The Turn of the Screw

by Henry James

Paperback, 1997

Status

Available

Call number

F Jam

Call number

F Jam

Barcode

7413

Publication

Barnes & Noble Classics (1997)

Description

Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML: The Turn of the Screw is s ghostly Gothic tale by Henry James. A masterpiece in ambivalence and the uncanny, The Turn of the Screw tells the story of a young woman who is hired as governess to two seemingly innocent children in an isolated country house. As the tale progresses she begins to see the ghost of her dead predecessor. Or does she? The story is so ambivalent and eerie, such a psychological thriller, that few can agree on exactly what takes place. James masters "the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy" in this chilling Victorian classic..

Media reviews

Det rör sig om en av världslitteraturens otäckaste berättelser. Otäck inte bara för att det som händer är otäckt utan för att man inte riktigt vet vad som händer – och har hänt.

Original publication date

1898

User reviews

LibraryThing member veilofisis
The Turn of the Screw is probably the most widely-analyzed piece of literature to come out of the 1890s (and certainly the most widely-analyzed of Victorian-era horror fictions). Its plot concerns nothing spectacularly unique, as far as ghost stories go; and yet this, James’ most consummate
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novel, is one of the more ingeniously constructed ghost stories in the English language. The Turn of the Screw’s greatest strength lies in its exploration of the complex web of doubts that linger in the back of its central character’s brain, which mirror in many ways the reservations that occur in the mind of a reader of ghost stories. This curious inversion of the relationship between reader and writer sets the stage for a matryoshka doll of a story that falls into itself, layer upon layer, numerous times throughout its scant hundred pages of text.

The Turn of the Screw is almost a condensation of every motif present in the archetypal English ghost story, though its scope is more American in its convolutions. Henry James, who penned several other ghostly tales alongside his more mainstream fiction, succeeds here so supremely because of his near-obsession with the ambiguity of ambiguities. Wilde called it ‘a most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale,’ and that is a fitting assessment: The Turn of the Screw envelops us in a fog of doubt and suspicion, placing us in its narrator’s head and forcing us to see mysterious events through her eyes: there is no third-person narration here to challenge our inevitable disbelief; instead we must rely on the facts as presented by a narrator who is, quite possibly, delusional…but then, is she?

The plot concerns the isolation of a governess at a sprawling country estate where she is left in charge of two children who seem to have fallen under the influence of a menace that may or may not be supernatural. As the story evolves, however, we are forced to question how much of what our narrator is telling us is accurate; The Turn of the Screw predates, and yet also exemplifies, the idea of the ‘unreliable narrator’ which was to have such an influence on the Moderns. Its subject matter lends itself, however, to this device and it remains one of the more successful examples of the technique.

The Turn of the Screw is quite possibly the death rattle of literary Gothicism—the final ‘key work’ in a century-long movement—and so it is quite fitting that it so encapsulates the entire tradition of the Gothic. There would be later luminaries—Lovecraft, Blackwood, Du Maurier, and others—as the 20th Century began to find its darker voice, but The Turn of the Screw remains the curtain call of Gothicism proper: it is the beginning of the psychological horror story and the end of the ‘haunted castle,’ ‘perambulating skeleton,’ ‘woman-in-peril’ school. It still fascinates, simply because so much can be read into it. If we grant that its conclusions remain open-ended, we must also grant, however, that a great deal of its import is right there in black-and-white: The Turn of the Screw elucidates as much as it obscures and paves the way for the kind of cerebral terror that would become the hallmark of the next era of literary gloom: the Weird Tale.

Like all fictions that occupy a place of transition, The Turn of the Screw is a very difficult piece to pin down or define, and given its subject matter, this ambiguity seems entirely relevant to any assessment of its impact. James may not be the foremost writer of Victorian-era Gothic, but his opus is without question one of the finest examples of the movement: it is crisper than Stoker and more chilling than Le Fanu or Stevenson, more allied with Poe and hence more American in its focus: James may have been an Anglophile of the strictest sort, but his darkest work, The Turn of the Screw, entirely exemplifies the principles of the American Gothic and remains, with the stories of Poe, the strongest work in its canon.
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LibraryThing member veevoxvoom
Any writer can make a cemetery or haunted house scary, but a good writer can make terrifying the absolutely ordinary. Henry James does this in Turn of the Screw, which is a ghost story about a governess who finds herself stuck with loving but haunted charges.

