The Turn of the Screw

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Summary: The Turn of the Screw - A Henry James Horror Mystery
Review: The Turn of the Screw is said to be one of the greatest horror stories ever written. The book begins with a group of friends telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve. One story begins with a governess going to live with two orphans at a country estate in England. The children's uncle tells the governess never to bother him with any problems that may occur. The orphans, Miles and Flora, are gorgeous, innocent children that everyone admires. Miles gets thrown out of boarding school for a reason that no one understands. All the servants and employees at Bly, their estate, are shocked. The governess begins to see two people wandering around the house that she has never seen before. When she confronts Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper, about them, Mrs. Grose tells her that their names are Mrs. Jessel and Peter Quint, both of whom died the year before. Through subtle actions by the children, the governess fears that they are somehow affected by the ghosts, which cause the children to behave oddly toward her. The governess, the only one able to actually see the ghosts, is determined to fight for the children's lives.
Henry James does enthrall the reader with his attention to detail and ability to make the reader experience the horror and perceived threats of the ghosts toward the children and perhaps the others at Bly. This was one reason that I liked this book. It took awhile to get into the story, mostly because it was set in the late 1800's in England and the wording and style of those times took some getting used to. Additionally, James' sentence and paragraph structure can be especially long and complex with multiple phrasings in each sentence. However, once the ghosts threatened and the lives of the children appeared to be in danger, I was hooked.
Carl Van Doren, in his preface to the book, says, "The Turn of the Screw is the blackest of all nursery tales, the most terrifying of all ghost stories, the most pathetic of all the chronicles of damnation." I think this story would appeal to those who love a good ghost story. In fact, this was one of the first horror stories to introduce the idea of evil ghosts, ghosts that could be described as "demons from the pit." If you're looking for a happy ending, this isn't the book for you.



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Summary: The Reason Henry James Continues to Enthrall
Review: A story told over a hundred years ago, and still sparking serious debate over its intention? Henry James must be proud. Now I like clear writing even more than the next fellow, but I find I really like the ambiguity and startling turns that both the dialogue and the plot take in Henry James's stories. The answers to the simplest questions put to a character always elicit an unexpected response. This makes it tough on a reader, who lazily expects direct, routine answers. It's unsettling and challenging to understand what these characters say, and mean, by their responses.

So, I think that the charm of Henry James is that the reader is asked to use his own imagination in interplay with the writing. It's a puzzle, and the more imagination one brings, the more fascinating the characters. You'll note how little physical description James uses for a character like Mrs. Grose, allowing the reader's imagination to fill in the blanks.

Each generation sees something different in the story. Originally viewed as a ghost story, it was later reviewed to be a Freudian tale, told by an unreliable narrator. Sexual overtones affected the narrative of the governess, making the reader question what she saw, and what she says others saw. This ambigous reality reached not only to perception of the ghosts, but of the actions and motives of the children.

However, I was struck as a 21st Century reader by the awful plight of Miles, the ten-year-old boy asked not to return to school for reasons the school never explains. It is only in the last chapter, when Miles and the governess are alone together, where the governess uses language that seems to promise carnal pleasure to Miles, that the most startling aspect of Miles character is revealed. Abruptly asked whether he was discharged accused of stealing, he instead admits to having told things to "those few he liked." They in turn told others they liked, and it eventually reached the head master. This beautiful, sensitive, intelligent boy was trapped and mortified by the things he said to the few he liked, and only reluctantly reveals this to the Governess. It is left to the reader's imagination what Miles may have said, but given Henry James's own sexuality, much may be supposed.

Then the Governess alerts Miles to the ghost that she has been seeing during their conversation, and she thinks, has been protecting Miles from. He supposes she means the prior governess, who had been "haunting" his younger sister. Instead, in horror, he hears that she means deceased Peter Quint, an unsavory manservant with a penchant for wearing his master's clothes and an interest in the children. Quint's death was unexplained but violent one night as he was coming from town. Can it be that he and Miles had a relationship that causes Miles to be so ashamed and fearful that he dies rather than face his tormentor? It is ambiguous, but the possibility, so real to the reader, does not seem to occur to the governess, who in her zeal to protect Miles, has pushed him to confront the one horror that he could not survive, in order to save him from the ghost she alone sees.

Great story, requiring careful attention, but the ideas have inspired arguments among generations of readers.

