The circumstances surrounding the deaths of the Governess’ predecessor, Miss Jessel, and her lover, Peter Quint, are immediately suspicious and are linked to behaviour that crossed certain moral boundaries. Jessel went for a “short holiday” according to Mrs Grose, from which she never returned, an explanation which arouses our suspicion that Jessel died in childbirth. This is supported by Mrs.Grose’s comment that Quint was ‘much too free with everyone!’ Quint ‘was found by a labourer going to early work, stone dead on the road from the village;’ and the fact that he was found on ‘a wrong path altogether’, according to Mrs.Grose’s description, implies that the path Quint had taken in his life had been morally wrong. The possibility that the sightings of Miss Jessel and Peter Quint are real is augmented by the fact that the very nature of Quint and Jessel’s relationship together was socially destructive. Jessel was a governess whilst Quint was merely a valet. A firm class division existed between the two, so by having a relationship the two servants are disrupting class boundaries.
Furthermore, we learn through the conversations of the Governess with Mrs.Grose that these two former employees were very close to the two children at the house, Miles and Flora. Again, this gives some further reasoning for their ‘return from the dead.’ So close was the relationship between these servants and the children that Mrs.Grose states that “Quint was much too free” with the young Miles. A close relationship between the children and their elders would certainly have given Quint and Jessel an added incentive to return to their dwellings at Bly and such a relationship would have been a further example of their social and moral transgression. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the ghosts of Quint and Jessel manifest moral and social chaos and disruption.
Despite this, it remains more convincing that this chaos and disruption exists in the mind of the governess rather than in the behaviour of Quint and Jessel. By accepting the job at Bly, the Governess is able to promote herself to a level in the social hierarchy which she has previously not enjoyed. As Millicent Bell alludes to in his text ‘Class, Sex and the Victorian Governess: James’s The Turn of the Screw’, the position of governess was one of a ‘peculiar social position.’ The position of governess was in its very definition disruptive, with Bell highlighting that the governess was a ‘woman burdened with the task of upholding…the “Victorian” domestic ideal.’ The governess was a “lady in the nineteenth-century sense of the word, yet anomalously earning her own living.’ Described as an ‘anxious girl out of a Hampshire vicarage,’through her new role she is able to acquire ‘supreme authority.’ However, with this new level of responsibility, the governess is also given many freedoms which she has not previously experienced. The freedom of these new surroundings proves seductive and yet disruptive at the same time, a fact which the governess herself accepts: “Oh it was a trap - not designed but deep - to my imagination, to my delicacy, perhaps to my vanity.” With these new freedoms, the governess experiences new feelings expressed in her desire for the master, which is made very clear when she reveals to Mrs.Grose that she was “carried away in London.” Quint, dressed in the Master’s clothes, can therefore be seen as a projection of the Governess’ deep desires, appearing at the very moment when the Governess imagines meeting the master. When the governess sees herself in the mirror shortly after her arrival at Bly she comments that “for the first time, I could see myself from head to foot.” It is conceivable that these new freedoms and the new awareness of her own self, and perhaps even her own sexuality, lead to a disruption of her psyche. As an ‘anxious girl out of a Hampshire vicarage,’ however, the Governess would be unnerved by these feelings and would therefore repress them. Quint, as a supernatural projection of the Master, provides a less disturbing outlet for her desires, with the reversal of affect, represented by her extreme disapproval of ‘the wretch,’ acting as a further defence mechanism.
As part of this desire, the Governess seeks a higher position on the social hierarchy, which also can be seen to manifest itself in the appearance of the ghosts. It is worth noticing that on two of the occasions that she sees Peter Quint he is in an elevated position. On the first he was ‘high up, beyond the lawn and at the very top of the tower,’ and on the second he is seen to be ascending the staircase inside the house and ‘had reached the landing halfway up.’ This can certainly be viewed as an attempt by Quint to climb the social hierarchy, particularly in the eyes of the governess, who is disgusted by Quint’s transgression of class boundaries through his supposed affair with Jessel. A Freudian reading would suggest that this disapproval results from a reversal of affect; Quint, as a projection of the Governess’ id, represents her repressed desire to climb the social hierarchy in an attempt to get closer to the master.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the element of the supernatural in ‘The Turn of the Screw’ is the manifestation of chaos and disruption. Whether this supernatural element of the novel though is due to the disorderly nature of the characters of Quint and Jessel and their interaction, or the confused state of mind apparent in the Governess, is difficult to decide conclusively.
A ‘reversal of affect’ 3 essays of sexuality p.59, where pleasure becomes displeasure and desire becomes disgust, allows a repressed sexual impulse to be disguised.
Jarvis, Russell and Gorman ‘angles on psychology’ p.142, the id refers to the instinctive aspect of the personality, present from birth. It operates on the pleasure principle – a desire to be satisfied, and it does not willingly tolerate delay or denial of its wishes.
