Dimitra Doukas
Professor Alexander
ENG 260-7447
February 6th, 2009
The Turn of the Screw
Final Paper
Henry James’ novel, The Turn of the Screw, is, for the most part, told through the eyes of
a young woman, a newly appointed governess to two children, stuck on a lonely estate in a
sparsely populated area in the English countryside. The novel revolves around the governess and
her charges, Miles and Flora, as well as their two unwelcome guests, the spiritual apparitions of
Miss Jessel and Quint. As the governess’ stay at the estate of Bly takes a turn for the worse and
becomes, in her eyes, life-threatening for the children, she finally concedes to write a letter to the
master of Bly, the children’s uncle, asking for help. As a metaphor, the letter comes to symbolize
a multitude of things to the various characters within the story.
At the first instance of trouble, arriving in the form of a letter from the Headmaster of
Miles’ old school and stating that Miles has been expelled, the governess does not write to the
master; she simply resolves to do nothing. She tells her intentions to Mrs. Grose, the caretaker of
Bly and her frequent confidante there. While being questioned by Mrs. Grose, the governess
declares that she would say “nothing at all (James 20),” neither in response to the Headmaster,
nor the master, nor Miles himself. At the end of their talk, both women agree to “see it out (James
20),” and put off the responsibility of having to contend with the circumstances at that moment. In
a way, this early avoidance of taking any sort of productive action sets up a pattern that the
governess will continue to play into, even as far more disturbing things than Miles’ expulsion
come to light. “Nothing at all” clearly describes what the governess does when the ghost of Peter
Quint starts to appear to her- at first she is shocked, but says nothing to anyone. After his second
appearance, the governess does tell Mrs. Grose about seeing him, yet she does not do anything
more concrete than that.
The governess instead forms a desperate plan where she will protect the children from the
ghost, in effect becoming “a screen- I was to stand before them. The more I saw the less they
would (James 38).” Here, the governess takes on the challenge of protecting Miles and Flora by
herself. She uses the pronoun “I,” never implicating anyone else in her quest to save the children
from danger. Here she shows her reluctance to have anyone help her, whether in protecting the
children from the ghosts, or running Bly. Towards the end of the novel, however, with two ghosts
prowling the grounds, and the governess’ conviction that Miles and Flora are seeing them and
possibly being possessed by them, there are no more options- the governess’ stand against the
ghosts has broken, and out of options, she concedes to contact the master.
The letter that the governess finally writes to the master represents a sort of failure on her
part to keep Bly under control and protect the children. As she said to herself in the first few days
at Bly, she “had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting
ship. Well, I was strangely at the helm! (James 15).” The governess felt like the captain of the
boat, standing at the helm, trying to steer her passengers (hazarding a guess at Mrs. Grose and the
children here) to safety. The governess felt like she was in charge, and, of course, she was, though
the final authority over everything was in the master’s hands. The idea of asking the master for
help, after the governess agreed never to contact him with any bothersome news, must have been
mortifying, especially since it would undermine her power, as well as show him how horrible
conditions at Bly had become since she had taken control.
The governess fears contacting the master, mostly out of self-preservation, as she is quite
sure he will not approve of the way things have spiraled out of control at Bly. She recognizes this,
and says that “I myself saw, his [the master’s] derision, his amusement, his contempt for the
breakdown of my resignation at being left alone (James 65).” She states this in her manuscript,
during which time she and Mrs. Grose are alone, talking about contacting the master to sort out
the problem of the ghosts coming to Bly and the danger they pose to the children. The governess
uses harsh words to describe the master’s reaction to her handling of the situation at Bly“derision,” “contempt.” Such strong emotions, and such a fear that they provoke in the governess,
and yet, there is no way to accurately predict how the master would react in such circumstances.
All the governess is going on are the conversations she had with him while getting hired, in which
he stated that he did not want to be bothered, and that she was not to make contact with him while
working as his niece and nephew’s governess.
