Turn Of The Screw By Henry James

Henry James, well-known for his psychological short stories and books, greatly influenced literature between the end of the nineteenth-century and the beginning of the twentieth-century. After being genuinely hurt by the fact his play Guy Domville was decried in London in 1885, he wrote The Turn of the Screw two years later, drawing its inspiration from large mansions where he stayed in Sussex. Member of the Society of Psychical Research, Henry James was attracted by spirits and ghost. He wrote The Turn of the Screw from a story of the archibishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson, who believed in malevolent spirits who wanted to allure young children to their end. The twist James added on his novel was that all characters, the ghosts, the …show more content…
Governesses were a recurring theme, from A Night Like This by Julia Quinn to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brönte, passing by Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray. Frequently portrayed as heroines, ocasionnally as villains, governesses made a great subject and were important for middle and upper-class children as they spent with them a significant part of their childhood. Children could easily establish with their governess a relationship they did not have with their mother. Moreover, they were also considered sexually available for householders and older sons and embodied a second risk for a traditionnal British family. Despite the general threat they symbolised during this period, the governess in The Turn of the Screw is not depicted as a villain by Henry James. However, Edmund Wilson, an prominent critic at that time, characterised the governess as distraught and obsessive. He wrote that the fact she is the only one who can see the ghosts was just in her head, hallucinations and creations of her imagination. With this Freudian's interpretation in mind, the ambiguity over the governess remains. This uncertainty hovers nevertheless the preeminent appeal of the