ENC 1102
02 December 2010
Ambiguity: Is The Turn of The Screw based on a true story or is it a tale of insanity?
The ambiguous writing style used by Henry James in The Turn of The Screw leaves the story open to the interpretation of the individual reader. I will show how this ambiguous writing style does not lead the reader to any specific interpretation, but it is actually used by James to deliberately confuse the reader and foster an atmosphere of uncertainty. This purposeful lack of facts by James throughout the story makes the reader draw his own conclusions about what actually takes place.
Many critics have analyzed The Turn of The Screw and most of them have come to the same conclusion; that the story is littered with ambiguity, but this is where the consensus ends. Nearly everything that takes place in the story can be interpreted in more than one way (Beidler 189). This novella penned by James has generated more than three hundred books, articles, and doctoral dissertations over the last forty years (Teahan 349). One critic, Edmund Wilson, wrote in his evaluation “There is a very good reason, however, in the fact that nowhere does James unequivocally give the thing away: everything from beginning to end can be taken equally well in either of two senses” (172).
Just a few of the many unanswered questions that get asked are: Why did Miles really get sent home from school, is he as angelic as he is originally portrayed or is he a bad boy? Why does the uncle not want to have anything to do with Bly or the children, does he know what’s really going on there and avoiding it? Then there are the main questions which are asked; is the governess mad or is she truly seeing ghosts and just trying to protect the children from them, and if she is seeing them why does no one else? Or do they see them and they are just not admitting what they have seen (Roberts)? As the reader begins the story he is actually being taken into a story, within a story, within a story. James starts with a captivating but ambiguous beginning which draws the reader in and foretells a tale of “delicious” dreadfulness (23). The tale opens with an unnamed narrator attending a house party on Christmas Eve at which ghost stories are being told. All of the guests agree that stories in which ghosts visit children are especially eerie, and an older guest named Douglas indicates that he has access to a story in which a ghost visits two children. In the second paragraph of the story, Douglas says, "If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what you say to two children (James 22)?"
Everyone wants to hear the story. The reader also shares in the eagerness of the guests to be frightened; to be thrilled by the horror they are going to experience. Upon seeing Douglas' anguish at the thought of the tale he is about to tell, and its "dreadful - dreadfulness"(James 23), one of the female guests actually cries, "Oh how delicious!"(James 23). The story he is going to tell was written many years earlier by a governess, who also was the narrator, who has been dead for twenty years. She was once his sister's governess so Douglas had firsthand knowledge of the story.
As we move on through the book we come to the meeting of the governess, who is not actually the governess at this point as she has not yet accepted the job being offered by the gentleman on Harley Street. He is a rich, attractive bachelor who has taken on the responsibility of seeing to the education of his orphaned niece and nephew, who live at his remote country house, Bly. The location is isolated and lonely, and the gentleman has a strange stipulation that she must deal with any problems on her own and she is never to communicate with him about any matter. James leaves the reader with the following questions; why would this gentleman have such a strange request? What is going on at this isolated country estate that he does not wish to have any part of? This lack of explanation leaves the reader free to guess what the motives of the employer might be. Also to wonder why a woman such as the governess would accept such a strange task, does she have a secret desire for the employer or is she truly in just for the job?
The next scenario of an ambiguous nature which I will discuss is when the governess receives a letter from her employer; this letter contains another letter which is from the headmaster of the school at which the employer’s nephew Miles is attending. The letter states that Miles will not be allowed to return to school when the summer break is over and does not go into any further details as to the nature of the offense which has caused his banishment.
The governess goes to Mrs. Grose, a servant who is the acting governess because the last governess Miss Jessel died unexpectedly. Mrs. Grose seems overly glad to see the new governess and quickly becomes her companion and confidante. The governess asks Mrs. Grose if she has known Miles to cause trouble in the past. Mrs. Grose replies that Miles has on occasion been bad, but that was to be expected from a boy.
Again we are left without explanations; why did the employer did not read the letter from the school, is Miles a good child or is he really a bad apple, and why did the governess not contact the school to try and find out why Miles was expelled (Roberts)? James provides a lot of superfluous details but nothing that would give us a concrete answer. We are again left to try and answer these questions using our own imaginations.
The third and final example of James’s ambiguity I will delve into is the question as to whether or not the ghosts in the story are real or if they are just the generated apparitions of a woman on the edge of insanity.
Mrs. Grose had accidentally brought up Peter Quint, though she did not mention his name, in a conversation with the governess. Perhaps it was the mentioning of him which caused her to see his figure in the tower. Another fact worth noting about the governess’s first sighting of Quint is that, before the governess sees him, she is daydreaming about running into someone on her walk; perhaps her employer. This is the governess’s first sighting of the ghost of Peter Quint; though at this point in the story she does not think that he is a ghost.
From this point on throughout the story whenever the governess sees a ghost no one else seems to see it and they do not admit to seeing it. The question then becomes do they really see the ghosts and are just not admitting it for some unknown reason or are they telling the truth the and the governess is just going mad (Beidler 197-200). When Miles blurts out “Peter Quint — you devil! (James 120)” he seems to acknowledge his awareness of the ghost, and he also seems anxious, or perhaps terrified, to see Quint himself. When Miles dies, there seems to be little explanation for this occurrence other than the governess’s—he has been dispossessed and this has killed him (James 120).
To some readers the conclusion of The Turn of the Screw might seem to resolve the question of the governess’s reliability in her favor as it may be assumed that Miles has seen the ghost of Quint. However, to other readers it may seem that Miles’s outburst proves only that he knows that the governess thinks she sees Quint and that she thinks Miles can see him too. His words don’t prove one way or the other that he has ever seen Quint.
This leads us to the final question we find ourselves asking; is Miles actually calling Quint a devil or is he really calling the governess a devil? James uses his mastery of ambiguity for the final time and neglects to provide us with the information necessary to answer our question (Beidler 197-200). He leaves us to our own devices to make the final conclusion and to find our own meaning in the story.
James himself, when questioned about the meaning of the book, would not commit to any one specific analysis of the story being the correct one. The fact is that he thrived on the ambiguity and deliberately cultivated it, which is clearly evident from the structure of the text. Unfortunately James is no longer living, so the mystery of The Turn of The Screw will remain exactly that, a mystery.
But what if Henry James were alive today, what would he have to tell us about his story? I think he would remain ambiguous, as he always had before. James once wrote in a letter to his friend Howard Sturgis, "I greatly applaud the tact with which you tell me that scarce a human being will understand a word, or an intention, or an artistic element or glimmer of any sort ... Face to face I should be able to say a bit how I saw — and why I so saw — my subject. But that will keep" (106).

Works Cited
Beidler, Peter. “A Critical History of The Turn Of The Screw.” The Turn Of The Screw. Ed. Peter G. Beidler; 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. 189-214. Print
James, Henry. “The Turn Of The Screw.” The Turn Of The Screw. Ed. Peter G. Beidler; 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. 22-120. Print
James, Henry. “To Howard Sturgis, Ms Harvard.” Henry James Letters: 1895-1916 Vol IV. Ed. Leon Edel; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1984. 105-06. Print Roberts, James L. CliffsNotes on The Turn of the Screw. Web. 2 Dec 2010
Tehan, Sheila. “ “I caught him, yes, I held him”: The Ghostly Effects of Reading (in) The Turn of the Screw.” The Turn Of The Screw. Ed. Peter G. Beidler; 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. 349-63. Print
Wilson, Edmond. "The Ambiguity of Henery James."The Turn Of The Screw. Ed. Deborah Esch, Jonathan Warren; 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1999. 170-73. Print