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Summary: A classic ghost story
Review: Having been a student of literature in college, this is a title that surfaced ever so often when discussions turned to "pivotal" literary works. After finally reading it, it appears that reason for its considerable attention lies in the fact that it's likely the first ghost story NOT to be taken @ face value.
Instead of a straightforward story, the reader is introduced to a plot-line as seen thru the eyes of an ostensibly unstable persona. Whether the ghosts are real or just figments of her mis-guided imagination are topics left open to interpretation. Unexpectedly, the story casually alludes to elements of eroticism, paranoia and severe anxiety.

The story itself is beautifully written. That James was a master of elegant prose is without question. The style of his prose may seem a bit odd (and perhaps "thick") to the modern reader, but one has to admire his manipulation of the language.

For those who enjoy a good ghost story where everything may not be as it seems, this book is highly recommended.

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Summary: The supernatural vs. the psychosexual
Review: Henry James is not everyone's cup of tea. They consider his pacing to be mortifyingly slow. They think his focus on morals and manners can be pretentious. For those people, I implore them to read "The Turn of the Screw". I won't re-hash the plot here; plenty of other reviewers have written perfectly good summations. What I want to recommend here is that this is a perfectly paced DRAMA. The psychosexual tensions, which appear to manifest themselves in the supernatural, are both fascinating and satisfying. This has to be one of the best 'scary" (for lack of a better word) stories of modern, if not all, time.

Rocco Dormarunno, author of THE FIVE POINTS

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Summary: Do you believe in ghosts?
Review: I brought a considerable amount of bias to this story; after all, it has been hailed as the greatest ghost story ever written by so many literary critics, and it is difficult to set aside such prophesies of adulation.

I wasn't terribly disappointed.

Henry James has a style of writing that doesn't appeal to everyone. Certainly not to people expecting fast paced thrillers written by Dan Brown, or horror glock by Stephen King. His style is slow, psychological, in some places almost operatic. But there were strong points and weak points, and those are clearly delineated here. The introduction is fabulously alive and sparkles with tension, as do all of the sequences where characters interact with each other. When we are left alone in the mind of the governess, who is either a prescient seer or a hopeless neurotic, the immediacy of the writing slows considerably.

Unfortunately, we are in the mind of the governess for the majority of the story.

Still, it's a fascinating tale, rife with subtlety and passion, and considerable suspense. What did the young master do at school that caused him to be sent home, when he appears to be such a perfect angel? What is the nature of the apparitions the governess sees? What affect, if any, do these apparitions have on the two children in her care?

The ending itself is ingenious, and quite a shock. It answers many questions, but leaves just as many unanswered. You'll need to connect the dots yourselves, for James doesn't give much away.


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Summary: Psychological Portrait of Repression
Review: I had long heard of Henry James and his short novella, The Turn of the Screw and decided to read it, thinking that at only 88 pages long, it would not take more than one evening. Three evenings later, I finished the text and I must admit slightly confused. I had to reread the ending several times to truly understand what had happened. Thankfully, I had the critical edition, which included several essays on the story, one in particular by Edmund White which profoundly changed my opinion of the story.
A simple ghost story on the face of it, but in reality a pre-Freudian tale of sexual repression. Narrated by an unnamed governess who ventures to a country house to take charge of two young orphaned children, it soon becomes a tale of ghosts, mysteries and secrets. Always alluded to and never talked about at face value, the governess becomes convinces that the ghosts are after the children and she alone can save them. But are there really ghosts? The reader must go beyond the plot and carefully read the language...all the language. James writes like no other author I have ever read. The best word to describe it is "dense". With almost no dialogue, the narrator can spend pages describing her thoughts and feelings, yet these are so "coded" as to decipher her real meaning takes much concentration on the part of the reader. I know that James himself thought the story an amusement only, but the critical essays I read after the book deeply impressed me that the story has hidden depths which make it all the more interesting.
I would recommend this novella to anyone with the patience to read it thoroughly and with an open mind as to its meaning. I would strongly recommend the critical edition which helps the reader better understand the story's meaning and importance in literature.

