Transcript
Speaker: Hello listeners, this is your blanket spoiler warning. We will be spoiling the end of The Turn of the Screw and any other book we have read. Also, this discussion may get into the topic of abuse and death of children, so please take care of yourself.
Speaker: I learned something, at first certainly, that had not been one of the teachings of my small smothered life. I learned to be amused and even amusing, and not to think for the morrow. It was the first time in a manner that I had known space and air and freedom, all the music of summer, and all the mystery of nature. Oh, it was a trap, not designed but deep, to my imagination, to my delicacy, perhaps to my vanity, to whatever in me was most excitable.
Speaker: Welcome to the Book Club podcast. Today we are discussing The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. This story was hard for me to read just because of the writing style. I hope by the end of this conversation, we'll have a better understanding of why this book was so influential. It inspired many adaptations, other books, movies, plays, and other ghost stories in particular. Apparently the story was an influence on our last book, The Haunting of Hill House, and on our next author, Stephen King. What did you think, Caroline?
Speaker: So I was surprised to find that the interpretation that made the most sense to me for this famously ambiguous story was that it's a story about a woman being haunted or tortured or whatever word you want to use by her dependency on children for what she wants in life, which I think is actually a pretty sympathetic understanding and portrait of the fragile position of women in many societies.
Speaker: So let's begin with our summary. The book starts with a group of people gathered around the fire on Christmas Eve in an old house and a man named Douglas says he has a frightening story to tell. The tale is about his sister's old governess. She was referred to a gentleman who was looking for a governess for his niece and nephew, whose parents had died in India. He kept them at the country house, but there was no one above the stairs other than the help. It's mentioned that the governess fell in love.
Speaker: Upon arrival at the country house in Bly, the unnamed governess meets Flora, the younger girl, who she describes as Angelic and Mrs. Gross, the housekeeper. The boy, Miles, who's about 10 years old, is due to arrive from school in a few days. Before he does, though, the governess receives a letter stating that Miles cannot return to school. He has been expelled. No reason is given. Only the governess can read the letter. She wonders if he is corrupted. That's the word she uses.
Speaker: She learns that the last governess, Miss Jessel, died while on holiday from the job. The new governess meets Miles and describes him as pure, divine, a cherub. She loves her time with them. They play, they walk the grounds, they treat each other and her with love. Her favorite moments, though, are when they go to bed and she can walk the grounds.
Speaker: While walking the ground, she sees an unknown man up in the tower. This frightens her. Sometime later, she sees him again, this time on the terrace outside the formal dining room on Sunday evening. She describes the man to Mrs. Gross, red -haired, handsome, wearing a gentleman's clothes, but definitely not a gentleman. And Mrs. Gross says that describes Peter Quint, the master's valet, who died last year. The governor's is certain that the ghost is after Miles.
Speaker: One day at the pond with Flora, she sees a woman in black, Miss Jessel. Flora does not react at all to the presence, but the governess is sure that Flora knows she is there, but is hiding it. Mrs. Gross reveals that Quint and Miss Jessel were lovers, and that Quint had been too free with Miles, and Miss Jessel with Flora. The governess lets the children out of her sight. She says, I had all but pinned the boy to my shawl,
Speaker: and compares herself to a jailer. A few nights later, in the house, the governess comes face to face with Quint on the staircase. After the confrontation, she finds that Flora is missing from her bed. Flora returns shortly, but will not explain why she left. Another night, she sees Miles, far out on the lawn, alone. There's another apparition of Miss Jessel, this time in the schoolroom.
Speaker: After this, the governess writes a letter to the uncle telling him what is happening. Several days later, Miles is particularly charming and plays the piano for the governess, but only in order to distract her while Flora leaves. When they realize this, Mrs. Gross and the governess find Flora by the lake, and Miss Jessel appears. Only the governess can see her. Flora wants to escape the cruel governess, and she stays with Mrs. Gross overnight and becomes sick after the encounter at the pond.
Speaker: They decide that Mrs. Gross will take Flora to her uncle and tell him about the letter, which Mrs. Gross reveals was never sent because Luke couldn't find it. After the departure of Mrs. Gross and Flora, the governess is alone with Miles. She is frightened to be face to face with this crisis. She wanders around the house alone until dinner.
