618 James, Henry
picture of Americans and Europeans, James shows
that there are different ways of dealing with inno-
cence and experience, and that one needs to develop
one’s own way in order to lead a successful life. Isa-
bel’s mysterious decision to go back to her husband
at the end of the novel also illustrates this assump-
tion: Instead of dodging responsibility once again,
she decides to face the consequences of her mistake
and thus finally grows into mature dignity.
Timo Müller
jamES, HEnry The Turn of the Screw
(1898)
On January 5, 1895, Henry James entered the
St. James Theatre in London as the final curtain
came down on the opening night of his play Guy
Domville. Already depressed because he was having
trouble successfully publishing his fiction, he moved
to the stage in answer to the audience’s call for the
author; he was jeered. Despite James’s humiliation,
the play ran for several weeks. In the psychological
crucible of the following months, James wrote the
first notes for The Turn of the Screw. In contrast to
the complete vulnerability James experienced on
the stage of Guy Domville, James creates a web of
ambiguity in this terrifying tale that is anchored in
three realities: the actual, the psychological, and the
supernatural.
In The Turn of the Screw, the narrator’s acquain-
tance, Douglas, shares the manuscript of a friend
of his sister. The text recounts the young woman’s
travails after she is interviewed and hired as gov-
erness to an orphaned brother and sister who live
in an isolated country house with Mrs. Grose, the
housekeeper. The governess comes to learn that her
predecessor, Miss Jessel, and groundskeeper, Peter
Quint, died under mysterious circumstances. Mrs.
Grose appears to insinuate that the couple had had
a tryst, and that they were corrupting influences on
the children. The crux of the plot is the governess’s
attempt to save the children from these “ghosts.” In
the end, she fails.
The simplest way to read the tale is as a ghost
story, a fiction type to which James was no stranger.
The early “The Romance of Certain Old Clothes”
(1867) and the late “The Jolly Corner” (1908) are
examples of his mastery of this genre. The Turn of the
Screw, however, is different in that it may be read as
a psychological thriller filled with Freudian subtext
and sexual innuendo, heightened by the charac-
ters’ circumstances of isolation. A classic struggle
between good and evil or innocence and experience,
critics agree that James’s story is among the first
“modern” tales in English.
Ellen Rosenberginnocence and experience in The Turn of
the Screw
Henry James regularly wrote fiction driven by
the themes of innocence and experience. A New
Yorker, born in 1843, he frequently traveled to
Europe with his wealthy family, attending a vari-
ety of European schools, being tutored at home,
and visiting the monuments of the Old World.
In between trips, James was schooled in America.
The differences that he observed between the
two worlds developed into a view that Americans
were essentially naïve, unsophisticated, and inex-
perienced, while Europeans were cultured, knowl-
edgeable, and experienced, though sometimes to
the point of dissipation. As a young man, James
returned to Europe and eventually chose to live in
England for the rest of his life.
His life as an American abroad influenced his
writing, and the question of innocence and experi-
ence often takes place on the societal level. In The
Turn of the Screw, we have characters whose passage
into knowledge may be viewed as a maturational
necessity: Sooner or later, we all grow up. The book
takes place in America, but it is allied to James’s
transatlantic novels in which individuals of narrow
experience come to know a wider world that oper-
ates under exacting social laws. This thematic tie
comes to us through the governess, who is herself
naïve at the beginning of the story and parallels
American innocents in James’s other works. She
comes from a poor, religious, but educated back-
ground and is too young to have been initiated into
love. She finds herself in the resplendent setting
of Bly, in the employ of the wealthy, decadent, and
impatient bachelor who sparks her passions. This
emotional ember marks the beginning of her pas-
sage out of innocence. Similarly, Mrs. Grose comes