Turn of the Screw, Henry James’ landmark gothic novella, has frustrated readers for centuries with its deliberate ambiguity. The twin ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel terrorise the young governess to the point of hysteria, with it never revealed if they are truly supernatural manifestations or figments of her imagination. The novel never reveals the secret to the very end, leaving readers uncertain if Miles is strangled to death by the governess or taken by the ghost of Peter Quint. Yet the abundance of phallic imagery, and the governess’ reaction to them, suggest that she has repressed her sexuality, causing her hallucinations of the ghosts which are visible only to her. The ghosts of Miss Jessel and Quint, in the governess’ mind, seek to “corrupt” (James 63) the children. The chaste governess frames them as a force of of evil, threatening to mar the children’s innocence with their unrestrained sexuality. She hence struggles to shield the children from their sexuality, a struggle which drives her to hysteria. In this essay, I will argue that the governess’ sexual repression manifests itself in hallucinations of the ghosts, causing her later hysteria.
The Governess interprets her role in the house as a guardian of the children’s innocence. As she assumes the role of governess after moving into the Bly home, she likens the children, particularly Flora, to angels. She describes Flora as having ‘angelic beauty’ (James 12) and calls Miles ‘an angel’ (James 26). The word ‘angelic’ implies that the children are benign, moral and most importantly innocent, ignorant of their sexuality. It is this awareness of sexuality that the governess tries to shield the children from. She views Miss Jesse and Peter Quint, who are sexually liberated, as a malevolent force, calling Quint a “hound” (James 42) and describing the pair as “villainous” (James 53). She likens Quint to a predatorial animal, hunting for the children. Quint had seduced Miss Jesse, and the Governess is afraid that he will spread his ideas of sexuality to the children. The paranoia shown by the Governess towards these ghosts is very irregular. As both Peter Quint and Miss Jesse are already dead, the Governess’ irrational fear that they will spread their sexuality to the children suggests a latent fear of sexuality within her.
Turn of the Screw, read psychoanalytically, suggests that the Governess has a fear of sexuality, by her reaction to phallic imagery. The most distressing instance to the Governess, is perhaps the incident when Flora tries to make a boat:
She had picked up a small flat piece of wood, which happened to have in it a little hole that had evidently suggested to her the idea of sticking in another fragment that might figure as a mast and make the thing a boat. This second morsel, as I watched her, she was very markedly and intently attempting to tighten in its place. (James 39)
Flora takes on the innocent task of crafting a toy boat by hand. Yet the Governess feels “apprehension” at the sight of “what she was doing”. She imagines that Flora is not making a toy but simulating the act of sexual intercourse. The Governess envisions the phallic stick Flora tries to stick into the hollow of the wood block as the male genitalia. She describes Flora’s motions as “markedly and intently” to justify her own interpretation that the child is simulating the act of coitus. Her interpretation of Flora’s innocent action of creating a toy suggests that she is not only afraid of her sexuality but also has repressed it. Her unwillingness to come to terms with her sexuality causes her to attribute sexual actions to everyday occurrences. In her mind, Flora exists as an “angelic”, unknowing and innocent force. Hence, the sight of Flora play-acting the act of intercourse, exhibiting her sexuality openly, drives her to hysteria. Her reaction to Flora’s actions are most telling of her fear of sexuality: the governess goes into hysterics with Miss Grose and is immediately becomes convinced that Flora has witnessed the ghastly apparition of Miss Jessel by the lake (James 40).
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalytic theory, argues the following in his essay “The Uncanny”:
every emotional affect, whatever its quality, is transformed by repression into morbid anxiety, then among such cases of anxiety there must be a class in which the anxiety can be shown to come from something repressed which recurs. (Freud 13)
The governess’ fear of her own sexuality causes her fear and hysteria. As described earlier, the governess experiences the “morbid anxiety” which Freud describes when she witnesses Flora seemingly simulating a sex act.
