The Turn of the Screw by Henry James follows the story of a governess who takes care of the children Miles and Flora. The issue regarding the reliability of the governess as the narrator has been debated due to her “interactions” with the supernatural world. However, the governess is insane throughout The Turn of the Screw because the ghosts she sees are hallucinations; she shows irrational behavior towards the children; and she is obsessed with getting approval from others such as her employer and the children.
The governess claims to see ghosts around Bly when they are just hallucinations. When the governess takes a stroll on the estate, she sees a ghost-like figure in a tower after imagining to meet anyone, possibly her employer. She is taken back from the situation that she illustrates “what arrested me on the spot...was the sense that my imagination had, in a flash, turned real” (Page 15). She
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Many scenes from the book provide evidence that the governess shows care and compassion towards the children. She reveals this when she “met [Miles kiss and [the governess had to make...the most stupendous effort not to cry” (Page 46). However, this caring nature is not always present, such as when Flora did not believe that the governess saw a ghost, causing the governess to see her as ugly. It can also be argued that the story exists in a world where ghosts can exist. It seems that the governess experiences the supernatural powers of a ghost during a conversation with Miles when suddenly “an extraordinary blast and chill, a gust of frozen air, and a shake of the room as great as if, in the wild wind, the casement had crashed in” (Page 65). This event may make it seem that ghosts exist in this world, but unnatural weather patterns do not prove the existence of ghosts. Disproving the hallucinations also does not mean that the governess is sane as
There are many interesting ways people have created hallucinations without hallucinogens or any other chemicals. After dreaming (obviously), the most common way to hallucinate is by using light. Lights blinking at certain frequencies can cause vivid hallucinations by activating your pineal gland that equal the intensity of psychedelic drugs. There are even glasses that are made so you can experience this anytime you want but it is probably not very healthy for your eyes.
Although the question still remains, abundant evidence suggests that the governess is in some form of deranged state. The governess is insane because she is the only person to witness the ghosts, she has extreme fear and anxiety and she is overly devoted to protecting her charges which causes her paranoia. On the other hand, many people argue that the Governess is sane, however these claims can be disproven because of strong quotes and in-depth analytical support. In the end, it is quite clear that the governess is suffering from a mental
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.
Seeing her mother again, and what she’s done with her life after years of separation shocks her, shown with “When she looked up, I was overcome with panic that she’d see me and call out my name... And mom would introduce herself, and my secret would be out.” [Walls, 3]. She grew up, escaped, and put her poor childhood behind her.
Besides that, Lipsha really regrets and feels so sorry because he blessed the turkey heart by himself with holy water. When they come back to home after Grandpa’s funeral, they think Grandpa is always by their side and he stays at home with them. James Ruppert said “The return of Nector Kashpaw’s ghost is even more mediational. Nector’s sudden death leaves him without a chance to say good-bye to the two women he loves. Lipsha and Marie know that when ghosts return they have a “certain uneasy reason to come back”.”
“She wasn’t far from the road, but the idea of running for it appeared to her a demeaning absurdity, herself flailing through the drifts like some weeping, dopey, sacrificial extra in a horror movie” (6). Maureen is confused and puzzled throughout the abduction. She thinks, her abductor has the wrong person. “She shook her head as if to clear it”
Ambiguity is the characteristic of a word, phrase, or book that can be understood in multiple ways. Henry James, during the middle part of his career, incorporated this type of vagueness into his writing. One of James's most debatable use of ambiguity was a ghost story. In the novella The Turn of the Screw, Henry James uses conflict, perspective, and ambiguity to create a mystery, with his own twist, for the reader to solve and leave them guessing. James, through conflicts involving the children and possible ghosts, limited point of view, and the overall ambiguity, forces the reader to solve mysteries throughout the book without giving the answers at the end.
The story of the haunting begins on the grounds of the Pittock Mansion. People have said that they could hear the sounds of someone walking around the yard in heavy boot and then coming into the side door. It is possible that some people have seen this entity because it has been said that he is the gardener. All of the museum staff and even visitors have seen the happy couple Henry and Georgiana.
As their next-door-neighbors begin dying, two men are driven to action: Reverend Henry Whitehead, whose faith in a benevolent God is great, and Dr. John Snow, whose beliefs about contagion have been rejected by the scientific community, but who is convinced that he knows how the disease is had spread. “The Ghost Map” records the
The novel, Turn of the Screw, by Henry James takes place in England and is told from the point of view of the Governess, whose sanity is questionable. The Governess is insane because throughout the novel, she is the only one who sees the ghosts, she is in love with the master, and she allows her desire to protect the children to drive her to insanity. First, the Governess is insane because she is the only character in the novel to ever have seen the ghosts. Early in the novel, the Governess claims she sees the ghost of Peter Quint, and immediately tells Mrs. Grose.
In Henry James’s novella, The Turn of the Screw, the topics of sanity and insanity are commonly argued among the readers. Insanity is the state of madness or being irrational while sanity is reasonable behavior. It is up to the audience to decide on whether the author intended for the governess to be sane or insane. Despite this dissension, the governess is insane throughout the whole story because she possesses all the symptoms of a paranoid schizophrenic, has an obsessive personality, and is the only one who claims she sees the apparitions.
At Tower Hill the headsman’s axe flashed regularly, while for the vagabonds there were the whipping posts, and for the beggars there were the stocks” (Waters). He was undoubtedly filing away these events to use in later works. The increase in death and morbidity around them encouraged the Elizabethans to develop an obsession with ghosts. A ghost is “...the soul of a dead person who is said to appear to the living in bodily likeness at a place associated with his life. Ghosts are said to have died in terrible and violent circumstances” (Alchin).
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” tells the story of a young woman who is battling severe depression. The protagonist is essentially locked away for the summer as a cure for her psychological disorder(s) (Craig 36). Being locked in the house with the yellow wallpaper worsens her mental state and eventually drives her to insanity. Throughout the course of the story, the protagonist’s mental state noticeably declines; she claims there are people in the wallpaper and believes it is haunting her. Several Gothic themes are scattered throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper”; however, the protagonist’s isolation, the presence of insanity, and the occurring idea of supernatural elements are most prominent and can be used to justify “The Yellow
The governess progressively believes in things around her that are pseudo and assumed. Nobody else at Bly can see the ghosts that she claims even when the children tried to believe her, they just could not see the ghosts she could see. Things slowly but surely fell apart at Bly, and it seemed to start right when the governess made assumptions about the ghosts she had met. The governess had done many things at Bly, but proving her insanity is something she could not
The comment on Beauty’s freewill accentuates the lack of volition in Beauty’s case for she had to pay for her father’s transgression and the Beauty, as other women in the patriarchal social setup is aware of it and willingly accepts her plight. The magic realist tendencies of Angela Carter’s writings also come to the fore in the intermingling of the world of humans and animals, and the mundane and the magical. It is a type of postmodern gothic, which treats a ghost at the table as an everyday occurrence rather than something to be afraid of. In contrast to the “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon,” “The Tiger’s Bride” is explicitly sexual and more radical in its exploration of feminine-masculine stereotypes and relationships.