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Summary: how to ruin a good story
Review: james starts his story out in a classic setting of people telling stories around a fire--no they aren't camping. the story is told in writing by a governess who is hired to teach and care for two children at bly, a country estate. the ghost story evolves when she begins to see apparitions that are thought to be the prior governess and her lover, a servant on the estate.

the curious part of the tale is the unanswered question of whether these are really ghosts trying to take control of the children, or simply figments of a deranged mind. the question is not really raised to the reader until near the end of the book and is intentionally left hanging. the debate rages on even today!

as a ghost story goes, this one is pretty good. the suspense rises with each new sighting and "turn" of the children. the ending, though ambiguous, leaves the reader with much to think about and wonder.

the real shortcoming here is the writing. james is very confusing, rambling and obtuse. it is by no means poetic as it is harsh to the ear. no one writes this way, much less talks. it really doesn't add to the "mystery" through subtle nuance. it is quit simply hard to read and understand. the ghost story should be quick and easy to follow so that suspense can build up rapidly. when you have to go back and reread sentences to better understand what was said, the suspense dies.

an interesting, but frustrating read.

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Summary: Difficult to Read but Fun
Review: James's narrative style is bit difficult for me to read. It seems to me that, at least in this story, he writes in a breathless, phrase filled steam of consciousness style - similar, but more so, to this sentence. Most sentences contain many phrases having more or less to do with the subject of the sentence but getting to a point that I would re-read many of them to try to sort out exactly what was intended. Oftentimes, I felt that I only got the gist of the sentence before moving on. The story is intriguing and I was dying to understand it. In the end, I think that a great deal of the ambiguity is intentional. This is one case where I may end up resorting to help from Cliff in interpretation.

The story of the unnamed governess is given as a sort of ghost story told among friends but originating from the real manuscript of the narrator's sister's governess of the spectral occurrences she witnessed at a previous position she had had when she was younger. Accepting a post at Bly as governess to a young girl who's brother was away to school, she is under the strict interdiction not to make reports to her employer, the children's legal guardian and uncle. Shortly after the beginning of her engagement, the male child returns from the school, presumably for the holidays, but a letter from the headmaster informs her that he is not to be allowed back. No reasons are given and a mystery develops over why a child so innocent seeming as he should be outcast. Mystery continues to flourish as the new governess begins to see two people on the grounds that are identified by the housekeeper on their descriptions as the previous governess and the employer's man - both deceased. As the governess becomes convinced that the apparitions have malevolent designs on the children, she enters into a struggle of evasion and confrontation, dealing with things half-said or unspoken. While I was truly clueless most of the time as to exactly what her suspicions were, the ending seemed to illuminate them and was very powerful. I think that the design of the story is to play on the reader's imagination and interpretation ... I think. This is one story where I will seek out other's reactions to see if I read it the same way they did; but even if other's reader's interpretation are vastly different I still believe that that allowance for each reader's imagination to give the shape to the story is remarkable.

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Summary: Deliciously vague
Review: The Turn of the Screw has been hailed as one of THE classic gothic/ghost stories. I read it recently and agree that it's brilliant - but not in the way some might expect. Henry James is not an easy writer to read nowadays when every author seems to aim to "hook" the reader from the first page. DON'T read this long short story NOR any other James story or novel if you expect some fast-paced, action-packed thriller. What you will get instead is a very sharply descriptive style that uses language to convey the complex psychology and moods of the characters and events. This kind of works well for a story about a governess and three other main people in pre-20th-century England, in an isolated estate.

The story is simple - a man has two nephews who have become orphans. He lives in the city and isn't really interested so he hires a new goveness (the narrator) after the old one dies. The gonverness is convinced that the estate is haunted and that the ghosts are undergoing creepy conspiratorial communications with the two children.

I found the story did freak me out, for the same reason as why it has been analysed so much in terms of psychology or sexuality. While James may not have meant all that people put into the story, it is an amazing study of the perception of propriety and morality and its relationship to our sense perception. Thus, the whole catch of the tale is that it's perfectly ambiguous - everything can be interpreted from at least two very different angles (read to find out which ones!) - but the interpretation also differs depending on which society's conventions we read the story from.

This makes for an fairly complex and unique book - one that told me as a reader more about myself than it did about any silly ghosts - which I think is the mark of good fiction.

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Summary: a disappointment
Review: This "classic" was a monumental exercise in boredom. I've had more enjoyment whilst pulling slivers out of my fingernails. James takes obtuse to a whole new level with this yarn, one in which he must have gotten paid by the word! Skip to Daisy Miller.