rson to see the apparitions―that we can findHenry James’ The Turn of the Screw: A Reading from...

Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw: A Reading from the Perspective of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Works


Michiko Okuno, Ph. D.

The Turn of the Screw (1898) contains numerous riddles set by the author. One riddle, for instance, involves the governess’ mysterious sighting of a woman (Miss Jessel’s ghost) across the pond; however, her companions at the time—her pupil Flora and the housekeeper Mrs. Grose—deny seeing the woman, even though the governess is sure that they have. Before this event, the governess witnessed another ghost—Peter Quint—who stared at her intently from a tower in Bly. It is only by solving this mystery—why the governess is the sole person to see the apparitions―that we can find an answer to yet another mystery surrounding the sudden and inexplicable death of Miles, the governess’ second pupil, at the end of the story. The Turn of the Screw ranks as one of Henry James’ most controversial fictional works, as is attested to by the sheer volume of diversified critical response. The most influential and controversial commentary on The Turn of the Screw was given by the renowned Freudian critic Edmund Wilson, who argues in “The Ambiguity of Henry James” (1934) that “the story is a neurotic case of sex repression, and that the ghosts are not real ghosts but hallucinations of the governess” (90).1 This analysis has generated counterarguments among critics. Robert B. Heilman, for instance, who affirms that the governess is “a perfectly normal person” (Norton 183), refutes Wilson by pointing out that “[w]hen the governess describes the ghost to Mrs. Grose, Mrs. Grose identifies it with Quint, the dead valet, whom the governess had never so much as heard of; and Mrs. Grose gives him—and later Miss Jessel—a character which is entirely consistent with what the governess has already inferred about the moral quality and intentions of the ghost” (Norton 179). Despite the biting criticism of Wilson by Heilman, some critics support the Freudian reading. Shoshana Felman, for example, who understands The Turn of the Screw on the basis of a Lacanian reading in “Henry James: Madness and the Risks of Practice (Turning the Screw of Interpretation)”

1 Edmund Wilson, Edmund Wilson’s Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s & 40s (NY: Literary Classics of the United States, 2007). The Freudian reading was first written in 1924 by Edna Kenton, who observes that “the guarding ghosts and children ... are only exquisite dramatizations of her little personal mystery, figures for the ebb and flow of troubled thought within her mind, acting out her story” (New York: Norton, 1999, 170; hereafter abbreviated “Norton”). Kenton is criticized by Robert B. Heilman; she “adduces almost no evidence to sustain her interpretation....” (Norton 178).

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(1977), writes that Mrs. Grose realizes that “the governess ... is mad, and that the children are but the victims of her delirium” (241) and emphasizes that her reading of The Turn of the Screw would “attempt not so much to solve or answer the enigmatic question of the text, but to investigate its structure … but to understand the necessity and the rhetorical functioning of the textual ambiguity” (165; Felman’s italics). Indeed, in her long essay, Felman analyses The Turn of the Screw by turning her attention to particular words in the text—such as “letter” (184-95), “grasp” (205-10), and “master” (214-19)—and examines their various connotations of vagueness, opposites, duality, and abstraction. It seems convenient for Felman’s analysis to “not so much to solve or answer the enigmatic question of the text” because, in general, as is expressed by Henry Sussman, The Turn of the Screw appears to be “a story without a center … [and] the presence of a subject so fragmented and split as to be held together by no logic other than madness” (Norton 236). However, Ned Lukacher points out that “Even Felman ... has omitted all reference to the real, which is a profoundly non-Lacanian reading strategy…. The critics of The Turn of the Screw have forgotten the story’s temporality, which is the pathway to the real” (Norton 242). In order to appreciate The Turn of the Screw, we should consider the historical background of when it was written, which leads us to discover “the real” story behind the text. Peter G. Beidler writes in “A Critical History of The Turn of the Screw” that “it is fashionable in these postmodern times for scholars to reject all efforts to find the answer to the questions raised by the story. The ghosts are both real and imaginary, the governess is both sane and mad, the text both feminist and antifeminist, Quint both gay and straight” (249-50; Beidler’s italics). Beilder wonders, “Are they (the readers) growing impatient with being told that The Turn of the Screw is ambiguous or indeterminate or undecidable or unreadable? Or do they merely yearn for the days when critics proposed definite readings and defended their readings with old-fashioned arguments and evidence drawn from a lovingly close reading of The Turn of the Screw?” (250). I would like to address the last question in this essay by defending my reading with old-fashioned arguments, but also with new evidence drawn from The Turn of the Screw. To discover fresh evidence in The Turn of the Screw requires reasoning on the part of the reader, as suggested by James himself: “There is not only from beginning to end of the matter not an inch of expatiation, but my values are positively all blanks save so far as an excited horror, a promoted pity, a created expertness ….” (Preface to vol. 12 of the New York Edition 1908, xxii; hereafter abbreviated “NYE”). Considering the phrases “not an inch of expatiation” and “all blanks,” it can be said that The Turn of the Screw is a detective story; one of the features of this genre is that a case or mystery



