

Although often opposed to apparitionist interpretations, Wilson’s Freudian lens can overlap with them, since both camps acknowledge the governess’s unreliability—whether through self-deception, projection, or outright madness.

STRUCTURALISM. 

Structuralists approach the text by examining the relationships and symmetries between characters, places, and events, treating them like the interlocking gears of a mechanism. In Turn, their chief interest lies in the triads of couples—Miles/Flora, Quint/Jessel, and the Governess/Master—who both mirror and invert one another.

Miles functions as Flora’s masculine counterpart; Jessel represents the female half of a tragic affair (ending in shame, perhaps pregnancy and suicide), while Quint embodies the reckless, unscathed male half. The governess and the master are themselves binary opposites: female and male, powerless and powerful, narrator and silent absence, propriety and intrigue, chastity and seduction, poverty and aristocracy.

The novella is filled with such doublings and echoes. The governess mirrors Quint when she spies through windows; Jessel appears as her uncanny double, weeping on the stairs or confronting her in the classroom.

Miles is alternately figured as a “mini-master,” a precocious flirt whom Mrs. Grose confuses with his uncle, or a “mini-Quint,” a potential danger to women whom Grose fears being left alone with. Even the master and Quint appear uncannily alike: both seductive men of authority who share clothing, women, and an air of scandal.

Structuralist readings emphasize that the story’s meaning arises not from any single character’s reliability but from the way these mirrored relationships destabilize boundaries between innocence and corruption, authority and vulnerability, presence and absence.

FEMINISM. 

Early feminist critics of the 1960s and ’70s focused on women’s subjugation under patriarchy, while later waves broadened attention to marginalized voices across class, race, and sexuality.

Contemporary feminist readings of Turn are often less interested in the governess’s binary opposition to the master than in how critics and characters alike marginalize her narrative. She is routinely dismissed as “hysterical,” “irrational,” or sexually frustrated—labels that echo the misogynistic diagnoses Victorians applied to women.

Feminist scholars highlight the governess’s precarious position as a woman bound by patriarchal expectations, forced to repress her sexuality and conform to ideals of purity and propriety. Her uncritical acceptance of the master’s absurd command—that she must never contact him even in emergencies—illustrates the way she has internalized patriarchal logic, interpreting obedience as proof of her worth.

Sympathy also extends to other women in the text: Miss Jessel, frequently demonized by the governess, may be less a monster than a tragic victim of class and gender constraints; and Mrs. Grose, often mocked for her illiteracy or dismissed as foolish, proves the most pragmatic and clear-sighted figure in the household.

In this sense, feminist criticism reframes the story not only as a Gothic tale of possession but also as a parable of women struggling to survive in a society that mocks, silences, and misreads them.

FREUDIAN / PSYCHOANALYSIS. 

Freudian critics were among the first to challenge a straightforward ghost-story reading, making them pioneers of non-apparitionist interpretations. Freud’s revolutionary theories of the unconscious suggested that repressed desires—often sexual in nature—leak out in disguised forms, whether through dreams, slips of the tongue, or symbolic imagery. Applied to Turn, this lens positions the governess as a neurotic woman whose narrative is saturated with sublimated desire.

Freudian analyses often focus on her fixation with the master (does he even notice her?), her disturbing intimacy with Miles (is it maternal affection or veiled eroticism?), and her obsessive moralism. Her background—hinting at family instability, a parson father possibly suffering from mental illness, and suggestions of incestuous brothers—has been combed for evidence of neuroses.

Meanwhile, Quint and Jessel embody raw, transgressive sexuality: rumors abound that Quint seduced Jessel, assaulted Grose, and corrupted the children with lessons in vice.

Symbolic readings flourish under this approach. Quint appears on a phallic tower; Jessel beside a vaginal pond “oblong in shape”; Flora is caught affixing a mast into a toy boat, which the governess interprets as sexual knowledge.

The governess herself represents the superego, moral regulation; Quint, the id, primal desire. Bly becomes the ego’s architecture, its grounds concealing the unconscious (the pond, the woods) where illicit acts take place.

