S4 E6 The Turn of the Screw: Henry James's Ultimate Gothic Mind...Screw?

If you’ve ever contemplated a governess career, perhaps Henry James’s THE TURN OF THE SCREW will give you pause.  Or maybe this bite-sized Gothic ghost story will thrill you with the chance of being in charge of a beautiful English country house with no master to tell you what to do.  But choose your adventure carefully because you might end up haunted and/or crazy and/or murdering someone.  

Join Sonja and Vanessa as they do a quick Henry James 101, and explore WITH SPOILERS his classic, 1898 ghost story.  Are there ghosts?  Is the governess losing her mind?  Why did Miles get expelled from boarding school? Are Miles and Flora the OG creepy literary kids?  What role does hysteria play? Is there a spell cast over the entire plot?  Is the story a trap to catch the reader? How does the novella, set at Bly Manor, link to the Netfilx show, THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR? 

We’ll address these questions, and along the way, Sonja will propose a sexy theory, and Vanessa will suggest that the bosom can be a murder weapon. 

REFERENCES:

While we did not look at JANE EYRE as a Gothic tale, we did think about whether it counts as a female odyssey in Season 1:  Can a Lowly Governess Have an Odyssey?

Here is an overview of James Literary Criticism, including Edmund Wilson’s influential article, “The Ambiguity of Henry James” from 1934.

Here is the article about how Henry James felt about Jane Austen.

For more information about the Hysteria Diagnosis in the late 19th/early 20th century, check out this link. 

Here’s a great article celebrating the ambiguity of Turn of the Screw.

Here is a link to the article that offers Henry James's take on several women writers that Vanessa cites in the episode.