Errors, Misjudgements and Strategies in The Turn of the Screw

Abstract

There is a widespread assumption in literary criticism that literary texts are error-free, internally consistent works in which anomalies and inconsistencies either do not arise or are eliminated in the process of checking and revision that precede publication. However, a close reading of one canonical literary text, The Turn of the Screw, reveals a series of anomalies in the representation of the textual world which can only be attributed to an oversight on the part of the author. These anomalies are the result either of unconscious errors or of misjudgements—conscious choices not in keeping with the author's overall objectives. Careful study of three different editions of The Turn of the Screw reveals a complex process in which errors that arose in one edition were sometimes corrected in the next, only for new errors to arise in the process of revision. It is argued that such errors are largely attributable to the difficulty of the task that the author set himself and situational constraints under which the work was produced.