Freud’s argument suggests that the ghost of Miss Jessel is a manifestation of the governess’ repressed sexuality. Parallels are drawn between the two early in the story: Miss Grose compares the two governesses in terms of their physical similarity, stating that Jessel was “also young as pretty almost as pretty, miss, even as you.” (James 17) Later in the story, the governess witnesses the apparition of Miss Jessel, sitting at her desk, horrified that at the sight of her predecessor (James 76). The governess is disgusted by Miss Jessel, who occupied the same role as her. She resents Jessel’s unbridled sexuality, while the governess has repressed her own. The similarities are no coincidence. In his essay, Freud suggests the concept of a “double”, where an individual’s repressed emotions are projected onto a parallel of themselves “as an insurance against destruction of the ego” (Freud 9). The Governess’ hides her sexuality in her “double”, Miss Jessel as a defence mechanism — she is afraid of sexuality. When the ghost of the sexualised Miss Jessel, comes to confront the Governess, it becomes a “vision of terror” (Freud 10), causing distress and anxiety, pushing her to hysteria.
Stanley Renner writes in “Sexual Hysteria, Physiognomical, and the ‘Ghosts’ in The Turn of the Screw”that the ghost of Peter Quint is the Governess’ hallucination of a sexual male. By using physiognomy, the practice of judging character by one’s facial features, Renner argues that the Governess’ description of Peter Quint fits “a widely recognized stereotype of the predatory sexual male, a set of typical features and characteristics that such a figure would be presupposed to manifest”. He claims that the ghastly apparition of Quint is not of Peter Quint himself, but rather a caricatural manifestation of the Governess’ fear of the sexual male. Quint’s “Red hair, very red” (Renner 183) was a symbol of evil and immorality. In her fear of sexuality, the Governess has equated it with evil in her mind. The ghost of Peter Quint is not a supernatural manifestation, but rather a symbol of evil, hallucinated by the sexually repressed Governess, representing the sexual, predatory male.
The Governess’ inability to reconcile with her repressed sexuality drives her to hysteria. As the ghost of Jessel is the manifestation of the Governess’ repressed sexuality, the ghost of Peter Quint is the manifestation of her sexual fear of men. Their twin figures repeatedly come to haunt her with their presence. She is unable to face them head-on and sends Flora away (James 110) as a neurotic, last-ditch attempt at shielding the children from sexuality. As mentioned earlier in the essay, she views her role as a guardian of the children against the unbridled sexuality of the Quint and Jessel. She is aware that she is losing the battle, as both Miss Grose and Flora start to suspect that the ghosts are only her hallucinations (James 91). Furthermore, she is unable to come to terms with her repressed sexual desires. This culminates in a final act of hysteria. As Mile is about to confess his wrongdoing, the ghost of Peter Quint appears for the final time, and the Governess strangles Miles to death in her embrace, saying “I have you, but he has lost you forever!” (James 112). She reaches the peak of her fear as Miles is about to reveal his sexual wrongdoing. She unconsciously kills Miles, so that Peter Quint will have “lost forever”. Her act simultaneously prevents Quint from imparting his ideas of sexuality onto the boy and stops the precocious young boy from growing into the figure of the sexual male which she so fears.
Through her sexualised interpretation and reaction to Flora’s play, we gather that the Governess is fearful of her sexuality and has repressed it as a defence mechanism. The Governess represses her sexual desires by projecting them onto her “double”, Miss Jessel, who manifests physically as a ghost. Her fear of sexuality also manifests itself in the apparition of Peter Quint, who is in fact a caricature of the sexual male. Hence, it can be seen that it is the Governess’ fear of sexuality which eventually drives her to hysteria.
Works Cited
James, Henry. Turn of the Screw. Kindle ed., Project Gutenberg, 2008.
Freud, Sigmund, David McLintock, and Hugh Haughton. The Uncanny. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. Print.
Renner, Stanley. “Sexual Hysteria, Physiognomical Bogeymen, and the ‘Ghosts’ in The Turn of the Screw.” Nineteenth-Century Literature, vol. 43, no. 2, 1988, pp. 175–194. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3045173.