The Turn of
the Screw
Henry James
Chapters I-V Evaluation
SETTING
• Bly is overwhelming & depressing
– Empty & lonely
• Flora happily leads governess through “empty chambers and
dull corridors, on crooked staircases that made [her] pause…
such a place would take all color out of storybooks and
fairytales” pg 14
– Uncomfortable
– Foreboding
GOVERNESS
• How does her new surge of power affect her
judgment?
• Timid and worried
• Takes comfort in new friendship with Ms. Grose
• Overwhelmingly positive opinion of Flora- helps her
relax
• Curious about the last governess
– Dark, mysterious, tainted past doesn’t seem to bode
well; past governess “went off ” and died
GOVERNESS
• How reliable is she as our narrator?
– Tries to establish a reliable front; thinks she might have
heard “faint and far, the cry of a child” and a “light
footstep,” during tour but she dismisses these as fanciful,
perhaps to gain the reader’s trust in her sensibility
• foreshadowing
MS. GROSE
• Does she know about the ghosts?
– “She saw me as I had seen my own visitant; she pulled up
short as I had done; I gave her something of the shock that I
had received. She turned white… I remained where I was,
and while I waited I thought of more things than one. But
there’s only one I take space to mention. I wondered why she
should be scared.” pg 32
• Illiterate: does this give the governess a sense of
superiority? What purpose does this character trait
serve?
• Comforting to the governess and a fairly static character
– “like sisters”
FLORA
• Is she simply an angelic, innocent child or is she
charmingly devilish?
– “the most beautiful child I had ever seen”
– “no uneasiness in… the radiant image of my little girl,
the vision of whose angelic beauty… made me take in
the whole prospect”
– She has “the deep sweet serenity indeed of Raphael’s holy
infants” pg12
– She and Miles have the governess “under a spell” pg 19
MILES
• Governess points out that the master likes the
governesses “young and pretty.”
– “‘Oh he did,’ Ms. Grose assented: ‘it was the way he liked
everyone!’ …she caught herself up. ‘I mean that’s his way – the
master’s.’
I was struck. ‘But of whom did you speak first?’
She looked blank, but she coloured. ‘Why of him [the master]’”
pg 19
• Foreboding letter from headmaster
- “He’s an injury to others” though this is “unimaginable” to the
governess. pg 14
PETER QUINT’S GHOST
• Out for a twilight stroll on her own, the governess
thinks of how charming it might be to “suddenly
meet someone” in her path, when she sees a ghost in
the tower, “staring” with “both hands on the ledge.”
– This produces “fear” and a feeling of “death”
– Does the preceding passage deplete her reliability
somewhat?
– Even if she does believe she sees the ghost, should we
also believe it actually exists?
– If the ghost is real, what does he want?
PETER QUINT’S GHOST
• He appears for a second time, again while the governess
is alone, when she goes to retrieve her gloves- this time
through the dining room window
– “The person looking straight in was the person who had
already appeared to me… but with a [new] nearness” pg. 20
– Quint equally as shocked as she: “He had come for someone
else.”
• Again, is the governess reliable?
• She reacts courageously; does this defy expectation?