Speaker: and Miles exercises his independence from the governess by disappearing all day. She orders dinner to be set downstairs in the formal dining room to add a sense of formality. This is a quote, I could only get on at all by taking nature into my confidence and my account by treating my monstrous ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course, and unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair front, only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue.
Speaker: At dinner, he asks where her sister has gone and why. She doesn't really answer him. We're all alone, he says. She compares their situation to that of newlyweds. She references the help. He says they don't much count, do they? She asks him if he stole the letter and he says he read it and burned it because he wanted to know what she wrote about him. Then she sees Peter Quint appear in the window behind Miles. She keeps him distracted to keep him unaware.
Speaker: She says that transcendentally, she would act and keep the boy unaware. She grabs him in a close hug. She considers telling him about the apparitions but pauses, considering it an act of violence. Instead, she asks him what he saw in the letter that he took. He says nothing. She asks him if he stole things at school and reveals that she knows he's been expelled. He says only that he was expelled for saying things. This causes her turmoil. She's terrified that he might be innocent and thinks,
Speaker: For if he were innocent, what then on earth was I? She continues to question him again about the letter, but he won't say what it was he said at school, only that it was to his friends. Then he moves away from her. She sees Quint again through the window and again grabs Miles.
Speaker: He asks if she is here, which the governess takes to be a reference to Miss Jessel. Then Miles says, is he here? But turns and does not see a Quint. The governess thinks she has defeated Quint because the ghost disappears. But in that moment, she sees Miles fall. She catches him, grabs him and holds him close and realizes his heart has stopped.
Speaker: So, as you said before, it's a very ambiguous story, and I think we agree that the writing doesn't really clarify things. Two major interpretations of the story. One is that the governess saw actual spirits, even though she was the only one who could see them.
Speaker: And the other interpretation is that she hallucinated the spirits. I wonder if we can talk just broadly about the story and, you know, what it would mean for the story to have either of these interpretations. Did she see the ghosts or was she hallucinating? So I initially inclined towards thinking that she
Speaker: imagined them or hallucinated them. And the reason for this is that all the apparitions seem to align so closely in time with how she is feeling about the children and the estate. It seems that she loves the estate. She wants a reason to stay there, but she's having conflict with the children, particularly the boy, because he wants a little more freedom, which she isn't giving him. And remember, the original reason she's not giving this freedom is because she thinks there's danger out there in the form of these apparitions. So she has to grab him close.
Speaker: and keep tight control on him. And so the conflict to me, it seemed between a boy who wants to be a little more grown up and this woman whose position sort of requires that he continue to be a child who needs her. And in that context, maybe it makes sense to see dangerous spirit all around.
Speaker: Yeah, so I'd like to read a quote. It was the first time in a manner that I had known space and air and freedom. And there was a part where she talked like once in the whole story, she talks about she was in a poor family, a large family, and
Speaker: She was happy to escape from the troubles. She was receiving letters about bad things happening. She never goes into detail about what's happening with her family. Just that she's happy to have a place to be where she's away from all of that and that she was being smothered and feeling
Speaker: free. When she's first at Bly, it felt like there was a lot of ego in there because she said multiple times that it was, it was her right. It was her position. Like she had to be there to serve this purpose. And she was the only one who was right for this job. I mean, to me, that speaks of delusion. Well, yes, but also governesses, I think we should talk about this. They did have
Speaker: a unique class position in the society. So they were hired help, but they were above the stairs hired help, meaning they normally got to live in the upper stories with the family. They got to have meals with the family and access to everything that the family had access to. So they got to live a lifestyle of an upper class that they would not otherwise be entitled to.
Speaker: And at this particular country home, that's very obvious because she's the only one there who has those privileges. She's also the only one who can read. As you pointed out, she really enjoys that. Yeah. And whenever she talks to Mrs. Gross, there's a very weird way that she describes Mrs. Gross's responses. It seemed to be superior and not legitimately superior. Yeah. It seemed to be an expression of that.
Speaker: Yeah, it's kind of sending. She refers to her as simple many times in many different ways. And possibly we're supposed to think that as well. I mean, her name is Mrs. Gross, right? She's not part of the finer things. Right. So there's these two extremes because the way she describes the children is uncomfortable in the different direction where she's like, they're so beautiful, physically beautiful. They're delicate. They're gentle.
