A review by lory_enterenchanted
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

challenging dark emotional mysterious

4.0

Read with a brave English student. There are certain sentences I cannot make head or tail of, so I expect she is even more befuddled. 

Grasping the gist, I think it’s a story about a haunted person. The children could have healed from whatever happened to them, but not under the ministrations of this obsessive governess (who probably had something happen to her in childhood, too). 

The distant, uncaring “master” with whom her obsession begins — is he reminiscent of someone in her earlier life? He starts off the motif of people who don’t want to and can’t connect with each other, except in a selfish exploitative way, which is brought to such a deadly climax through the governess. 

What struck me was her weird determination to skew the world into her personal view of it. The children never give any objective sign of actually seeing the ghosts, yet she is determined that they do. Anything can be twisted into evidence supporting her personal vision (is that the real “turn of the screw”?) 

It’s impossible to tell what truth James wanted us to discover, so it remains a frustrating story. I can only imagine that something happened to the governess to mess up her mind to such an extent that truth cannot be found there.