Though the governess is afraid of letting the master see the pitiful condition of Bly as it is
towards the end of her story, Miles, quite obviously, feels different about contacting his uncle. He
wants to write to him, and wants him to fix the situation with his school, so that he can go back
and leave Bly. “But I mean does he know (James 74)?” Miles questions the governess one day on
their way to church, referring to his uncle and whether or not he knows about his school situation.
“Know what, Miles (James 74)?” the governess responds, which to Miles quickly replies “Why,
the way I’m going on (James 74).” Though Miles is young, he certainly understands that he
should be in school, surrounded by other boys his own age, instead of stuck on a nearly deserted
estate with no one but his governess and his little sister for company. Miles involves his uncle in
the discussion, perhaps in an effort to remind the governess that he can always appeal to someone
with a higher authority than her. When the governess simply brushes off his questions and asks
“But who’ll get him [the master] to come down (James 74)?” Miles says forcefully “I will (James
74)!” The young boy is quite convinced that he will be able to contact his uncle and persuade him
to come to Bly to help him and find a school for him. Therefore the letter the governess writes to
the master comes as a relief to Miles, who has been hoping that his uncle might be contacted. Yet
it also frightens him as well, because he does not know what the governess has written, and he
becomes suspicious that she might have written something bad about him in it.
The governess’ letter, left on the kitchen table for the postman, was discovered stolen the
very day she left it there. The governess’ suspicions stray to Miles, and she says to Mrs. Grose
that he must have taken the letter. Later, when Mrs. Grose and Flora have left Bly, the governess
gets the chance to question Miles about the letter’s disappearance and he confesses that he did,
indeed, steal the letter. When the governess asks why he did such a thing, Miles answers with “to
see what you said about me (James 109).” Miles must have been feeling quite conflicted about the
governess’ letter to his uncle. On the one hand, he did want his uncle to come to Bly and fix the
problems he was having with school, and yet, on the other hand, he was scared that it might have
contained something bad about him. Stealing the letter and reading it was an act of desperation;
he did not trust the governess to not write something horrible about him to his uncle. Seeing that it
did not contain anything bad about him though, he was still left in possession of a stolen object,
and in an effort to rid himself of this article, he burned it.
The accumulation of events that finally led the governess to write to the master also
affected one other character a tremendous amount- Mrs. Grose, the caretaker of Bly and the
governess’ frequent companion. Mrs. Grose, worried about the children, only had their best
interests in heart when she tells the governess to write to their uncle and ask for help. “Their uncle
must do the preventing. He must take them away (James 65),” she says, while she and the
governess are discussing what can be done to help the children now that the presence of the
ghosts have become more frequent. “He ought to be here- he ought to help (James 65),” she says
a bit later in the conversation. Never having before encountered something as frightening as what
the governess is telling her, and terrified about what might befall the children, the idea of
appealing to the master who could help them must have been comforting to her. The letter the
governess writes to him, then, becomes a symbol of hope for her, a way to get help amidst the
turbulent occurrences that have her so frightened.
The letter, as a symbol, comes to represent many distinct things to three of the main
characters in the governess’ novel. To the governess herself, it is an embarrassment, a recognition
of her failure as a governess and to help the children by herself; she cannot be a “screen” for them
any longer, they already know about the ghosts. Yet, for her to write the letter at all, she must be
optimistic that the master can help them in some way. To Mrs. Grose, the letter is seen as a
beacon of hope, a desperate cry for help that she is hopeful will be answered. To Miles, the idea
of writing to his uncle is appealing at first, a way out of his life at Bly, and the start of a new one
at school, where he can be a normal child. His suspicions get the better of him however, and he
steals the letter only to burn it later- his actions condemning those around him. There will be no
way out now- the master never got the letter- he burns whatever hope the governess and Mrs.
Grose had. As such, the novel comes to a close, with Miles dead, and the governess distraught.
The dying embers of a letter, the loss of hope, with no one to hear the governess’ plea for help,
the terrors at Bly have taken their toll.
Bibliography:
James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. New York: Random House, 2001. Print.