Speaker: And it's almost as if she's worshipping the children. And I could see that being because they are the reason she's there and able to be in this position, but also maybe glorifying them because they are upper class. I mean, there's a point where she talks about Miles, his attitude walking to church one Sunday, Miles' whole title to independence, the rights of his sex and situation were so stamped upon him that if he had suddenly struck for freedom, I should have had nothing to say.
Speaker: She has to be subservient to the kids, but she's also responsible for teaching them. He's only 10 years old. Like, I cannot imagine any 10 -year -old with the rights of his sex and situation stamped upon him, right? Like that just... Right. And that also comes up in how she thinks about Ms. Jessel and Peter Quint and their interactions with the children, right?
Speaker: It is talked about as though merely by the fact that they were lower class. It is said that the old governess was a lady, but Peter Quint was definitely lower class. That just by being too free and too friendly with Miles and Flora, they somehow corrupted the children. That is the language that is used. It is very upfront about the contamination that comes with inter -class friendships.
Speaker: Hmm, that's interesting. It seems that her possessiveness over the children, it feels obscene. She is so aware of her position in her class, and she knows that Miles is above her in class, but she kind of wants to possess him in a way. And it's interesting that there's a similar obscenity in
Speaker: Peter Quint having a love affair with Miss Jessel. It's like we are most offended by things that remind us of the things we hate about ourselves, right? Always true.
Speaker: I think another tension that goes unmentioned here is not clarified to me is whether or not she is only supposed to be taking care of the boy for the summer term because presumably in the fall, he would go back to school. It's unclear if she would be needed to take care of just the girl. Um, and so in the context of this letter that only she can read that says he's expelled, that's actually very good news for her.
Speaker: He will now need schooling to be done at home indefinitely. She gets some job security by that. I also think it's very interesting that nobody else ever reads that letter. Miles does seem to admit that that is true, that he was expelled. But I think even in that conversation, the language is a little ambiguous. I think there's also a world where she made up the letter or she is determined to find that there's something wrong with Miles such that he can't go back to school.
Speaker: I think that's also a possibility. Yeah. So her employer immediately gives her a bunch of power. He's like, you handle everything. Don't even tell me about it. Which part of me wants to question, did that conversation actually happen? I'm going to assume that it did. I think that feeds her ego right away. She's immediately placed into this position of power that she's never had before.
Speaker: And I think it was really interesting, I mean, as you said before, that she fears corruption of Miles and Flora, and that corruption is somehow being out in the world. I want to come back to that, this idea of childhood being pure. So there's a question of, was Miles corrupted at school?
Speaker: Like somehow school is dangerous to him, somehow these ghosts are dangerous to him and Flora. And while she sees herself as the protector, she sees Peter Quint outside the dining room on the terrace, and she's terrified at first, but then she has this certainty that he's after miles.
Speaker: And then when she has a certainty that he's not after her, he's going to go after the kids, she's suddenly courageous. And it's her role to protect the kids and she embraces that role of being the protector. And so she's protecting the kids and they're beautiful and they're divine and they're cherub -like. Then later on, when Flora denies seeing Miss Jessel when they're outside,
Speaker: with Mrs. Gross. Suddenly Flora becomes ugly. My interpretation of the story is that she did see the ghost, but that she's also delusional. That she loves the kids and Flora says she wants to get away from the governess. And the governess, I'm like, well, we know that she's been smothering these kids. She's never let them out of her sight. She's constantly hugging and kissing them. And she thinks that they welcome it, but I'm not sure that they do.
Speaker: So when this comes out that Flora's like, I'm tired of you smothering me, then she becomes ugly. And so it's like, I feel like that's a hint to us as readers that first of all, our narrator is unreliable and that the way she sees the children is very much colored by her justification of being their protector and being their governors and being the most powerful person on blind manner. I think that's true. And one thing you pointed out was that early on when she sees the ghosts,
Speaker: or whatever they are, she becomes convinced that they are targeting the children. And there is actually even less evidence for that than anything else in the book. The children never see these characters. There's never any sort of what we would now call poltergeist activity where they are threatened. There's nothing like that.
Speaker: So maybe that's actually the biggest delusion. You know, maybe they are ghosts and they are there, but they're kind of ordinary ghosts. You know, just your regular haunting, but she's the one who takes it and transforms it through her own fixation on the children. And that's the part that seems to disturb Mrs. Gross in their conversation.