When the children escape to these spaces, they enact flights from repression into desire. Such readings render the novella not only a tale of ghosts but also a coded allegory of repressed sexuality, guilt, and projection.

JUNGIAN / ARCHETYPE THEORY / MYTHIC. 

Jungian critics, while related to Freudians, approach the story less through repression and more through archetypes and myth. For Jung, the psyche is populated by timeless figures—the Shadow, the Anima, the Animus—that shape human imagination. In this reading, Jessel embodies the governess’s repressed Anima, her feminine sexuality exiled to the shadows, while Quint embodies her Animus, the aggressive masculine energy she dares not acknowledge.

The ghosts, then, are not merely specters but symbolic projections of her unconscious. When the governess encounters Quint on the staircase—a liminal space of transition—at dawn (a symbolic hour of half-light, between consciousness and unconsciousness), she does not simply confront an intruder but her own denied appetites.

Her triumphal interpretation of the moment, claiming victory over him, may in fact mask his victory over her: the recognition that he is part of her nature. Jungian analysis reframes the governess’s struggle not as a moral battle with external evil but as an inner confrontation with the divided parts of her own psyche.

MARXISM. 

Marxist critics foreground the class tensions coursing through the novella. The absent master epitomizes the negligent aristocracy: an indifferent landlord who shirks responsibility while leaving dependents in danger. His treatment of the governess—seducing her with the prospect of status yet refusing to acknowledge her except on humiliating terms—parallels the exploitation of the lower classes, who labor under false promises of advancement.

Quint, a servant who dons his master’s clothes and seduces women of higher rank, becomes a symbol of class transgression. His refusal to wear a hat—an emblem of respect and deference—signals his rejection of hierarchy. Jessel, a lady undone by an affair with this charismatic lower-born man, represents the risks of crossing class boundaries, punished by shame and death.

Even Mrs. Grose embodies class dynamics: though mocked for her illiteracy and treated condescendingly by the governess, she may be the shrewdest character, quietly maneuvering for survival. Read this way, the novella dramatizes the instability of class structures, where ambition, seduction, and rebellion unsettle established hierarchies, and where those at the margins (like Grose and Jessel) often see most clearly the dangers of the system.

GENDER THEORY / QUEER THEORY. 

Gender and queer theory highlight the pervasive, though often repressed, sexuality in The Turn of the Screw. Miles’ mysterious expulsion from school is especially revealing: while the governess assumes he was guilty of aggression, Miles insists he spoke forbidden words only to boys he “liked,” implying homoerotic undertones. The vague handling of this incident suggests that Victorian society found such possibilities unspeakable, an anxiety the text itself encodes.

Queer readings also explore Quint as a pansexual predator, his corruption of Miles paralleling Jessel’s ambiguous relationship with Flora. While critics are careful to distinguish homosexuality from pedophilia, they note how James’ narrative conflates the two, exposing Victorian fears of non-normative sexuality.

Beyond the children, the governess herself engages in ambiguous physical intimacy with Mrs. Grose—embracing, kissing, and coercing her—which can be read as sublimated desire in the absence of the master. Sadomasochistic dynamics also permeate the text, later amplified in cinematic adaptations such as The Nightcomers (1971), which imagined Quint and Jessel’s relationship in explicitly BDSM terms.

Gender/queer theorists thus see the novella as a crucible of repressed sexual energies, where desire constantly threatens to destabilize social, moral, and familial roles. 

THE TURN OF THE SCREW IN FILM:

THE MOST NOTABLE CINEMATIC SPECTRES

THE TURN OF THE SCREW, 1954 (Opera),

1982, 2011 (Adaptations) 

English composer Benjamin Britten was fascinated by the psychological complexity of James’ supernatural tales. He first adapted Owen Wingrave into a world-acclaimed chamber opera in 1973, but his earlier and most celebrated adaptation was The Turn of the Screw. Written for a small stage, a small cast, and a modest orchestra, the opera has an atmosphere that feels strangely intimate yet simultaneously distant.

