

The open-endedness leaves us with unanswered questions and what really happened.Is the whole story even the original story? Is this a newly revised edition, edited by Douglas to fulfill a promise? From the article put together by Jeff Williams, we will see that the governess is not a reliable source and that this was not the original story. Henry James ends The Turn of the Screw with and ambiguous and a wide-open closing scene. The article “Narrative Games: The Frame of The Turn of the Screw” provides support from experts on narrations, that the governess is not a reliable narrator. Kimberley English 110 * An Unreliable Narrator * * The never-ending question about the novella “The Turn of the Screw” is if the governess actually sees the ghosts she claims to have seen. In his seminal essay "The Ambiguity of Henry James," Edmund Wilson proposed a Freudian reading of The Turn of the Screw, in which the governess who narrates the st.Jonathan Shamama Prof. Is The Turn of the Screw, as Wilson argued, "a study in morbid psychology", and are the ghosts "merely the governess's hallucinations" (Wilson 115)? Defining more, however, constitutes a problem of interpretation. Thus, Fagin argues, The Turn of the Screw is more than a ghost story.

For him, a story lay "not in mere physical plot, but in the undercurrent of suggestion and implication" (Fagin 154). Rather, he was interested in their artistic potential. Fagin states that students of James should be aware that his interest in any series of incidents was not confined to their dramatic value or their realistic impact (154). However, critics "not easily caught" have been fascinated with the novella since its publication, denying James's claim that it is no more than an amusette. , the jaded, the disillusioned, the fastidious" (Fagin 154).
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Henry James asked only that The Turn of the Screw be considered as "a piece of ingenuity pure and simple, of cold artistic calculation, an amusette to catch those not easily caught. Evans's and Fagin's interpretation of the novella as a story about good against evil. Evans's analysis of James's letters and stated intentions.Ĭ. James's own letters describing the theme of the novella.ī. The problems with Wilson's Freudian analysis.Ī. James chose to collect the novella with other psychological studies. The Novella is available to double interpretation.Ĭ. Edmund Wilson's "The Ambiguity of The Turn of the Screw"Ī. Is the novella a ghost story or does it bear deeper psychological meaning? James interested in artistic potential of story.Ĭ. James states that the novella was intended only as an amusette.ī.
