Cruikshank's Oliver and "The Turn of the Screw"

Abstract

ENRY JAMES'S The Turn of the Screw may be perceived as II being, in its inception, a Gothic tale, subsequently complicated by James's evolving a reflector character of a complexity not required by the limited genre. So perceived, it lends itself very well to an account afforded by Theodora Bosanquet, his amanuensis, of the characteristic working of James's imagination: When he walked out of the refuge of his study into the world and looked about him, he saw a place of torment, where creatures of prey perpetually thrust their claws into the quivering flesh of the doomed, defenceless children of light.' Peter Brooks has generalized her perception into an argument for the essentially melodramatic character of James's imagination.' James was constantly obsessed by this image of the potential victim opposed by the abyss, the jungle, the social predators lying in wait, the ghost to be confronted or pursued. Such an encounter is the basic image and idea of The Turn of the Screw, on which its Gothic horror depends, that of the children opposed by evil presences. Confrontation is inherent in the donne'e as James initially recorded it in his Notebooks: