Childhood moral insanity: Another "Turn of the Screw"

Abstract

Henry James' The Turn of the Screw has never been an easy story to analyze due to the author's penchant for ambiguity. Since it was published in 1898, the novella was read as a terrifying ghost story until 1934, when scholar Edmund Wilson muddied the waters by proponing that James' tale could be best understood by a Freudian reading wherein the governess was sexually repressed and the "ghosts" mere hallucinations resulting from her repression. Ever since, scholars of Henry James have engaged in heated debate over which interpretation of the story is the correct one. In this essay I choose not to embroil myself in this unsolvable argument, but instead take up a reading that does not contradict nor support either side, but instead takes an altogether different route to take a closer look at the often-overlooked children. I explore the possibility that they are not victims of either the ghosts' or the governess' evil (as is usually the case), but may be quite evil in their own right as victims of moral insanity. With the writings of Victorian mental scientists as guidance, examinations of contemporary reviews, and a close reading of the text as support, I come to the conclusion that Miles and Flora can be read as something other than innocent. James purposefully filled his text with ambiguity. The story is so horrifying because the reader never knows if the ghosts are real or if it is the insane governess who is really terrorizing Bly. I believe, however, that by writing the children just as ambiguously as everything else in the novella, James intended to give the horror screw still another turn by portraying the children as morally insane.