Speaker: Because as a good country woman, Mrs. Gross does not seem all that appalled by the idea of ghosts in general. It's when the governess says they're fixated on the children. They're going after the children. And you can read that section as, you know, Ms. Gross is disturbed because this person is not just imagining the thing, but is now getting increasingly wound up about it. But you could also read it as,
Speaker: Ms. Gross could accept that ghosts were true, but the governess is adding this layer of persecution that is not real. Right. So I did cheat a bit and looked at outside sources because I needed some help grappling with the story. And one thing I learned was that this was a different way of describing ghosts in ghost stories, that the way he described ghosts was
Speaker: copied from more scientific descriptions of corpses. Whereas ghosts and stories before had been like, in Dickens and A Christmas Carol, the ghosts are shown with chains and in torment in the afterlife, not as like the way that their bodies would look. So that was new about the story. And so it's supposed to add more realism somehow. I mean, it's never clear like,
Speaker: what the ghosts want with the children. And if we're looking at this as the ghosts are real and somehow Quint wins and kills Miles, like why was that a win for Quint? Right.
Speaker: Unless he's just purely evil, right? Which I think is the governess's viewpoint, right? Things are not particularly motivated. There's just angelic and demonic and they're eternally at war. You know, I'm not saying I agree with that at all. Hmm. So is Quint evil because he was free and loose in life?
Speaker: Or is he evil just because he's dead and still walking the earth? But then why would he still be walking the earth? I mean, does that happen with all who die? It's very unclear from this story. So there's a fear that Quint and Miss Jessup corrupted the kids while they were alive. And now that they're dead, they want the children.
Speaker: more, more completely somehow. You know, there was a comment that Miles makes when he's asking about why Flora was sent away and he's like, Flora was sent away, but she was so ill. How could she travel? The governess is like, no, she was ill because she was here. She'll get better. She goes and I was like, did this governess kill two children? Like, did she send Flora to her death? If she did, then how did she continue to work as a governess? Because we're introduced to her as being the governess of someone else after she was governess for these two children.
Speaker: And it sounded like she was a governess for many decades afterward, which to me suggests, I think that's a little sad or would be to this particular governess. Sometimes being a governess was like the equivalent of being a teacher on the American frontier. It was something that young women did until they found a situation of their own and got married and had their own establishment.
Speaker: This governess did not have that. She continued to be a governess for decades. Maybe she wanted that. Who knows? But it doesn't seem like she wanted that from this book. I don't entirely know what to make of that. I did notice that in that same section where they're telling the frame story, they mention repeatedly that she was a young woman who fell in love. And I thought that meant she fell in love with the gentleman, the uncle. But no, I did not think that. She hardly ever
Speaker: thinks about him. There's one mention of the uncle where she talks about her role in not disturbing him and how that's like the highest compliment a man can pay to a woman, which was completely baffling. My impression more was that she was in love with Bly and these children. And she there's a point where she starts calling them my children. Yes.
Speaker: my boy, my girl. And I thought she was in love with the children. But then I got really disturbed in that last chapter when she's alone with Miles and she thinks she compares their situation to that of newlyweds. And to be clear, that's because they're both sort of waiting awkwardly and in silence because she has just sent away Flora and things are awkward between them. But she does choose to compare that to two newlyweds, which is creepy. I agree.
Speaker: Which, you know, in a generous sense, it's not that she has a sexual attraction to Miles, it's that her attachment to him gives her power. Like, if she were to marry someone of a higher social position, then she gets granted that higher social position. And so she's confusing her role as governess as being an attachment to this boy that gives her higher position. And so that's, I mean, that was my main interpretation of that.
Speaker: Yeah. Although to be clear, I don't think that's a confusion. That's true, right? She just falls in love with it a little too much. Also part of the background context is how little other avenues there were for her to get what she wanted out of life. I mean, this is published in the 1890s. If you as a young woman at that time were not a lady, were not upper class or came from money and you had dreams of simple things like owning your own home and children and
Speaker: a nice life. It's not clear how you would get that.
Speaker: except through caretaking someone else's children or getting the right person to fall in love with you. Right. I was disappointed that the ending was so abrupt. I wanted them to come back to the original scene. Douglas, the person who apparently had this story from the governess, I wanted him to explain. And then after that, this is what happened. But we don't get any of that. We just have to have to guess that, well, she clearly wasn't blacklisted as a governess after this.