Britten follows a Freudian interpretation and an apparitionist perspective—in his version, the ghosts are real, but their motives are deeply sexual. His score is eerie, atonal, and dissonant, while the libretto is fearfully intense, filling in details James deliberately left unsaid.

The result is a genuinely sinister interpretation of Quint and Jessel’s motives, suggesting that their apparitions seek to supernaturally reenact their illicit love affair through the children they molested in life. A lush, cinematic production of this opera was filmed in 1982 and is available online, while a later filmed stage production from 2011, starring Miah Persson, is often considered the superior version.

THE INNOCENTS, 1961

The most famous adaptation – often considered one of the best horror movies in history – is this Freudian interpretation of James’ tale, directed by Jack Clayton and starring Deborah Kerr. The direction and photography are truly unsettling and inventive, tormenting the viewer in stark chiaroscuro tones of black and white – a landscape dominated by shadow and light, good and evil, right and wrong.

This adaptation is famous for avoiding cheap thrills and horror for intense psychological dread and terror.

The score – made of music boxes, children’s songs, sinister flute airs, and synthetic layering – too, is notably chilling, and the acting is superb. But it is truly Clayton’s masterful vision as a director – watchful, voyeuristic, and invasive – that has attracted so much attention for what most critics consider the best adaptation of the novel.

Clayton, like Britten, takes a psychoanalytic approach but remains an apparitionist (it is very hard to doubt that something supernatural is occurring in a house ringing with maniacal laughter in the dead of night), causing the audience to wonder what the insecure, infatuated governess might be projecting onto the specters, but never really calling her into doubt (indeed, this is very hard to do in a film version – James hints at the governess’ odd expressions, emotional overreactions, and misinterpretations, but films seem to gain more power by building faith in the governess rather than wicking it away).

Sexuality boils heavily beneath the film, from Quint’s leering, undressing eyes to the final shot of the governess laying her quivering lips onto Miles’ cold mouth. The screenplay was written by Truman Capote of Cold Blood fame. Capote is well known for his flair for the Southern Gothic style of Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, and his script has been noted for its use of this lens.

The whole environment has a very Faulkneresque air, one writer noting that Kerr’s “repressed erotic sensibility [is] counterpointed by shots of lush and decaying plants and rapacious insect life” in a manner that owes a debt to the Southern Gothic tradition. Themes of moral repression, latent evil, and social hypocrisy float effortlessly around Bly as easily as they would a Spanish moss-covered plantation in the Alabama swamps. Peter Bradshaw reviews the film in the following manner:

‘[It] is an elegant, sinister and scalp-prickling ghost story – as scary in its way as Rosemary's Baby or The Exorcist. It has to be the most sure-footed screen adaptation of Henry James … clarifying some of the original's ambiguities and obscurities, but without damaging the story's subtlety… [The governess] finds something she describes as "secret, whispery, and indecent": the house is haunted by the souls of Peter Quint, a drunken, disreputable valet, and Miss Jessel, the former governess whom he seduced. Without admitting it, the children can see the ghosts as well; the spectres have become their secret, parasitical friends. Flora's pertly knowing innocence and Miles's insolent adult hauteur show how the children become possessed and corrupted by them. Clayton brilliantly uses slow dissolves to create ghostly superimpositions, and the harmless squeals of bath-time fun, or squeakings of a pencil, suggest uncanny screams. The most disturbing scenes take place in daylight: Quint's appearance in the garden is heralded by the sudden silencing of the birdsong. It's a moment that makes your blood run cold. The whole film does that.’

The Innocents remains the unquestionable masterpiece to which all adaptations must needs be compared – atmospheric, psychological, stark and bleak, and often terrifying, it is one of the best ghost stories in cinema. 

THE NIGHTCOMERS, 1972

Starring a world-weary Marlon Brando, this prequel to the main action is perhaps the most influential adaptation other than The Innocents. Filmed in the throes of the sexual revolution, it is no wonder that the film is larger consumed with sex, especially considering the subject matter: the relationship between Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. The tension, however, is fascinatingly shifted, with the children taking on the roles of antagonists and the adults becoming their victims.

