The Turn of the Screw 621while Victoria was queen of England (1837–1901).
The Victorians insisted upon public morality, modest
dress, and restrained social behavior guided by strict
etiquette, while also valuing physical appearance
and beauty. This prim code drove normal impulses
underground and intensified curiosity, sometimes
infusing the commonplace with unconscious desires.
The sexuality that is never explicitly addressed in
the tale actually works to increase its presence in the
unconscious minds of the characters. It creates a wild
emotional underground that pulses with love, sexual
awakening, sexual desire, sensuality, eroticism and the
dangers that these impulses represent.
The first hint of these themes comes in the little
story that frames the governess’s tale. The author
guesses that the governess was in love, and Douglas
affirms it, but tells the author that neither he nor
the governess ever spoke of it. The theme of unspo-
ken love gets top billing with the theme of horror:
Douglas was in love with the governess; the govern-
ess was in love with the handsome guardian of the
children. She experienced a sexual awakening in her
two limited interviews with the guardian, much as
Miles probably experienced a sexual awakening at
school. The guardian employs the governess to go
to Bly, his country estate, but insists that she must
never contact him. She promises to follow that
instruction, and when he takes her hand at the end
of the interview, she feels “rewarded.” Off she goes
to Bly, vibrating with an awakening sensuality that
is doomed never to be spoken of, no less fulfilled.
The unnamed governess redirects the sexual
interest aroused by her employer by focusing on
loving and, in her word, “possessing the children.”
A byproduct of her erotic arousal, however, is that,
shortly after arriving at Bly, she begins to see “appa-
ritions.” Often these sightings occur just when the
governess is dreaming of the gentleman who had
hired her. The “ghosts” of the story, then, can be
understood as representations of the governess’s
own guilty conscience. In a prim Victorian world,
sex must be repressed, but the energy has to go
somewhere.
At Bly, the governess’s only adult companion is
the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, who is taking care of
the guardian’s little niece, Flora. The child, whose
name means “flower,” is described as being pure, and
she represents a pre-sexual openness to the world
around her. Ominously, we learn that there had been
a previous young and beautiful governess, Miss Jes-
sel, whom the governess believes had tried to corrupt
Flora. Jessel had gone away, ostensibly for a holiday,
and then she died.
So, too, the valet, Peter Quint (whose two names
suggest masculine and feminine sexual parts) has
died mysteriously. Mrs. Grose insinuates that the
two had been lovers. Flora’s brother Miles is about
to return home permanently because he has been
expelled from school for reasons unknown. The
housekeeper and the governess speculate that he
did or said something that posed a threat to the
other students. What could a “lovely” 10-year-old
boy, on the brink of adolescence, have done? The
implication is that something unclean transpired
between Quint and Miles, and Miles has carried
this corruption into his behavior at school. Mrs.
Grose, moreover, later confirms that Miles had gone
off with Quint alone for many hours at a time, and
when questioned about it, he denied having been
with Quint. The governess concludes that Miles was
engaged in an “intercourse” that he was concealing.
While intercourse can mean something as simple as
communication, the double entendre (a word that
can be understood in at least two ways, one of which
is sexual) feeds the governess’s imagination. She
never says, but seems to believe, that Miles has said
or done something of a sexual nature.
In her sexualized maternal role, the governess
feels it is her charge to save the children from these
“ghosts,” which are actually the governess’s own
sexually “wound up” thinking.
She surmises that Jessel became pregnant by
Quint and probably died in childbirth. Later, Quint
died from a fall (with the suggestion that he might
have been murdered), but not before Miss Jessel
tried to initiate Flora or Quint had corrupted Miles.
The children never admit to “seeing” the ghosts.
In one instance, Flora stares off into the distance.
The governess decides that she must be seeing Miss
Jessel, come back to get or sexualize Flora. The gov-
erness’s hysteria can be tracked by a literal reading
of her sentences. She projects her own sensual and
sexual fears onto the household, finishing their sen-
tences with her own erotic conclusions.