is usually solved by a detective through logical ratiocination. However, supernatural phenomena like the two ghosts completely contradict rational explanation. Therefore, in this study, I would like to hypothesize that Quint and Miss Jessel only play the roles of specters, and are not actually ghosts. With regard to the question of the detective’s identity in The Turn of the Screw, I believe that James regards the governess as a nearly first-class detective, Douglass—to whom the governess gave her manuscript before her death—and the first narrator as first-class detectives, and the reader as a potential detective. As regards a common theme in James, “the international theme” addresses the complex relationships between naive Americans and corrupt, cunning Europeans, which sometimes involve money, love, perfidy, and deceit. James pursues this theme, for instance, in The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Wings of the Dove (1902), and The Ambassadors (1903). Indeed, Graham Greene in “Henry James: The Private Universe,” discusses the relationship between wealth and treachery in James’ works. He comments that “The American in 1876 and The Golden Bowl in 1905 … produced his [James’] great gallery of the damned” (27) and that “[w]ealth may have been almost invariably connected with … treacheries….” (28). The present study aims to argue how James utilizes Doyle’s ideas in The Turn of the Screw to depict a world of betrayal and deceit entwined with money. To this end, I will clarify some of the riddles and literary allusions to Doyle’s “The Copper Beeches” and “The Red-Headed League” from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes as well as Doyle’s “The Parasite” (1894) embedded in The Turn of the Screw to reveal a hidden parodic story.

In fact, in his “Ghosts Real and Imagined: Detecting Genre Diversity in The Turn of the Screw,” Andrew Armour points out some similarities between The Turn of the Screw and Doyle’s “The Copper Beeches” and “The Red-Headed League.” Armour states that “Conan Doyle’s own tale (“The Copper Beeches”) [involves] a young governess who is unusually well paid but … submit[s] to strange conditions. … The similarities do not end there; a mysterious man stares at the governess through the windows of the Hampshire house, [and] the young boy she looks after has an evil streak” (3; n4). Armour adds that in The Turn of the Screw, James makes a reference to “The Red-Headed League”: “red hair, very red” (12; n17).2 Armour further states that although “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes depicts a crime for a pecuniary motive—a man murdered his stepdaughter for her inheritance—The Turn of the Screw has no connection with such a crime for money.

2 The word “beeches” in Douglas’ words also implies “The Copper Beeches”: “the shade of the great beeches and the long hot summer afternoon” (3).



However, I believe that Miles’ sudden death [in The Turn of the Screw] was a crime for which the motive was money. Armour concludes that in The Turn of the Screw, James experimented with the genre of the detective story created by Doyle (20–21).

1. Similarities between The Turn of the Screw, “The Copper Beeches,” and

“The Red-Headed League” Although Armour does not take note of two pairs of similar scenes between “The

Copper Beeches” and The Turn of the Screw, it is clear that James sets both the genre and the theme of The Turn of the Screw by borrowing two scenes from “The Copper Beeches.” In the first similar scene in The Turn of the Screw, the governess recounts what she witnessed in the garden from her window at one o’clock in the morning: “The moon made the night extraordinarily penetrable and showed me on the lawn a person. … The presence on the lawn—I felt sick as I made it out—was poor little Miles himself” (43). In “The Copper Beeches,” the governess recounts to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson a scene outside her window at two o’clock in the morning: “It was a beautiful moonlight night, and the lawn in front of the house was silvered over and almost as bright as day. … As it emerged into the moonshine I saw what it was. It was a giant dog. … That dreadful sentinel sent a chill to my heart which I do not think that any burglar could have done” (443). From this, it can be seen that both the governesses looked out of the window on a moonlit night to be shocked by the sight of something on the lawn. The master in “The Copper Beeches” confines his step daughter to a room on his premises with the purpose of usurping the legacy she received from a relative. He realizes that once she marries, he will lose claim to her property; to prevent her fiancé from seeing her from across the street, the master lets his mastiff, Carlo, run free in the yard throughout the night. The governess begins to have some doubts about being employed at such a high salary, and she seeks Holmes’ advice. Holmes resolves her doubts: the master makes her sit with her back to the window every morning to act as a proxy for his step daughter. This is so that the step daughter’s fiancé, who watches her movements from across the street, falsely thinks, from her gesture of driving him away, that she dislikes him; in fact, the governess is ordered by the master to make these gestures. The quoted passage from The Turn of the Screw can be considered to be a parody of the events in “The Copper Beeches.”

