The figure of the gothic hero-villain in The Turn of the Screw

The Turn of the Screw is a novella by Henry James, first published in 1898. It is a ghost story that tells the tale of a young governess who is hired to care for two orphaned children, Miles and Flora, at a remote country estate called Bly. The governess soon begins to see the ghosts of Peter Quint, the former valet, and Miss Jessel, the former governess, who are believed to have been having an affair. The governess becomes increasingly convinced that the ghosts are trying to corrupt the children, and she is driven to madness in her attempts to protect them.

Henry James creates a complex and ambiguous character in the governess. She is initially presented as a benevolent hero, but her mental state deteriorates as she becomes increasingly convinced that the children she is caring for are being corrupted by the ghosts of their former caretakers.

James first introduces the governess through the use of a frame story. A group of people are gathered during Christmas, telling scary stories. A man named Douglas states that he has a story to share that has “another turn of the screw” because it features two children and a governess. He introduces her as the governess of his sister, and refuses to tell the story without the manuscript in which the governess set record of her experience. Once Douglas retrieves the manuscript, the story shifts to the first-person narration by the governess. This is a first-person major character narrator, in which the view is limited to what she sees and experiences – this becomes a particularly interesting strategy as the governess gradually descends into psychological despair. This is not described by an omniscient narrator in words, but rather we feel it in the way the governess’s description of the setting and the children shifts abruptly. Ann Charters describes Henry James’s technique in The Elements of Fiction (1991). A character is used as a “central intelligence”, placed in the center of the action, whose psyche “is a stage for the drama", and the views of all the other characters will be "measured against the thoughts and feelings of the central intelligence".

The fact that The Turn of the Screw is a gothic novel is undeniable, with its “gothic trappings”, in Hume’s terms, like the castle setting, the supernatural occurrences with a seemingly natural explanation, a time-yellowed manuscript. But the strongest gothic element present in the novel, in my reading, is the presence of a morally ambiguous villain-hero, embodied by the young governess. According to Hume (1969), “the action derives from a complex villain-hero. They are fearsome and profoundly ambiguous”. I will next analyze how, in the novel, the governess shifted from a benevolent hero to a reluctant villain, albeit subtly and ambiguously, as the novel is famous for.

After setting the stage through a frame story, the narrator shifts to a first-person narration by the governess and the reader is able to immerse in her psychology. According to Hume, the importance of psychology and the reader’s immersion in it is central in gothic novels. The first-person narration provided by the governess makes the reader not only immersed but completely convinced by her words; it allows the unreliability of her narration to be partially concealed. According to Charters (1991), “the authority of a first-person narrator is immediate and compelling.”

Upon first arriving at Bly, the governess’s description of the surroundings and the characters she meets illustrates a state of marveling. She uses positive language and a dream-like tone: “Driving at that hour, on a lovely day, through a country to which the summer sweetness seemed to offer me a friendly welcome, my fortitude mounted afresh”. Her description of Flora, the little girl, was no less bedazzled, stating that she was “charming as to make it a great fortune to have to do with her” and “the most beautiful child I had ever seen”. Throughout the chapter, Flora’s purity and innocence in the eyes of the governess are emphasized, going as far as describing her as one of “Raphael's holy infants” Multiple positive adjectives stand out in the first chapter, describing Bly as “impressive”, “a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy sprite”. Later, when she met Miles, the older boy, he was also described as beautiful and pure. In this first stage of the story, the governess places special importance on purity. She states that caring for and educating the children would give her a “happy and useful life”.  The tone that the governess used thus far in her manuscript was one of solemnity, awe, tenderness, love, and admiration towards the setting and the people at Bly.

The tone starts to shift as the governess first encounters the ghost of Peter Quint, a former employee of Bly. The narrator describes it not as a sighting but as “a bewilderment of vision”, to add to the unreliability and uncertainty of her mental state. Although Mrs. Grose did not witness any apparition, she empathized with the governess and believed her, at least according to the narrator.  After learning from Mrs. Grose that the figure she saw was Quint and that he was dead, the governess became obsessed with the thought that Quint came to retrieve the children, to corrupt them and that it was her duty to protect them from the evil of the ghost.  She states that the situation demanded an “extraordinary flight of heroism” from her, and that “they [the children] had nothing but me, and I—well, I had THEM”. The tone now becomes one of strength, determination, and moral duty, but at the same time one of fear and terror, much contrasting to the state in which the governess was during her first weeks at Bly.