The briefly featured Master is now a Freud-look-alike, authoritative, but grey-haired, bearded, and fusty – hardly a London playboy – and Brando’s Quint is almost fifty, a kindly man with lightening hair and a cynical weariness that makes him seem vulnerable when compared to his energetic wards (whose ages have been advanced to put them in the opening years of puberty).

Quint is a roguish but lovable entertainer – a storyteller, philosopher, and clown – who harbors fascinating theories on love (that love and hate are the same) and death (that it is only in death where people can be together).

Quint and Jessel conduct a violent BDSM affair under the peering eyes of the voyeuristic Miles and Flora, who begin to willfully adopt their manners and fetishes into an incestuous relationship.

Ultimately, Mrs Grose’s moral outrage at the servant’s sadomasochistic lovemaking causes the children to sabotage Grose’s efforts to separate them – with psychopathic results. The Nightcomers is erotic, chilling, bizarre, and shocking. It is a psychosexual thriller which begs the question: what if the predators weren’t the servants (people trying desperately to express a forbidden love and attraction), but the (sociopathic, incestuous, voodoo practicing, and murderous) children?

THE TURN OF THE SCREW, 1992

This jarring interpretation is set in England during the Swinging 1960s is clearly inspired by The Innocents, making use of daring photography and direction, Freudian undertones, and thematic ambiguity. The relocation to a more modern date is surprisingly effective, and the deep eroticism is narcotic (the Master is a crack-smoking, earring-wearing, ‘60s swinger with a leopard skin rug and a pirate shirt and the governess is a buttoned-up, wide-eyed, Catholic-school-girl type with a blond ponytail, conservative clothes, and an Olivia Newton John aura).

The claustrophobic directing, powerful visuals, and ambiguous hauntings combine into what genuinely feels like a bad high, or what one reviewer called “a beautiful nightmare” and another a “dizzying display of hypnotic beauty.” It is sensual, luscious, delectable, and poisonous, like a venomous orchid marked with garish colors both as an attraction and a warning.

The camera shots and lighting are discombobulating, sending us into vertigo as we navigate through Bly’s creepy litter of toys, windows gushing with sunlight, and the dense foliage outside. The equalization of the children, the religious devotion of the governess, and the moral corruption of those around them all conspire to make an immensely uncomfortable, and thoroughly effective film. One of the best of the bunch, and highly recommended in spite of its dramatic silences. 

THE HAUNTING OF HELEN WALKER, 1995

Although it is not particularly outstanding or unique, this version of “The Turn of the Screw” is worth watching for the strangeness of the ghost scenes: it features the creepiest Quint I’ve encountered (an ogling, leering, suggestive lech), and includes some shockingly erotic elements: Quint and Jessel beckon the governess (a ludicrously miscast Valerie Bertinelli) into a three-way, Miles French kisses the governess while moaning in Quint’s voice, and she imagines (or has a vision of) Miles, Flora, Quint, and Jessel participating in what seems to be a four-way – meeting at a bed and closing the door suggestively.

This is a poorly-acted period supernatural drama that doesn’t merit much time, but is interesting for some of its more salacious and chilling material – none of these movies were as genuinely creepy (not necessarily in a good way). It has the vibe of an Are You Afraid of the Dark, Goosebumps, or Eerie, Indiana episode: sensational, Gothic, and unmistakably filmed in the ‘90s: the ghoulish lighting, Dutch angles, and general fun-house/carnival vibe will not let you forget that.

THE TURN OF THE SCREW, 1999

This Masterpiece Theater adaptation is among the most highly recommended for those interested in a faithful, un-stylized adaptation (the sort you might watch to avoid reading it for English class), due in large part to its uncommon ambiguity and the tight acting.

It includes the knowing cast choice of Collin Firth as the Master (as Bridget Jones’ Diary will attest, Firth’s 1995 appearance as Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice made him the living embodiment of the Master for many viewers: a sexy, distant, desirable man who invited obsession), and the measured acting of Jodhi May: alternatingly pitiable and vulnerable, hysterical and insane.

