An Analysis Of The Turn Of The Screw By Henry James

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Looking Through Frosted Glass “The Turn of the Screw”, Henry James classic gothic novella is a story of a young governess who has been employed by the uncle of two young children who, after the death of their parents, are left to his care. The terms of employment are simple and straightforward – the uncle mustn’t be contacted at any expense regarding the children or of anything that would take place in the mansion in which they reside in the country at Bly. What starts off as a fairly simple job soon turns into a psychologically traumatic experience for both the governess, and in turn the reader also. Many a debate has been made about what exactly unfolded at the mansion. The main questions that have been asked about the text are whether…show more content…
Therein lies the marvelous feat of Henry James, so much that “The Turn of the Screw has been to critics a chameleon text, taking on a coloring that lets blend in with almost any way of reading it” (Peter Beidler vii ¶3). The ambiguousness and structure of the story is what I would like to address in this research paper. The dictionary defines the word “Perception” as the way that you notice or understand something using one of your senses. (Merriam-Webster). Like the five senses that we as humans have of hearing, tasting, smelling, sight and touch, perception in turn can be translated as a sixth sense. This unique ability to be able to perceive and formulate objective information and translate that into a subjective thought and opinion is an opaque sense. Personally, I’ve come to decipher the story of ill-fated governess and the strange occurrences at Bly to be much like watching a movie through frosted glass. The way James has written the story and structured it allows the reader to see the framework of characters and settings to be seen, yet does so without providing subjective information. Personally, I feel that Henry James does a marvelous job with his writing, almost tip-toeing a fine line between giving a stencil of the story and letting the reader fill out the spaces. James also craftily finds a way of influencing the reading in a non-direct
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