After claiming to see the ghost of Miss Jessel, the former governess, the narrator becomes suspicious of Miles and Flora’s innocence and begins to think that perhaps they are in on something with the ghosts. The narrator’s tone becomes anxious and conspirational. She tells Mrs. Grose: “They know —it's too monstrous: they know, they know!". She describes herself as “nervous” and “impatient”. Mrs. Grose rejects the possibility of a conspiracy between Flora and the ghosts: “Isn't it just a proof of her blessed innocence?". She is the moral norm of the story: according to Hume (1969), gothic novels contain a moral norm against which the villain-hero is measured that serves as a standard for the reader to associate with.  

At this point, the governess is convinced that Miles and Flora are being contaminated by the impurity of the ghosts, they are “lost” and she must save them. In her paranoia, the governess obsessively questions Mrs. Grose to find further information about the relationship that the children had with Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. She is convinced that Miles is “carrying an intercourse that he conceals from her”, and states that she feels that she must watch. The tone of the narrator is one of wariness, mainly towards Miles, whom she feels she must surveil to uncover a possible secret pursuit. Still, in the next chapter, the tone suddenly shifts again: “There were moments when, by an irresistible impulse, I found myself catching them up and pressing them to my heart”. The sweet, tender, and motherly tone shows that the governess’s wariness is motivated by her desire to guard and protect the children. 

After another encounter with the ghost of Quint, the governess confronts Flora about her knowledge of the apparitions. Her tone is desperate, alarmed, and suspicious and she is convinced that the child is hiding something. She then refers to Miles as a “presence”, the same word she used to describe the ghosts of Quint and Miss Jessel: “The presence on the lawn (…) was poor little Miles himself.”

The governess herself describes her state as one of “obsession”. Her certainty of the secret meetings and association between the children and the ghosts kept growing stronger. Her wariness of the children also escalated, referring to them as “little wretches” who tried to trick her with their tenderness. She is consumed by her preoccupation with the safety of the children in the face of the two apparitions who, in the governess’s perception, wanted to corrupt their innocence. Her tone grows more and more uneasy about the children and Mrs. Grose, who states that she does not see the ghosts. 

The governess’s obsession troubles the children. Flora, at one point, says: “I don't know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never have. I think you're cruel. I don't like you!". Her tone is one of exasperation, but also of fear of her carer. She demands that Mrs. Grose take her away from the governess and is afraid of seeing her again. In her consuming quest to ensure the safety of the children, she brought turmoil to them, causing the exact opposite. 

Alone with Miles in Bly, the governess perceives the ghost of Peter Quint and embraces Miles. The narrator recognizes that Miles is uncomfortable, stating that his face “showed me how complete was the ravage of uneasiness”, but attributes it to the presence of Quint. The narrator’s tone is agitated, anxious, and shaken by the sight of the ghost, fearsome. After what she perceives as an encounter with Quint, the governess realizes that Miles died. Her desperate attempt at protecting the children from what she thought to be two ghosts caused exactly what she desired to prevent.

In conclusion, the first-person narration and the shifts in tone demonstrate the moral ambiguity of the main villain-hero from whom the action derives, a characteristic of the gothic novel proposed by Hume (1969). The governess’s wish to guard the children’s innocence from evil was subverted by her deteriorating mental state, as is evidenced by her lexical choices, her abrupt shifts in tone, and the reactions of other characters.

James, H., & Curtis, A. (2003). The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers. Penguin Adult.

Hume, R. 1969. Gothic versus Romantic: A Revaluation of the Gothic Novel. New York, NY. Modern Language Association. Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1261285

Charters, A. 1991. The Short Story and Its Writer. Boston, MA. Bedford Books of St Martin in the Fields.