“The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James, 1898

“The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James, 1898

Told through a third-party narrator, the story is about a governess who is hired to watch over two children, Miles and Flora, in a manor named Bly in Essex. The kids are charming at all accounts with the exception of Miles expelled from school for reasons that are never clear.


Life at Bly proceeds normally until two strangers, later to be identified as Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, start materializing on the grounds of Bly, and then vanishing just as quickly.


We later learn from Mrs. Grose, the person in charge of all things “below stairs”, that Peter Quint, the valet, was Miss Jessel’s hunky stud, and Miss Jessel was the previous governess to the children. The problem is, Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, are both dead.


Throughout the entire book, the governess is the only person who actually sees the two ghosts, or is, for any account, the only person who will admit to seeing the apparitions. For this reason, a plentitude of scholarly discussions, whether this is a ghost story or a story of a mad woman’s downward spiral into dementia, exists.


Personally, I thought of the book as a ghost story because of the fact Mrs. Grose had so easily been able to put a name to the detailed descriptions of the ghosts who the governess describes, but had never seen before. Other readers, though, may disagree on this, and it is very much, I suppose, open to interpretation.


“The Turn of the Screw” is around 120 pages, a short but clever story, and still the author manages to make the two children with angelic exteriors, Miles and Flora, at times seem rather sinister. Were Miles and Flora really aware of the ghosts? Were the children hiding dark secrets of sexual abuse? Did the Miles witness and commit homosexual acts; encouraging other boys at school which led to his expulsion?


All told, I would have to say the novel is an uncommonly good story and is one that tends to stay with the reader (me anyway) even after the final and rather abruptly shocking page has been turned.


My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars)