Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw makes more sense when it is read in the context of the history of Victorian Ghost Stories. Do you agree with this assessment? Discuss in relation to the Turn of the Screw and at least one other ghost story. The Turn on the Screw written in 1898 has lent itself to many different interpretations, from the supernatural to the hallucinationist. Critics use these elucidations to attempt to determine what the nature of evil within the story actually is. I present that The Turn of the Screw's narrative remains deliberately ambiguous and does not make more sense when it is read in the context of the history of the Victorian ghost story. If the reader decided at the start of the novella that the Governess was insane, then it would be read as a straight piece on the insanity of the woman. We would take the death of Miles as deliberate, or if not deliberate solely the Governess's fault. By presenting the tale in the format of a Victorian Ghost story, it allows James to use the power of the fictional narrative to manipulate the reader. Due to the Gothic genre's popularity in the late nineteenth century, James's choice of style for his novella could be viewed as a deliberate façade for an examination into the depths of the human psyche. I would argue that The Turn of the Screw makes more sense when read alongside works such as William James's Principles of