Psychoanalysis Criticism: Turn of the Screw The Turn of the Screw by Henry James is a ghost story that has the reader question everything about it. The reader slowly starts to question the reliability of the narrator and soon has the narrator questioning herself. Believing that the ghost she sees are out to get the children and also struggling to find proof that she is not the only one who sees these ghosts but ultimately ending in the death of one of the children. By looking at the novel through a psychoanalysis lens, the reader can see that the ghosts were just hallucinations and the reader finds Governess reasons for these hallucinations.
The novel The Turn of the Screw by Henry James first starts off with a group of people telling ghost stories. The unknown narrator describes the conversation that he has with a guy named Douglas who claims to have a scary ghost story that doesn’t just haunt one child but two. Douglas then says it’s his sister’s Governess’ manuscript and that it is suppose to be a real account. Richard Sawyer states in the article What’s Your Title- The Turn of the Screw that the prologue conditioned
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The narrator in The Turn of the Screw, who was never named but called the Governess, began to see ghosts. Even though the Governess sees these ghosts she is unable to know for sure if anyone else sees them too. Eventually, she found out the horrible truth which is that no one else sees them. “...for with this hard blow of the proof that her eyes were hopelessly sealed I felt my own situation horribly crumble…” (James, 121). The Governess was beginning to figure out that she is the only one that can see the ghosts and starts to question her sanity more than before. Her sanity slowly starts to crumble. This was the proof she needed. She needed to know if Miss Grose sees the ghosts too and it turns out that she