This high-brow adaptation suffers from a lack of atmosphere: it is bright but not ironically so, colorful but not lush, and has all the personality of a tasteful picnic in June. Just a bit too sunny and pleasant, but even this helps lend an ambiguous nature to the governess’ reliability (a truly spooky setting makes us believe without much work, but here were pitch back and forth between trust and doubt, pity and annoyance).

The acting is clever and professional if not absorbing – May is ingenious in her role as the emotional governess whose motives are anything but transparent and whose attraction to Firth’s character is electric – and the historical accuracy is the best of any adaptation.

The children are played supremely well: they are absolute angels at the beginning, but when chinks begin to show in their goodness, it is as if a trap-door opens under us, and we suddenly doubt whether they have been faking all along. It is amazingly ambiguous, and nearly any type of reading is possible (unlike The Innocents, for instance, which doesn’t lend itself to a non-apparitionist vision).

I only wish it had included some more terror and had a little less of the PBS polish and shine. Notwithstanding, a very accurate rendering of the book, and one which does the nearly impossible: introduces the ambiguity of the governess’ insanity.

This is one of the few versions where one feels pulled back and forth between believing and disbelieving her. On one end her emotional hysterics are very off putting, and her bias is clear, but on the other we are driven to suspect the children of complicity with the ghosts. In any case, this is the only version I know of that accurately casts doubt on the governess without falling into misogynistic character assassinations.

THE OTHERS, 2001 

Though not a direct adaptation, Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others—starring Nicole Kidman—is deeply indebted to James’ novel. The title itself recalls the governess’ dread of “the others,” and the film shares James’ mood of claustrophobic repression and ambiguity.

Set just after World War II, the story follows a woman living with her two photosensitive children in a remote country house. A group of new servants arrives, coinciding with a series of disturbing supernatural events, including the reappearance of the presumed-dead father. Fog isolates the family, heightening the atmosphere of paranoia and dread.

The Others is a masterful work of psychological horror, intelligent and terrifying, often regarded as the modern heir to The Innocents.

THE TURN OF THE SCREW, 2009

I won’t say much about this notable yet regrettable interpretation starring Michelle Dockery. Dressed up as a typical horror film, it begins with the governess being psychoanalyzed by a police psychologist who gradually comes to believe her story of psychotic ghosts but is ultimately helpless to stop their plan to silence her.

There are far too many horror movie clichés, unambiguous uses of the supernatural, and sensational moments of terror to make it a worthy addition to the canon. The corny twist at the end is enough to lay it to rest: Quint’s face appears on one of the policemen leading the governess away to death row. It is, nonetheless, a fun and creepy horror movie, but does a grave injustice to James’ delicacy.

THE TURNING, 2020. 

This most recent feature-film adaptation of The Turn of the Screw (directed by Floria Sigismondi and starring Mackenzie Davis, Finn Wolfhard, and Brooklynn Prince) was widely panned by both critics and audiences, though not without a few defenders.

Attempting to modernize the tale while keeping it nominally set in the 1990s, it trades ambiguity for sensationalism, offering a parade of conventional horror tropes—jump scares, grotesque apparitions, loud stingers, and dream-sequence fake-outs. What made James’ novella unsettling—the gradual insinuation of psychological instability and the uncanny—is replaced with fragmented plotting and heavy-handed supernatural imagery.

Davis’ governess is sympathetic but underwritten, Wolfhard plays Miles with smirking sadism rather than ambiguity, and the climax notoriously collapses into incoherence, concluding with a much-maligned fake-out ending that angered nearly everyone.

While the Gothic setting of the Maine mansion is atmospherically shot, and the child actors give committed performances, the film is most often remembered as a squandered opportunity—a reminder of how delicate James’ balance of suggestion and dread really is, and how easily it can be lost when reduced to horror-movie shorthand.

THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR, 2020. 

