The Turn of the Screw
The most terrifying question in English literature: did the governess see ghosts, or is she losing her mind? Henry James's masterpiece of psychological horror unfolds at a remote English estate where a young woman is left in charge of two children. She sees them. A man and a woman, dead but terrible, standing on the lawn, watching the house. The children say they see nothing. But something is wrong. Their innocence sharpens into something else. The ambiguity becomes unbearable. Are the ghosts real, preying on the children? Or is the governess projecting her own desperate fears onto an innocent household? James gives us nothing to hold onto. Every detail could be evidence of the supernatural or evidence of madness. The horror lies not in knowing the truth, but in never knowing. It has terrified and tantalized readers for over a century.
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“Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any pain, and I had more pains than one.””
— Henry James
“He was there or was not there: not there if I didn't see him.””
— Henry James
“There was nothing in the room the next minute but the sunshine and a sense that I must stay.””
— Henry James
“The summer had turned, the summer had gone; the autumn had dropped upon Bly and had blown out half our lights. The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after the performance--all strewn with crumpled playbills.””
— Henry James
“I take up my own pen again - the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles. To myself - today - I need say no more. Large and full and high the future still opens. It is now indeed that I may do the work of my life. And I will.””
— Henry James
“I was a screen-- I was their protector. The more I saw, the less they would.””
— Henry James
“Make (the reader) think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications. My values are positively all blanks, save so far as an excited horror, a promoted pity, a created expertness... proceed to read into them more or less fantastic figures.””
— Henry James
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James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-turn-of-the-screw-94e1accc-eef2-4742-9f23-ebdcc0f2a101.James, H. (n.d.). The Turn of the Screw. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-turn-of-the-screw-94e1accc-eef2-4742-9f23-ebdcc0f2a101James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-turn-of-the-screw-94e1accc-eef2-4742-9f23-ebdcc0f2a101.