Speaker: which doesn't make any sense. Maybe this candle was covered up because I think he says in the frame story that he got this story directly from her. So maybe she covered it up somehow and is only now revealing her hand in it because no one else was there in the room and very few people were in the house and they were all of a lower class and maybe she had freedom to explain away whatever happened. This secret was kept for years. That's really disturbing.
Speaker: Yeah, maybe she finally confessed it at the end of her life. Yeah. But we were talking about whether or not she was in love with someone or with the house or the children. The reason I brought that up is because it's interesting to me that she sees Peter Quint first and that he is terrifying.
Speaker: I can understand why one would be haunted by the pretty young woman who occupied the same position you did previously, particularly because there's a toss away line. Mrs. Gross says, oh, she was also very pretty, just like you. He likes them pretty, implying that there's been this long succession of governesses and none of them get to stay very long and they're somewhat expendable. All right, in that contest, I would also be haunted by images of my predecessor.
Speaker: But why Peter Quint? Why is that haunting? And maybe it makes more sense if she's in love with the house. If she's in love with the uncle, of course she's haunted by the image of this beautiful predecessor. If she's in love with the house, there's something disturbing about Peter Quint specifically.
Speaker: Yeah, so one thing about the house is this is our first ghost story we've read where the house is actually beautiful and welcome and inviting and it doesn't have an air of evil about it. Like the house is not doing the haunting it's these spirits and it's kind of funny to like oh this is our third book and we're finally getting what I would consider like a traditional ghost story. To add on to that the house doesn't even have a name. I think Bly is the town or the location
Speaker: It's certainly not an entity or a personality as it is in some of the other books we've read. Right. She sees a ghost and she doesn't think it's a ghost at first. The question is she seeing what she's seeing? Our other two books, people immediately knew that something weird was happening and accepted it, but this time she's like, there was a person and I think he escaped and ran off
Speaker: or somehow, you know, so she finds a justification, a rational justification. I don't know how to approach her question about why she sees Quint first, but when she does see him, she thinks he's just another person who snuck onto the ground somehow. So if she's in love with this property and in love with her position on this property, wouldn't a threat be someone like a thief who could damage property or steal property? I guess so. It doesn't seem to me like she would
Speaker: be blamed for that or her position would be at stake. I mean, I guess if she does truly feel that this is her house, then yeah, any threat to the house to any degree would be a threat to her. So that part does follow. But she didn't know that Quint existed before.
Speaker: she describes him to Mrs. Gross. That's true and that's by far the best piece of evidence in favor of these ghosts are real because she's able to describe him fully to Mrs. Gross in detail having never seen him or known he existed. Well if that's true I mean maybe this is a more classic haunted house story and the house is
Speaker: manifesting ghosts, you know, from people who were there at some point for reasons of the house's own? No, I think it's more the ghosts like Quint. Well, okay, I don't know if this is coming from the story itself or if I have from because I saw the TV show The Haunting of Bly Manor and it seemed more in line with that character.
Speaker: So correct me if this is not in the story at all, but Quint by having a relationship with Ms. Jessel, it seems like he was greedy for something beyond what he deserved, right? Beyond a station, which is the same. I mean, I keep going back to this. It's the same thing that our governor's narrator wants. She wants something beyond her station.
Speaker: It's also, if the governess is in love with the uncle, it's the inverse. She's in love with the uncle. She hopes to raise her class, but it's actually more likely that she will fall in her class by accepting the attentions of someone lower class, because even though she thinks it's lower class, there's much less distance between her and a Peter Quint than there is between her and the uncle. Oh, interesting.
Speaker: So I get the idea if she's hallucinating the ghosts, why the ghosts want the children, but if she's not hallucinating the ghosts, why did the ghosts want the children? Oh, I don't think they do. I mean, I think there was very little evidence for that. I mean, they truly just appeared at some places.
Speaker: didn't interact with the children, didn't seem fixated on the children at all. So the governess has this, she obsesses over it a lot. This problem, she thinks she has this secret with the children that Flora knows that Ms. Jessel was watching her and Flora tried to distract the governess from seeing Ms. Jessel.