This mini-novel is densely written, so
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if you're fresh off Stephen King and want blood, gore, and one-liners, you're not going to find it here. Turn of the Screw is an old-fashioned gothic story, full of expensive manors and apparitions in the study. But if you can get through the dense language, you'll find a terrific atmosphere. At first everything will seem normal, but a sense of unease will creep up on you. You'll realize that there's something not quite right with the children or the governess. You'll feel the macabre before you can even put a name to it, and you'll start to question what is real and what is psychological. This is horror the way it used to be, and the way it should be again.
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LibraryThing member Andjhostet
This was a fairly difficult read, with dense prose and antiquated terms. It felt much longer than it was. Great story though and I see why it's a classic. There is a lot of depth to the short story. Is the governess crazy? Are there ghosts? Are the kids possessed or merely acting out?

While I
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struggled with this, it was a very rewarding read.
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LibraryThing member timsreadinglist
Against my better judgment, I read this, my second Henry James story. So tedious! The exquisite sensitivities of his protagonist are absurd and prevent her from achieving a simple solution on every page. The protagonist and James' prose were exasperating enough to overwhelm the psychological
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tension and creepiness that this story is supposed to exhibit so well. William remains my favorite of the James brothers, for sure. I'll do my best to avoid Henry in the future.
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LibraryThing member Bookmarque
This is one of those books that I hadn’t read despite it being mentioned pretty much every time someone called for a good ghost story. During our latest winter storm I decided it would be a good time to dive into it and for the most part I really liked it. It had excellent pacing and the story
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was trim, not a lot of extraneous detail. There’s the set up, which is folks gathered around a fire to hear a scary story, the prologue which puts our protagonist in place and then we’re off. Strangely the tale just ends and we never get back into the room with the fire. I wonder if James forgot or his editor or what, but those people never show up again. Kind of sloppy if you ask me.

And there’s that ending. Wow. It came on extra suddenly for me because I read it as a Project Gutenberg ebook which has a lot of publishing info at the back so it’s hard to tell exactly where the book ends. Is it me, or does everyone have to read the ending three times to get it straight? And by straight I mean bendy and weird and what?

Spoilers on the move -

I knew it was a psychological horror story going in and that there might be more to the story than what’s on the surface. I don’t want to go so far as to declare an unreliable narrator, but it’s close. Even if what Jane perceived wasn’t real, she believed that it was and to me, that’s not an unreliable narrator, merely a fallible one. Are there the ghosts of servants past haunting the old pile, or is Jane crazy? Does Miles have some sort of symbiotic connection to Peter Quint? Does getting Flora away from the place break hers to Miss Jessel? There are no concrete answers. Instead, James relies on the reader’s interpretation of some pretty unspecific information. For example, just why are these ghosts so evil and is their evil different now than it was in life? Both are branded as villains, but nothing is specifically stated about what they did exactly. It’s hinted that there was an illicit affair going on between them, very improper, and somehow because the children were aware of it, the knowledge corrupted them. Did that lead to Miles’s unknown crime that got him kicked out of school? And speaking of unfathomable and unresolved...what’s with the uncle’s condition that Jane never contact him about the kids? That’s just weird. The whole thing is weird and that’s what makes it fun.

The actual writing, I should warn you, is convoluted. James is fond of the very long sentence populated by many, many commas. At first it was a job getting into the rhythm of his writing, but reading out loud helped, something I find useful for older novels. As you might have guessed, if you’re the type of reader who needs everything explained and tied up neatly, The Turn of the Screw isn’t the ghost story for you.
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LibraryThing member bragan
A young woman is hired as a governess for two orphaned children, with only one condition: the children's guardian, who lives elsewhere, doesn't want to be bothered with any reports or questions about them. Despite the worrying nature of this request, she very much enjoys her job and the two angelic
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children... until the ghosts start showing up. And until she starts wondering whether the children are quite as angelic as they seem.