Released the same year as The Turning, this Netflix limited series (from Mike Flanagan, creator of The Haunting of Hill House) fared far better critically, though not without caveats. Unlike most straightforward adaptations, Bly Manor is more a reimagining than a retelling: it uses The Turn of the Screw as its skeleton but fleshes it out with plotlines and imagery from James’ other ghost stories, including “The Jolly Corner” and “The Romance of Certain Old Clothes.”

Critics generally agreed that it is not especially frightening; where Hill House was a bona fide horror series, Bly Manor is a Gothic romance, suffused with grief, longing, and the weight of memory. Flanagan leans heavily toward the non-apparitionist, psychological interpretation, portraying the hauntings as metaphors for trauma and loss.

The result is that many traditional horror fans found the series slow or even sentimental, while others praised it as one of the most emotionally rich interpretations yet made. Victoria Pedretti, Rahul Kohli, and T’Nia Miller earned particular acclaim for their performances, while Amelia Eve and Pedretti’s doomed love story became the series’ heart.

The show’s defining feature is its reinterpretation of James through a lens of queer love and tragic destiny: it transforms the governess’ ambiguous devotion into a tender same-sex romance that defies the long tradition of hysteria-driven readings of the character. Though it sacrifices much of James’ ambiguity and terror, it gains in emotional resonance, offering a meditation on death, memory, and the endurance of love.

Critics were divided, but the consensus was that Bly Manor may not be James, nor is it really horror, but it is a compelling Gothic elegy, and—perhaps uniquely among adaptations—it succeeds in moving its viewers to tears rather than merely raising their gooseflesh.

THE TURN OF THE SCREW’S 

CONTINUED ATTRACTION

The Turn of the Screw continues to fascinate and allure us – perhaps even more as time goes on and as our discourse on sexuality becomes increasingly public. We seem to simultaneously bridle against the idea of a society that is so naïve and repressed, and charmed by – even nostalgic for – the sort of Edenic innocence that the governess expects for her wards.

Today we know that child abuse is rampant, not a rarity, that children view pornography at shockingly early ages (a study by the London School of Economics reported that 90% of children 8-16 have viewed pornography; the average age of first viewing pornography is 11; 20-30% of pornography consumption is done by children), and that gratuitous sex has become a commonplace trope in the vast majority of television shows, movies, and video games targeted at teens. Sex has become cheap, common, and accessible. We consume it tangentially on a regular basis while we multi-task, when we’re bored, or when we want to relax.

Ironically, perhaps, it may be that the reason that the first adaptation of Turn wasn’t made until 1960, and that there have been increasing numbers of film and television adaptations with each successive decade is that we are nostalgic for what her side of the story represents – specifically the first third of the book where an adult woman has no reason to suspect children of being worldly, because the suggestion is ridiculous.

Of course, James’ world is suffered just as much vice and corruption as today’s, but it is was a time of relative innocence when most adults (however erroneously) could blissfully trust that children were safe from predators, unexposed to erotica, and ignorant of the sexualization of our worth that cause us to feel worthless, defeated, commodified, objectified, and humiliated once we enter puberty (again, this has never been the case for all children, certainly not those in marginalized communities, but as a general rule, it could be expected of at least the middle and upper classes).

For all the triumph and expression of sexuality, there has been an unquestionable trade off – of dignity, self-acceptance, and love – for many people, especially during the opening salvos of our teen years when we realize, for the first time, that we are being monitored by our peers, and that it is crucial to our value as a human being that we are attractive, popular, and desirable.

Children are supposed to be immune to this understanding, but many are not: those who have been abused, mistreated, neglected, or molested have experienced the self-aware jolt of puberty before their natural time, and are rocketed ahead of their peers into the world of vulnerability and cynicism that we hope will be warded off for the first 12 years of life at least.

James’ Victorian world was hardly without its problems—rigidity, hypocrisy, and moral blindness abounded—but it was also a society that still placed a high premium on protecting innocence. Childhood, in that age, was widely understood not simply as a stage of growth but as a realm to be sheltered, a sacred space where the young were given the grace to remain uncorrupted by adult desires for as long as possible.

