The Turn of the Screw

When the governess finally returns to her room, she stops short at the sight of Flora’s empty bed. Her alarm quickly subsides, however, as Flora steps from behind the window-blind and reproaches the governess for leaving her alone at night. Unable to explain herself, the governess asks if Flora saw anyone while looking out the window. The girl denies it, but the governess is certain she is lying.

This night is the first of many during which the governess remains awake, watchful, and occasionally creeps from her room to scrutinize the staircase. Although she never again sees Quint in the house, she does spy a woman seated on the bottom stair one night. The governess knows it is Miss Jessel, but the figure disappears in the dark without revealing her face.

After more than a week of nightly vigils, the governess gives in to sleep, but awakens at one o’clock in the morning. Flora is again at the window, and, convinced the girl is communicating with someone on the lawn, the governess slips from the room unnoticed. A quick calculation assures her that a window in the tower will provide the same view as her own bedroom window. She makes her way to the chamber and pulls open the shutters. In the light of the moon, she discerns a small figure and is sickened to realize it is Miles. He is gazing intently toward the governess, but above her, leaving no doubt that “there was a person on the tower” (53).

The next afternoon the governess coaxes the housekeeper to join her on the terrace. While she unburdens herself once again to Mrs. Grose, the children stroll harmoniously together on the lawn, within the women’s view. Mrs. Grose, as always, receives the governess’s account without skepticism. Yet she continues to see in the children “nothing but their beauty and amiability” (53), even as she lets the governess make “her a receptacle of lurid things” (54) about them.

The governess leads Mrs. Grose through the harrowing events of the previous night, describing how Miles came to her as soon as she arrived on the lawn, and how they returned to his room without exchanging a word. Her head spinning with numerous questions, she finally asked Miles why he went outside at night. He smiled and said he wanted to show her he could be bad, “for a change” (55). When she wondered how he could depend on her seeing him, Miles said he had directed Flora to go to the window, thus disturbing the governess’s sleep and baiting her to look out and see him.

Because Mrs. Grose responds to her narrative with less consternation than it would seem to merit, the governess adds one more detail that she believes “really settle[s] the matter” (56). Just before she left his room, Miles said to her, “Think, you know, what I might do!” (56). These six words resounded with allusions to the boy’s transgressions at school and before that, with Peter Quint. Looking at Miles and Flora out on the lawn, the governess declares that although they appear to be reading a book together, they’re really talking about Quint and Miss Jessel. The children seem unnaturally beautiful and good, but it’s a fantastic charade that veils their true allegiance to the depraved pair who schooled them in wickedness. When the governess concludes that Quint and Miss Jessel “want to get them” (57), the bewildered housekeeper asks, “But what for?” (57). The governess has a ready answer: “For the love of all the evil that, in those dreadful days, the pair put into them. And to ply them with that evil still, to keep up the work of demons” (57).

Seeing that she has finally struck a nerve with Mrs. Grose, the governess presses on, declaring that Quint and Jessel’s ultimate aim is to destroy the children. The apparitions have, to this point, presented themselves always at a distance—“on top of towers [… at] the further edge of pools” (58). They are determined to close that gap, however, to tempt the children to them and have them “perish in the attempt” (58). This prospect is too dreadful for Mrs. Grose, who decides they must alert the children’s uncle to the situation. The governess disagrees. She has pledged not to disturb their uncle and is loath to jeopardize his good opinion of her.

Weeks pass, and the governess feels she and her charges have arrived at a tacit agreement that certain subjects are taboo. Should they, in the course of their lessons or playful chatting together, find themselves approaching one of these subjects, they abruptly turn their discussion in another direction. The children have never uttered a word about their former governess, but they engage their current governess with endless questions about herself, her past, and the village where she grew up.

Summer gives way to autumn without the specters of Quint or Miss Jessel appearing before the governess again. Deliverance from these visions produces more anxiety than relief, however, as she prefers to confront evil with open eyes. She knows that Quint and Miss Jessel still lurk within their midst, and that the children can see and communicate with them. If she is blind to the demons, the governess nevertheless detects their arrival by “the strange dizzy lift or swim […] into a stillness, a pause of life” (62) that becomes apparent even when she and her charges are busy with activities. The spirits’ departure is also clearly marked. At this point, the children suddenly shower their governess with kisses and begin talking wistfully about their uncle.