The Turn Of The Screw: Bewildered Vision

TWAYNE'S MASTERWORK STUDIES Theliini of the Screw Bewildered Vision Terry Heller 0-8057-8080-7 Since its serialized appearance in Collier's in Henry James's The Turn of the Screw has been a favorite of literary sleuths. James succeeded in creating a work of insoluble 1898, ambiguity while imposing a "science of strict control" on the techniques that determine structure. Many have ple, that the its speculated, for exam- harassed governess is merely a sex-starved spinster whose protectiveness of her charge Miles stems from a perverted one that is echoed in the suggested sexual little love, delinquencies of the ghosts. Yet the reader is only the eyes and the mind of the given governess herself with which to see and understand events. Paradoxically, it is precisely this kind of ambiguity that makes James's ghost By story ''believable." specify the evil deliberately failing to influences exercise over Miles and that the his sister Flora, ghosts James ensured that each reader would supply his or her own details and explanations. In The Turn of Vision^ the Screw: Bewildered Terry Heller enlarges his already con- body of critical work on James's most celebrated supernatural siderable contribution to the While providing an engaging introducreader new to James's work. Heller also examines questions of interest to tale. tion for the professional academics, such as the crucial contributions of the prologue, the problem of how the governess understands herself, and the problems of reading and meaning in the text. Heller's analysis implicit interweaves and extends the three major strands of interpretation since Turn of 1898: the commentary that The Screw offers with respect to Victorian culture; an understanding of the governess from the perspective of Lacanian the psychoanalysis; and the fundamental question of ambiguity. Heller convincingly character( continued on back flap) BOSTOISI PUBLIC UBRARY The Turn of the Screw Bewildered Vision TWAYNE'S MASTERWORK STUDIES Robert Lecker, General Editor Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: American Comic Vision by David Animal Farm: Pastoralism and The Bible: A Politics by Richard I. E. E. Sloane Smyer Literary Study by John H. Gottcent The Birth of Tragedy: A Commentary by David Lenson The Canterbury Tales: A Literary Pilgrimage by David Williams The Divine Comedy: Tracing God's Art by Marguerite Mills Chiarenza Dubliners: A Pluralistic Great Expectations: World by Craig Hansen Werner A Novel of Friendship by Bert G. Hornback Heart of Darkness: Search for the Unconscious by Gary Adelman The Interpretation of Dreams: Freud's Theories Revisited by Laurence M. Porter Invisible Man: Race and Identity by Kerry McSweeney jane Eyre: Portrait of a Life by Maggie Berg Madame Bovary: The End of Romance by Eric Gans