A Counterclockwise Turn in James's "The Turn of the Screw"

Abstract

This ever fascinating ghost story, possibly the most discussed and written about bogey-tale in the English language, remains the enduring puzzle it for two reasons: few stories can have been so perversely designed obfuscate, mystify, and confound; and even fewer writers have been capable of commenting on their own work in ways which enhance, rather than compromise, the original purpose. Preface New York Edition, James's most extensive commentary on The Turn of the Screw, makes these points well. As a piece of criticism it perfectly complements the story itself. Ironic, maddeningly indirect, like the tale, when it purports clarity, it has at heart only the desire get us further lost. It here that James acknowledges that his story is a piece of ingenuity pure and simple-its purpose to catch those not easily caught.1 Helpful comment, that, as if any engaged reader of the story could possibly have discovered otherwise. But further on, ostensibly responding a reproach by a reader capable evidently, for the time, of some attention, that he had n't sufficiently 'characterised' my young woman, the Governess, he gives, believe, the one single a reading of the story which does not necessarily turn yet another dead end. Approaching this clue we must put out of mind the question of the reader's identity, a real or imagined figure; above all, we must put out of mind the patronizing tone (capable evidently, for the time indeed) which might lead us dismiss the advice out of hand; 'You indulge in that stricture at your ease,' James admonishes his unidentified antagonist, and adds: I don't mind confiding you that-strange as it may appear!-one has choose ever so delicately among one's diffi-