Speaker: The reason why Flora suddenly turned on our narrator governess is because she admitted, she spoke out loud the secret they had about having seen Ms. Schussle. And then in the last chapter, it seemed to me she was conflicted about whether or not to speak out loud that Miles is being haunted by Quint.
Speaker: And that when she admits it, that's when Quint wins. She thinks that she scared Quint away, but actually then Miles is dead. So it seems like Quint wins there. But it's like that secret. She obsesses about it so much that they have this secret and she thinks that they're dancing around the topic and they're like,
Speaker: sort of hidden meanings in the things that they say to each other or the way that they look at each other and that they're joined together and there's all this affection between the three of them. They're joined together in this secret. But somehow speaking about it is going to damage things. That's the part that's really hard. Yes.
Speaker: Well, I mean, she says at the end that if they are innocent, then what is she? So if they were truly innocent, then she has imagined all of this corruption and also brought it to them both by mentioning it, by violently hallucinating it in front of them, by forcing them to be around her, by taking their independence, things like that.
Speaker: But yeah, I don't understand what the stakes would be if the children did know the ghosts were there and were hiding it. I mean, why would that be such a corruption? Okay, so this gets into a question about is this a product of the times, right? That there's childhood innocence and that something horrible happens in growing up to lose that innocence. That seems to be a pattern in literature, especially in this time period.
Speaker: Okay, so some guesses about what the loss of innocence would be here. Death, maybe the children don't know that these two characters are dead, or maybe they do know, but they haven't seen a corpse and the apparitions are described as very corpse -like. Maybe the corrupting influence is something about class that would fit with the other themes, but I'm not sure exactly what, because they live with people of a number of different classes, right? So it's hard to imagine that just seeing someone
Speaker: or being exposed to them of a lower class would have any sort of power.
Speaker: I'm not clear what the corruption is. Do you have any thoughts? So early on, she mentioned something about being so charmed by their beauty and gentleness and sweetness and worrying that the world will destroy their beauty and sweetness and gentleness. Is it the difficult and unpleasant life that she brings with her that would be contaminating them, right? Because she comes from, although there aren't many details, it sounds like,
Speaker: She does not have the idyllic life they do. Would getting close to them reveal that, expose them somehow, or does she just feel contaminated with whatever's happened in her family that is so different from this idyllic, peaceful existence they have? Yeah, I mean, I think Miles going to school would be risking that corruption, right? So it's just the world, just maturity, just growing up. I mean, it's really strange because these kids are orphaned. Like, they've suffered
Speaker: horrible loss. They've lost their parents and their grandparents. They were in India and they had to leave India to move to England, which I mean, I imagine is pretty disturbing for a young kid to leave where they grew up and go to an entirely new place. And their only family member is an uncle who wants nothing to do with them.
Speaker: How can they be so happy and beautiful and perfectly behaved all the time with dealing with that level of loss and rejection? Although to be clear, the story in no way suggests that they should be disturbed or were or that this is tragic, right? It's just given very straightforwardly. This is the children's background, right? This makes me think, though, that
Speaker: it's part of her delusion around the children is that she sees them as perfect. But there were hints that they were collaborating to like keep her distracted so that one of them could just get away from her and like breathe some freely, you know.
Speaker: And then they do it quite obviously. And when she tracks Flora down, Flora is like, I don't want to be around you anymore. It felt like Mrs. Gross was responding to Flora like, OK, yes, that's enough. This governess has done enough. And now I need to take care of Flora. Like, that was my impression.
Speaker: Yes, there clearly comes a point where there's a break and Mrs. Gross thinks that the governess is dangerous or causing harm in some way. So yeah, so the governess did bring this on the children somehow. I mean, she kind of gets there of like, what if I'm not innocent? But she then backs away from that pretty quickly.
Speaker: I do have one last question that still nags at me. It's about the last sentence and what happens there. As you mentioned, they're in the formal dining room. She sees Peter Quint behind the window. Miles initially doesn't see him, but then he turns.
Speaker: and is facing that direction, but still does not see him. And then it's a little unclear from the prose, but it seems like Miles falls or faints, but also at the same time she grabs him in a hug. It was unclear to me, which happened first. And she says, I caught him. Yes, I held him. It may be imagined with what a passion, but at the end of a minute, I began to feel what it truly was I held.