The basic story here is decent. The disturbing elements are nicely subtle and slow-building, and there's an intriguing ambiguity about the whole thing. But Henry James' writing style I do not get along. I can deal with wordy Victorian prose, in general, but James takes it to an entirely new level. Reading one of his sentences is like navigating a labyrinth: it's full of unexpected turns and distracting side passages, and by the time you've reached the end of it, it's hard to remember the route you took to get there. It was just way too difficult for me to give myself over to a sense of creepiness when I often had to read a sentence over two or three times before I could extract the meaning out of it without getting lost in the middle (generally somewhere around the fifth or sixth comma). And James is definitely not an author you want to read while still working on your first cup of morning coffee, or while desperately trying not to nod off at bedtime -- which, unfortunately, are the main times I've had available to read lately.
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LibraryThing member ishtahar
I've never read any Henry James before (a terrible admission for an English graduate) so I really wanted to love this book. I didn't.

I thought the language was stilted and unnecessary, the story was something and nothing hugely padded out with superfluous narrative and the characters two
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dimensional.

Plus it didn't scare me at all. Some ghost story!!
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LibraryThing member Emlyn_Chand
Tired of rereading Dracula” or “Frankenstein” (or “Harry Potter” or “Twilight”) each and every Halloween season? Looking for a new horror story to keep you company as you sip your steaming mug of spiced cider by the light of a menacing-looking jack-o-lantern? Have I got the perfect
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story for you: Henry James’s “Turn of the Screw.”Coming in at just under 100 pages, “Turn of the Screw” is a quick read, although it’s not the easiest. One thing is for sure, it’s a ghost story. Err—it might be a ghost story. Or, perhaps it chronicles the ravings of an off-her-rocker governess. But, still, it could be a ghost story … actually, that’s for you to decide.The story starts with friends telling each other scary stories one Christmas eve (yes, this story has dual holiday appeal). We are then thrust into the viewpoint of a young governess who accepts a job caring for a handsome bachelor’s orphaned niece and nephew—the nephew having just been expelled from his school for mysterious, unstated reasons.At the gothic estate, the governess encounters two ghost lovers on several occasions. Convinced that the children also sense and even interact with the ghosts, the governess begins to worry about their safety and puzzles over the ghosts’ intentions. The children unwaveringly declare that they have not seen any ghosts at all, but the governess does not believe them. She clings to them tightly for their own good.Much, much more transpires, but it’d be a shame to give away the shocking ending. This is a novella that you must read the full way through in order to fully appreciate.Read it with a friend or loved one. This story lends itself perfectly to discussion. Every reader will come up with a slightly different explanation as to who the ghosts are, what they want with the children, if the ghosts actually exist or are hallucinations of aforementioned governess, and even as to whether a dark sexual subtext explains it all.Try something different this Halloween season, you won’t regret it!
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LibraryThing member janeajones
TURN OF THE SCREW is Henry James's most famous ghost story. Set on an English estate, Bly, the narrator has been hired as governess for two young orphans, Miles and Flora. The previous governess, Miss Jessel, and Peter Quint, the valet of the children's uncle, had died under mysterious
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circumstances, and their ghosts may have returned to reclaim the children. The tale is highly ambiguous as the reliability of the narrator is in question. Are there really ghosts or is she mad? The tale was written in 1898, and the repressed Victorian sensibility of the narrator seems a bit quaint even for the time -- but perhaps that was part of James's technique of character development.

I saw the film THE INNOCENTS, based on the story and starring Deborah Kerr, when I was a young teenager and was more frightened than I had ever been in a film -- the memory stays with me to this day, at least 45 years after I saw it.
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LibraryThing member beckymmoe
I have no freaking idea what I just read. It ended--if you can even call that an ending, which is up for debate--and I went back and re-read the last six chapters.

It didn't really help.

W.
T.
F????

2 stars for a strong start and a cool story idea...he lost me after that.
LibraryThing member PilgrimJess
“No, no—there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don’t know what I don’t see—what I don’t fear!”

