Monday, November 7, 2011
The Turn of the Screw
What a psycho!..That was my thought when I finished reading this novella. I hope im using it correctly but I got this very uncanny feeling when i realized the Governess suffocated Miles to death, i kinda quivered a little. I also thought the Governess relationship with Miles was a bit odd. I thought she was way too taken with him, always embracing him and harrassing him all the time about the ghost that she was alledgely seeing. i think in the beginning I believed that she saw the ghosts but after taking Ms. Grose on that joy ride around the lake looking for Flora and Flora's reactions. I had to rethink my opinions about her...my opinions which consisted mostly of thinking she was a bit of a lunatic. I did get a weird vibe from Quints and Jessel relationship with the kids, i thought there could have been an inapporiate relationship there..but it was moreso with Quint and Miles than Flora and Miss Jessel. I also felt bad for Ms. Grose because she was like the governess's unwilling sidekick half of the times. But then i thought living in that big house so secluded anything is probably entertaining for them.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I don't think it is at all clear that the Governess suffocates Miles. Though some literary critics have read it that way, aren't there a lot of factors that mitigate that reading? One thing you do pick up on though, that is interesting, is that the Governess's actions seem to be in excess of any visible problem...
ReplyDeleteI could see where the critics are coming from saying that the Governess suffocated Miles, but at the same time its more likely that she didn't. I think what a lot of readers and critics are forgetting is how the story is told through a man who fell in love with the Governess. The Turn of the Screw doesn't conclude by coming back to the beginning where the Douglas is telling a story around a fire toward the ending, (which really bothered me by the way.) and because of that people might come to their own conclusions about the Governess being crazy and paranoid. Granted it was supposed to be a scary story but that doesn't really explain why Douglas seemed to be so fond of her unless she really did kill Miles and Douglas has some weird Taboo fetish toward psychotic child-killing babysitters... I don't really know for sure but maybe that's something to consider and I do agree professor about the Governess' actions.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a good question, Shawn, about the ending. It IS very abrupt. But, because of that it places the reader in a very interesting position: one of having to engage with the conclusion, or even engage with the idea of conclusion, which we usually don't have to. Many stories have firm closure: they not only bring the plot to an end, but they kind of tell the reader how to think about it all. We often don't notice this, though, and usually think that the conclusions we come to about a story are "ours" when oftentimes they have been covertly suggested to us by the story's structure itself. A story like this one is a bit more obvious in the way it manipulates the reader, but all narratives do that.
ReplyDelete