JamesF-L is the on-line discussion group concerning Henry James.
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Here is a sample posting by Vanessa VanGilson to JamesF-L about "The Turn of
the Screw." She is replying to a posting by Adrian Cox, quoted in part
between the slash // marks. For the Adrian Cox posting and Casey Abell's
reply to it, use the following links:
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 1998
From: Vanessa VanGilson (VVanGilson@WITTERPUBLISHING.COM)
Subject: Re: The Screw of The Innocents
//Would any list member care to comment on the argument that tale was not only a portrayal of a progressive mental disorder culminating in a full-blown psychosis, but also a deliberate satire on Victorian morals?//
I've often thought that James was tightening the screw on Victorian sexual repression through the governess' extreme reaction to the perhaps overactive sexuality of the children. The governess comes to work with the children, who have been raised in a semi-isolated, comparatively free environment, from a religious and likely repressive family. She has never seen childhood in this manner and relates to the children in her own inexperienced way. She seeks relationships to help her understand her role, and continually returns to the romantic relationship as the organizing paradigm for just about all of the relationships that she observes and takes part in.
In watching over their every movement, the governess is reminded constantly of their relative, an attractive and mysterious man. So firmly entrenched in her memory is the children's uncle that she conjures him up--it seems to me that the first time the governess sees Quint, she is hard at work thinking about the uncle and even says something to the effect that "Wouldn't it be nice if I should happen to see him." Presto--there's a man, but she has to justify it; that's a bad impulse, it must be evil, ghosts are evil--it must be a ghost. Then she has to even it out--there can't be a male ghost roaming around; there has to be a female counterpart that is his equal so that she and her sexuality can be safe. Enter Miss Jessel. With the pair constructed partly out of desire and partly out of information from Miss Grose, the governess has balanced both sides of the equation and kept her understanding of relationships and sexuality intact.
Then there is the pair of children. Of course, it's pretty twisted to sexualize the two the way she does, but again, she has to externalize her sexuality. Her attraction for the uncle seems again to be the culprit; the children are his relatives and must bear some resemblance to him, which explains why she is particularly fascinated with Miles.
Another pair relationship that the governess sees is the mother-father one. If she is the acting mother, then the uncle has to be the acting father, which sets them up romantically. However, he's absent, which is probably something that she hasn't experienced at home, except probably in the case of God, the absent father. In the uncle's absence, the governess creates her own little troubled world in which she must continually overcome terrible obstacles to prove her love. The ghosts are the main trial for her; if she can defeat this grossly sexual pair, then that would leave only the mother-father and the sister-brother pairs, which are ostensibly normal and, in her mind, de-sexualized.
However, her unconscious desires are really working against her and seem to sexualize everything she comes in contact with. This seems to me to be the conflict that ultimately drives her mad and causes her to freak out Flora and kill Miles--she's trying to save them from the ghosts and stablilze the family relationship, but her zeal ends up destroying it. She does seem to get what she's wanted in the end--the sexuality of the "ghosts" overcome any Victorian repression she has. It's all visceral at the end.
I think the governess is mad only to the degree that she's been taught or given the skill to be so, and I think that James is, in fact, pointing out the extreme result of having a Victorian background, too much time on your hands, and a nearly blank canvas on which to play out your own internal drama.
Vanessa Van Gilson