In our own century, shaped by the aftershocks of the sexual revolution, the prevailing view could not be more different. Many celebrate the loosening of mores as a sacred victory for self-expression and sexual rights, but it has undeniably come at a cost: the cheapening of sex, the erosion of mystery and reverence for the human person, and the diminishing of qualities such as wonder, self-respect, and compassion.

It is within this contrast that James’ governess often strikes modern readers as laughable—shrill, prudish, overwrought. To the cynical eye, trained to see moral restraint as repression and innocence as naiveté, she can easily appear absurd. Yet James gives us reason to look closer. Beneath her hysteria and awkward fervor lies a figure animated by genuine idealism.

She may be clumsy, obsessive, even misguided at times, but her mission is clear: to protect her charges from being drawn too early into the adult world of corruption and desire, and to preserve their right to remain children. In doing so, she represents not just a personal obsession but an ethos that Victorian culture, for all its faults, still understood—the conviction that innocence is not a weakness to be outgrown but a virtue to be defended.

To reframe her in this light is to see that what the governess seeks to guard is not merely some puritanical fantasy of virginity but the foundation of human dignity itself. Innocence is what allows self-respect to take root, what nourishes compassion, and what makes wonder possible. Without it, childhood becomes a prematurely broken state, and adulthood an endless cycle of cynicism and exploitation. James’ story, then, can be read not just as a Gothic tale of ghosts and madness but as a lament for innocence under siege—a reminder that even in our own age of sexual freedom and self-expression, something profound may have been lost.

The Turn of the Screw has staying power. It sticks with us and haunts our imaginations. It is a vast drama of vulnerability, victimhood, and vice – of Flora and Miles, at the mercy of abusive demons and/or a mad governess; of an idealistic governess, barely an adult yet left responsible for the salvation of two children who may or may not be themselves evil; and of Mrs Grose, who may suspect her superior of being mad, but is illiterate, and would never be believed.

We care for and worry over the decisions that these characters make, wonder if they chose correctly, bristle when they miscommunicate, and moan when they overreact or underreact to the challenging circumstances that restrict them. We understand the governess’ situation: it is scary, even if we do think her mad. To be left alone in charge of another man’s wards, and to never be able to contact him for advice, background, or an explanation – to be saddled with the responsibility of making decisions that could have bearing on those children’s social prospects, mental health, and very souls.

And we identify – even if we pity or scorn her – with her ludicrous, unrequited love. Most readers will be able to remember a foolish and miscalculated crush that left them embarrassed, and most will feel either sympathy or disgust for the governess’ slavish attachment to a disinterested grandee – to the popular kid, to the rich girl, to the cool guy – that is more founded in self-reflection and bad memories than any objective consideration of her romantic life.

In fact, the great appeal of The Turn of the Screw is the way in which it is so easy to want to rip the wheel out of the governess’ hands – to take over and make her decisions for her. We want to yell at her “give up on him!” and to shake her when she imagines herself an angelic heroine sent to deliver two innocents from “the others,” because we know that she is too late, and that her efforts are naïve and doomed. We have a love-hate relationship with this girl-crusader: sympathizing with her vulnerability and stress, but resenting her silliness and submission.

When you sit down to read The Turn of the Screw, that is perhaps the greatest “turn” that it takes: our yearning to turn the tables, to take over, to make the decisions, to take on the responsibility, to ask questions frankly, to tell the master to be damned, to rid the story of innuendo and suggestions, to ask the direct, unflinching questions that an adult should ask – “did Quint ever touch you in your private area?” “Did you ever see him touching Miss Jessel?” “What did he do with you when he took you to the woods?” – frank, mature questions that grab the bull by the horns and reject the vagueries of propriety.

We want to turn her out, to trade places with her, to at the very least advise. But we can’t, and thank goodness, because for all of our frustration, we know in the deepest recesses of our gut that we would never want to be in the same terrifying, lonely, vulnerable position of the governess in The Turn of the Screw.

You can find our annotated and illustrated collection of Henry James' best ghost stories HERE!

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