Essay on "Psychoanalytical Reading of the Turn of the Screw"

Essay 5 pages (1503 words) Sources: 4

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Psychoanalytical Reading of the Turn of the Screw

Sigmund Freud's theories of psychoanalysis - in particular, the concept of repression -- have been liberally applied to interpretations of Henry James' novella, the Turn of the Screw. As with virtually any piece of literature that requires in-depth interpretation, critics tend to adamantly disagree about just how applicable Freud's theories are to the classic ghost story; and if they are applicable, in what sense?

Freud believed that people repress their primitive sexual desires in order to fit in with civil society. So it is not surprising that the sexually repressed governess who acts as the central character of James' novella has been analyzed at length from a Freudian perspective. The young governess has strong sexual desires for her employer, who she never sees and has only met a couple of times. She has led a sheltered life, and as far as the reader is aware, is sexually inexperienced. As such, some critics submit that the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are not actually apparitions but are, instead, manifestations of the governess' unfulfilled sexual desires. Simply put, the governess conjured up the ghosts in her subconscious mind because she felt that her sexual desires were "evil" and rather than face them directly, she projected them onto imaginary vessels of evil.

Throughout the novella, there are also many allusions to sexual symbolism which possess speculative Freudian implications. For example, according to Terry Otten:

It is well-nigh impossible to avoid the Freudian implications in James's story, the sexual symbolism of corridors, chambers, the tower, the stairs, the lake, the window. Add to these such blatant occurrences as Flora's playing with 'a small flatpiece of wood which happened to have a little hole that evidently suggested to her the idea of sticking in another fragment'(p. 30), and we have a Freudian's delight. Sexual allusions underlie every key encounter, especially those between Miles and the governess; and perhaps more than a figurative climax takes place at the end just after the governess 'whimsically' describes herself and Miles "as some young couple who, on their wedding-journey, at the inn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter' (p. 81 ). Trace the sexual innuendoes in the dialogue, and observe the governess's constant romanticizing and daydreaming, add her physical aggressiveness with Miles in particular, and the psychosexual interpretation seems incontestable (54).

But are they truly incontestable? Or are those who support a psychoanalytical interpretation of the story merely reading more into the narrative than James originally intended? One way to answer this question is to turn to the author's own explanation. According to Robert Lidell, Henry James once wrote the following about the Turn of the Screw in a letter to F.W. Myers: "the thing I most wanted not to fail of doing, under penalty of extreme platitude, was to give the impression of the communication to the children of the most infernal imaginable evil and danger - the condition, on their part, of being as exposed as we can humanly conceive children to be" (143).

These comments bring to light the significance of the title itself. In the prologue of the novella, Douglas claims that the true "turn of the screw" of any ghost story lies in the exposure of some sinister force to children. Following this line of reasoning, the party guests decide that a ghost story with two children would signify two turns of the screw. Interpreting this conversation from a psychoanalytical perspective one can see that the tightening of the screws is symbolic of the increasingly tight hold that the governess has on Miles and Flora. In turn, the children and the ghosts, real or imagined, have tightened their grip on the governess as well, ultimately causing her to repress her need for "corruption" even further.

According to Paul Ceflau "For Freud, the compulsion to repeat is the manifestation of the power of the unconscious repressed. Repetition expresses a partial return of the repressed, in which the subject repeats distortions of events rather than directly reencountering them" (101). Thus while many of the interactions between the governess and the ghosts, she and the children, and she and Mrs. Grose are repetitive in nature, her recollection of these encounters in her memoirs may indeed be quite distorted considering that repression, according to Freud, creates warped interpretation. At the same time, distortion can also be seen as a form of corruption; a word that is used repeatedly throughout the text to connote sexual debauchery.

Also indicating a theme of psychoanalytic repression throughout the tale is the obscurity of the explanations given by Miles and Flora about certain events. For example, Miles never does reveal exactly why he was suspended from school, just as Flora never explains why she was gazing out the window. These are questions that the governess desperately wants to know the answers to, however she is unable to unearth those answers. The frustration she feels from these failures could be interpreted to be representative of her own sexual frustration.

From this perspective, the governess has not only invented the ghosts as a result of her sexual repression, but also her suspicions about the children being corrupt and hiding their corruption through their innocence. The governess is, after all, innocent on the outside yet has "evil" sexual desires stirring inside of her. Therefore, she could easily have projected this dichotomous view of herself onto the children, assuming that if she is "good" on the outside but "bad" on the inside, the same must be true of everyone else. Many critics naturally associate this form of frustration as symbolic of the reticent sexual attitudes of Victorian times.

Interestingly, for some critics, the sexual manifestations of the governess do not end with her fantasies about the uncle and Quint, but actually transfer into the governess' alleged sexual attraction to the 10-year-old Miles. For example, Terry Otten asserts that "as the children become older in the governess's vision, they come more to assume the sexual roles implied by the mysterious lovers Quint and Miss Jessel, Miles especially. In the last half of the narration, the governess virtually plays out her sexual fantasy with Miles while at the same time chastening it by carrying on a holy campaign against the evil she partially creates" (60-61).

There is also some conjecture that Miles is repressing his own homosexuality; something that the governess would find to be even more corrupt than heterosexual corruption of a young boy. While some critics view the Turn of the Screw as a symbolic commentary on sexual oppression in the staid Victorian era, critics such as Eric Haralson view the tale as James' observations on societal disdain for homosexuality during the period. As Peggy McCormack explains:

Eric Haralson's essay, ? 'His little heart, dispossessed': Ritual Sexorcism in the Turn of the Screw, combines historicism and cultural criticism in examining James's popular potboiler. Haralson reads the story as an allusion to the 1889 Cleveland Street homosexual brothel affair as well as an allegory of Oscar Wilde's 1895 immorality trial involving Lord Alfred Douglas. Overall, Haralson groups his interpretations under the umbrella of late-Victorian homosexual panic toward which James is cannily ambiguous: he manages to sell his story of repressed homosexuality exorcised ?murderous[ly]? By the governess as the ?handmaiden of patriarchy? At the same time that the tale laments her role as ?a ruthless enforcer of heteronormative investment? (26)

Interpretations such as Haralson's seem on many levels to be stretching the boundaries of reason in search for a meaning manifested to further a cause or a particular point-of-view. Winnie-the-Pooh could be labeled as a symbol of repressed homosexuality if a critic wanted him to be; there are always ways of attaching certain meanings to various parts of a text - but that does not… READ MORE

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