This is my first Henry James book (novella really) and having read it has left me with very mixed feelings about
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so much so that I actually finished it much earlier in the day and have left it until now to write a review.As I swing from aversion to admiration.

Firstly I found it a little difficult to read,the syntax with its use or perhaps that should be over-use of commas was initially baffling as by the time that I'd finished the sentence my mind had wandered and I had totally forgotten what it was all about so had to re-read it.Despite the brevity of the book the language used was certainly densely packed. Then there was the proliferation of adjectives describing the children (angelic,sweet,beautiful etc) which was initially entrancing but eventually annoying and felt that their innocence had been over-laboured to put it mildly.

Now some people will now doubt feel that the lack of action (and gore) is a let down, after all it is never really obvious whether or not the children can see the ghosts of Miss Jessel and Mr Quint or whether they were merely the work of a mind that was suffering from a breakdown. Certainly lovers of modern horror genre will be disappointed but then this is over a hundred years old so not aimed at the modern market. However, I rather enjoyed this element as it leaves the readers to make their own minds up and in many respects makes it all the more relevant to today's society. In an age where visual violence abounds on our TV screens we have come to a certain extent anaesthetised to it but what any parent really fears is the corruption of their children by outside an unseen influences. Only now it is probably the internet of other media devices. This in many respects is a tale of the battle between good and evil,nature and nurture. Perhaps given that James was a confirmed bachelor this is all the more surprising.

An interesting worthwhile read that constantly makes you with an ending that took me totally by surprise and not an easy to put down and pick up at a later date but in the end the syntax won out hence the middling score.
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LibraryThing member ctpress
I've read [Washington Square] (which I liked) and [Portrait of a Woman] which I didn't like - now here's another one by Henry James that I didn't like.

This is about a governess who takes care of two children and the landlord or master or whatever is not around - and then she sees dead people
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(ghosts) (former employees) - or does she? And do the children see the manifestations? There's nothing all that shocking about these ghost's - but I wondered about the children's behavior. There was something eerie about them, but I couldn't put my finger on it exactly - and of course the ending is up to discussion, and I won't go there. No need to, because frankly, half way through I was quite indifferent. All the repetitions and speculations and strange conversations…It was too much.

The writing is very "rich" or "complex" and I struggled with the sentences, having to read them twice or three times and sometimes I just gave up. So even though it's a short novel it took forever to finish. Only because I can be so stubborn sometimes with novels.

But as it is a very popular classic I guess other's have very different experience with it….
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LibraryThing member Sovranty
The antiquated grammar and long sentences makes this book a little difficult to read. However, once the cadence is mastered, the story is filled with brilliant insights. The great thing about this book is that it can be read at face value as a ghost story or more in depth as a psychological and
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sexual thriller.
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LibraryThing member cmbohn
Wow, I forgot that I *HATE* Henry James. Actually, I didn't hate him quite so much before I read this book, but now I really do. So disappointed!

The hugely long paragraphs made my eyes glaze over. I couldn't pay attention long enough to figure out what was really going on.

I think if I hadn't
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heard the whole discussion on [The Turn of the Screw] - is it really ghosts or is the governess nuts - I would have been at least a little drawn into the story, to see what would happen next. But as it is, I just couldn't force myself to finish this! My vote is a solid 'the governess is nuts' vote. Totally unbelievable premise and I couldn't STAND the woman. Just bad.
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LibraryThing member Cecrow
At the start I was having 'Jane Eyre' flashbacks - a governess, a pleasant young girl as her charge, a housekeeper for her primary company, a love interest in the handsome but absent landowner, an isolated manor in the English countryside. Henry James knows this; he is winking at us when the
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narrator begins to wonder whether there could be "an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected confinement?" In short order though (and with benefit of the prologue), this tale resolves into a ghost story rather than a romance.

The author aimed to build suspense through that prologue's promise of a horrific tale to follow, etc. Maybe this worked at the time but now it leads to false expectations of something schlocky. Encountering an unexplained stranger in my own house at the dead of the night would be deeply chilling, even more so if it had a mysterious influence on my children; but today's reader of modern horror is spoiled by the likes of Stephen King’s in-your-face approach. TotS's relatively mild scenes won’t incite the same horror ... unless you read slowly, absorbing every turn of the narrator's thoughts, placing yourself in her shoes and opening your mind to its widest expanse of empathy for her. Then you can still find at least a wisp of its carefully crafted spell.