Speaker: we were alone with the quiet day and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped. So I had this image of she just hugged him to death. She crushed him. But my question is, what was his heart dispossessed of? See, if he had seen Quint, that would be so much clearer, right? That he would, if he had seen Quint, then he would have stepped into a way of being that
Speaker: made the evil of Quint accessible to him in a way, but he never did see Quint, but somehow Quint disappears. It seemed like there was, that the governess celebrated. She's like, you're free, you're free. And then catches him and it's like, Oh, he's, is he free of life? Free. Yeah. That language dispossessed. She thought he was possessed by some evil.
Speaker: that maybe she was just mistaking for ordinary life, right? And now he's dispossessed of that quality, but it turns out that was just maybe normal childhood things, like wanting some independence or something like that.
Speaker: Right, so to be free of what's messy of life is to be free of life. Perhaps, or only the dispossessed of life itself are completely free of corruption, putting corruption in quotes because I don't agree with her definition of corruption at all.
Speaker: I mean, the other thing is she is now dispossessed. She no longer has a position or access to this lifestyle. She's back to the status she had of not having anything. And she doesn't possess him anymore. Or the uncle or the house or the future or those lovely walks in the evening. This is the point to me that is the most emotionally touching about this.
Speaker: is why in order to access all those good things should you be so dependent on a child, right? And they're whims to some extent. I mean, it's not like the child hired her, but they don't get along. She'll probably go, you know, somehow the uncle will find out and she'll be on her way or he'll act out and that'll get the uncle's attention or something like that.
Speaker: I can understand that point of anger and horror of everything you want is dependent not just on another person, but a child. It's the position of a governess. It's precarious. It's also the position of a lot of women in general, right? Where your status is in many times and places was dependent on the children that you had or could have and who you had them with.
Speaker: Very similar status, still being dependent on children. It might be your children, but kind of still the same problem, right? Yeah. What do we think of the title turn of the screw? Cause the phrase is used twice in the, in the story. So it's used.
Speaker: in the beginning scene with all of the people, which these folks seem very excited to hear about scary stories involving children. And one of the comments is that if you have one child who sees a ghost, that's one turn of the screw. If you have two children, that's two turns of the screw. The definition I found for turn of the screw is that it takes a bad thing and makes it worse.
Speaker: The second time it comes up is she is talking more or less about screwing up her own courage to rise to the situation. The phrase in general seems to be about an intensification of feeling, not necessarily bad. Right. You read the quote.
Speaker: In the summary, only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue, which only when you read it when you're reading the summary, that's when I started to think, oh, is she taking she's taking on this role of protector. And it's, it's human virtue to protect innocent children. But it's, it's gonna cause suffering. She has to she has to do this to be virtuous. But it's painful to protect miles from Quint. Look at the painful
Speaker: Does that come from the nature of the analogy itself? I don't know. That's a good question. That could be my assumption. I mean, there's that if you're turning a screw and tightening it, there's pressure, there's force, there's resistance. There's also, I mean, the phrase is, I think there is a phrase, something like putting the screws on, you know, putting someone to the screws, a form of interrogation.
Speaker: And I don't know if that is meant to be here. I didn't necessarily see that. But why does she have to screw up her ordinary human virtue or courage? I mean, obviously, she thinks she has to because of the delusion she has. I don't know what this conflict is with Miles, this face to face with what like why is it so fraught?
Speaker: that she's alone with Miles, and there has to be something between them, like some sort of revelation. I mean, he's already said he's enjoying his independence from her. I'm sure that breaks her heart, but that already happened. So what is this now? She's preparing herself for something that last day, and I never figured out what it was.
Speaker: I mean, it may be simplistic, but she knows that her future at Bly is at least up in the air, right? Flora has been so sick, she had to be sent away. And to the extent it can be salvaged, it will be based on what Miles has to say about her, right? At some point, or her effect on Miles may be more generally than what he says about her. So now it's come down to can she salvage
Speaker: this relationship, which must be very frustrating to try to fix a relationship with a child under pressure of your employment when they have in some ways power over you, but they're also still just children. I thought that was sort of what was lingering between them.
Speaker: Right. So he seems very mature, but now I'm wondering if that's her delusion because if she's just like asking him, why did you get expelled? And he's like, I don't know. Well, what did you do? I don't know. Like I could see that being what he's actually saying. And she thinks that there's this secret communication happening because she's delusional. So.