Henry James has a style all his own that I admire, but it does require an extra level of patience. I've long confused this work with 'The Taming of the Shrew' for being similarly named, but now that I've read one I think I can keep them straight.
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LibraryThing member goet0095
I had a hard time with the language on this one...tough to follow. And I was continually frustrated with the governness in regards to Miles--if she wanted to know why he was kicked out of school, she should have asked him from the beginning, or written a letter to the headmaster!! It just seemed
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really odd that she decided not to mention it to him at all when he first came home. There was a lot of communication that was not happening. I did like the psychological element to it, and the possibly unreliable narrator. I was hoping it would be creepier than it turned out to be! I just didn't feel as much of an emotional connection to the characters.
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LibraryThing member jeanas1s
This story is about a young lady who work in a rich house as governess.She looks after two children.Their name are Flora and Miles.They enjoyed living in that house.But they get to realize existence of ghost.I think she is very brave woman.If I saw a ghost,I move immediately and quit job.Perhaps I
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couldn't think about two children and protect them.
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LibraryThing member LibraryLou
Another one of the scariest books I have ever read. Really creepy, perfect for reading around the fire by candlelight.
LibraryThing member zinkel101
Turn of the Screw is the classic story of the unreliable narrator. A governess is given charge of two children on a rather isolated estate in England. She has taken the job because it was offered by a man she has romanticized, a man she wants to impress, a man who is conspicuously absent at the
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estate.
The two precocious children are mysterious in their beauty, their behavior, and their background. They have a bond with each other, as well as with one staffmember that borders on collusion. They have secrets, revealed in bits about their previous governess and a licentious groundskeeper who had inappropriate relationships, implied in a Victorian manner. The two predecessors, though dead, figure prominently in the story as the heroine must protect the children from their ghosts.
James's method of relating the story through a third generation narrator brings into question whether the ghosts are "real" or the illusion of the governess, who, throughout the story, is defending herself. The opening chapter may be overlooked for its importance as it only introduces the thrilling tale, but much has been speculated on James's intent in using a narrator who is the friend of a man who once loved the governess, who may edit the story to defend him who may have edited the story that came from the governess herself. Love may make you do crazy things, which is why the governess's great threat is questionable in the first place.
The story may be my favorite of James's works because it is different from his longer novels. He uses the unreliable narrator, in a style like Poe's, and implied psychology, leaving ambiguity for the reader to interpret.
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LibraryThing member Girl_Detective
I don't think it has to be interpreted as either/or imagination or ghosts. I think it can be both. I also think there's some interesting things implied about the relationship between the governess and the older boy.
LibraryThing member kronos999
Very interesting gothic ghost (maybe?) story. Wonderful unreliable narrator who may be mad and imagining the whole thing. Or maybe the ghosts are real. Or perhaps she is mad, but isn't imagining it at all.
LibraryThing member hemlokgang
A suspense novel........a thriller..........and eloquent writing! A spectacular ending which left me speechless (a rare occurrence!)! Great book!
LibraryThing member beidlerp
A great edition of the FIRST edition of Henry James's most popular story.
LibraryThing member Stodelay
While Henry James remains a brilliant but decidedly un-fun author to read, the Turn of the Screw is the greatest ghost story ever (except for perhaps the incomparable Wayans brothers' movie the 6th Man and that unmatched children's program Ghostwriter). A psychological thriller, the story is crisp
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and tight and features brilliant twists and turns along with memorable characters and a maddeningly inconclusive ending. It's a definite must for anyone who likes stories of the supernatural because it's actually good writing.
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LibraryThing member amerynth
Terrific and short little ghost story -- ends with lots of unanswered questions. As I was reading, the tone really reminded me of the movie "The Others." After finishing the book I found out that the movie is in fact very loosely based on the book. This is one of the books referenced on "Lost" as
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well.
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Rating

(1992 ratings; 3.4)
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