Speaker: I was talking to my friends. What did you say? I don't know. That's a very child thing to do and say. But she thinks there's this big secret confession that has to happen and that if he's already corrupted, it's okay to say this ghost is after you. Like why didn't she just send Miles away the same time she sent Flora away? What's her purpose?
Speaker: Right. But if she really wanted to protect them, wouldn't she have just sent miles away? Or I guess the question is, is he corrupted? So if she sent him away, then it wouldn't matter because he's already been corrupted and he just takes the corruption with him. Or is he still innocent?
Speaker: I also don't think she wants them to be protected. She wants to be their protector, which is slightly different. Yeah, that's a good point. Do you want to talk about genre themes? Yes. So as mentioned, this one was a little different in that the house was not as much of an entity. And in fact, it was a very pleasant house, very enticing.
Speaker: Um, there's the sense of found family. So the governess talks about the children being hers, but she also has a sisterly relationship with Mrs. Gross, like they hug and support each other and she calls her sisterly. So when we say found family, we're meaning that when you exist in this house, it encourages family like relationships, because it's not necessarily that they are seeking out
Speaker: these relationships, but rather they just, there's something about the power of the house that they find to them. Right. It's a reason to stay in the house. There's the classic strange tower that doesn't match the rest of the house. Well, so untrustworthy companions, I'm not remembering this so much. Do the townsfolk know something that they're keeping a secret? So I was thinking there are times when the governess interacts with Mrs. Gross, assuming that Mrs. Gross knows the true story.
Speaker: and is keeping it secret from her. Mrs. Gross has the role that we see in some of these other stories of someone in the town, perhaps the real estate agent, perhaps the groundskeeper.
Speaker: uh, perhaps a neighbor who knows the true story, but keeps it secret and does not reveal it when it would have been helpful to first know it. Uh, so there's a little bit of that relationship between the two of them. It's, it's not the bulk of their relationship, but I think I saw that in there. Yeah, that makes it, it's kind of a twist. I like that. It's like a twist on the genre theme. Has your opinion on this story changed from when you first read it to now after having discussed it?
Speaker: I do think there's a possibility that the ghosts were real and that the problem was actually still how she interpreted the ghosts. I think that it is maybe more of a proper haunted house story if the ghosts are real because then
Speaker: This place is somehow manifesting that maybe the house is also as classist as that might be true with haunted houses. Maybe the house was horrified by this relationship between the governess and Peter Quint as well. So I'm certainly after discussing it, I'm more open to those two possibilities. What about you?
Speaker: Yeah, I think I was surprised at how many movies and there's plays, there's an opera. Apparently Shirley Jackson was influenced by this book and that The Haunting of Hill House and The Turn of the Screw are both considered psychological haunted house stories. And that's a small sub genre of the small genre that haunted house stories belong to. So I thought that was interesting.
Speaker: that had influenced so many stories. And it did give us some meat to discuss and think about, which is good. I did want to share that in, so there was a quote I found on Wikipedia. In his 1983 nonfiction survey of the horror genre, author Stephen King described the turn of the screw and the haunting of Hill House as the only two great supernatural works of horror in a century.
Speaker: He argued that both contained secrets best left untold and things left best unsaid and calling that the basis of the horror genre. And I thought that was really fitting because the next book we're reading is The Shining by Stephen King. I do think that's fitting. That also somewhat ties in with my sort of final thought about this book is coming back to the role of the house being more subtle in this one.
Speaker: As I said a couple times, the house isn't an entity. It's kind of backdrop, except there's nothing really about land and access to land and ownership that's merely backdrop. Those relationships, which are power relationships, influence so much. But in the quote you just read, we're not always allowed to talk about them bluntly.
Speaker: Listeners, what did you think of The Turn of the Screw? What do you think of Henry James as a writer? Did the governors imagine the ghosts? Let us know by recording a voice memo and emailing it to openingquestionatgmail .com. You can also complete the feedback form on our website at bookclubpod .com.
Speaker: Send your responses before November 13th so that we can include them in our feedback episode at the end of the season. Our next book discussion will be on The Shining by Stephen King. Read with us. You can get your copy by using the affiliate link in our show notes. We'll release that episode next week.
Speaker: The Book Club Podcast is produced by Carly Jackson and Caroline Borman. Music and audio editing by Alex Marcus.