In another similar scene, the governess in “The Copper Beeches” tells Sherlock Holmes: “One day ... as I ascended the stair, I met Mr. Rucastle coming out through this door ... and a look on his face which made him a very different person to the round, jovial man to whom I was accustomed. His cheeks were red, his brow was all crinkled



with anger.... He locked the door and hurried past me without a word or a look” (444). The governess in The Turn of the Screw writes that: “The apparition had reached the landing halfway up ... where, at sight of me .... [W]e faced each other. ... He was absolutely, on this occasion, a living, detestable, dangerous presence” (39). She adds that “the thing was as human and hideous as a real interview .... I saw the figure disappear, in which I definitely saw it turn, as I might have seen the low wretch to which it had had once belonged turn on receipt of an order, and pass, with my eyes on the villainous back ... straight down the staircase....” (40). Both Quint and the master in The Turn of the Screw resemble Mr. Rucastle in that each governess encounters, on the stairs, either the hideous master or Quint, who disappears without words. The master in The Turn of the Screw seems “gay and kind” (4), but is actually the villain, like Mr. Rucastle, who also appears to be a jovial man. By portraying Quint on the stairs, the governess in The Turn of the Screw hints that Quint is alive and acts “on receipt [recipe] of an order” from the master. This scene also shows that The Turn of the Screw is a parody of “The Copper Beeches.” In the scenes mentioned above, James suggests that the governess’ position in The Turn of the Screw is similar to that of the governess in “The Copper Beeches.” Accordingly, in The Turn of the Screw, the master also schemes to acquire his nephew Miles’ legacy, and in the process, makes use of the governess in his scheming.

Now, I would like to explain the circumstances in which many parodies of Sherlock Holmes were written around the same time as The Turn of the Screw. According to Yoshiyuki Ooshita, soon after the first Sherlock Holmes story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” was published in the July edition of Strand Magazine in 1891, “a two-page parody of Sherlock Holmes was published.”3 During what Sherlockians call “the Great Hiatus,” that is, the ten years’ discontinuance of Sherlock Holmes stories after the publication of “The Final Problem” (1893), Ooshita writes that “ten parodies of Sherlock Holmes were written in 1893 and another fifteen were written in 1903.” Ooshita comments that “these parodies supplemented the absence of the Sherlock Holmes series and showed the readers’ expectation for Doyle to write a new series on Sherlock Holmes.”4 In addition, as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes has been read

3 Strand Magazine was soled “at half the price of most monthlies of the period” (<http://www.strandmag.com/htm/strandmag_history.htm>). After the July 1891 edition, “the press run of The Strand Magazine rose from an initial run of 300,000 to an average of 500,000 copies a month, largely on the strength of the Great Detective” (Steven Doyle and David A. Crowder, Sherlock Holmes for Dummies, Indianapolis: Wiley, 2010) 148. 4 <thinkcopyright. org/Ooshita-Homes. pdf>.



worldwide, many famous writers must have enjoyed Sherlock Holmes. In fact, T. S. Eliot writes that “[w]hen we talk of him we invariably fall into the fancy of his existence …. every writer owes something to Holmes. And every critic of The Novel who has a theory about the reality of characters in fiction, would do well to consider Holmes.”5

Given that The Turn of the Screw was written during a pause in the Sherlock Holmes series, it is safe to say that James wrote The Turn of the Screw as a parody of Sherlock Holmes. James wrote to French novelist Paul Bourget that “[it] is but a monument to my fatal technical passion, which prevents my ever giving up anything I have begun” (Norton 114). The words “my fatal technical passion” imply that James was motivated to write The Turn of the Screw by a desire to create a parody of Sherlock Holmes but lacked a conclusion, although he nonetheless employed his experimental writing technique. James wrote to philosopher F. W. H. Myers: “The T. of the S. is a very mechanical matter, I honestly think—an inferior, a merely pictorial, subject and rather a shameless pot-boiler (Norton 118; James’ italics). His words “very mechanical matter” and “an inferior, a merely pictorial, subject” appear to indicate that from James’ viewpoint, he mechanically wrote The Turn of the Screw with themes, situations, and characters borrowed from Doyle. Moreover, James writes that “it [The Turn of the Screw] is a piece of ingenuity pure and simple, of cold artistic calculation, an amusette to catch those not easily caught (the “fun” of the capture of the merely witless being ever but small), the jaded, the disillusioned, the fastidious” (NYE xviii, James’ italics). This sentence seems to indicate that The Turn of the Screw is “a piece of ingenuity” based on Doyle’s works, a “pure and simple” detective story with “cold artistic calculation,” and “an amusette [distraction] to catch those not easily” finding satisfaction in ordinary parodies on Sherlock Holmes.6

Now, I will examine how the master in The Turn of the Screw hatched his murderous plan. On her third day at Bly, the governess receives an envelope from her master in London. Within this letter is enclosed another letter, addressed to the master, from the headmaster of the boarding school at which ten-year-old Miles is studying. The master demands that the governess deal with the headmaster without getting him involved. The headmaster’s letter contains a notification of expulsion for Miles, but it does not cite any reason for this. Later, the governess recollects that being “‘kicked out’

5 “Sherlock Holmes and His times” in The Criterion, April 1929, 554, 56. 6 It is interesting to mention that Edmund Wilson compares “the imitators of Sherlock Holmes” with Conan Doyle in “Why Do People Read Detective Stories?” (Wilson 657-61) and also discusses “the Copper Beeches” in “Mr. Holmes, They Were the Footprints of a Gigantic Hound!” (Wilson 684-90).



by a school-master was a mystification without end” (38). With the phrase “a mystification without end” the governess suggests to Douglas, the reader of her account, that she doubts the authenticity of the letter from the school-master.

It is my theory that the master forged this expulsion notification.7 He employs the governess at a large salary, despites the fact that she is inexperienced in the ways of the world and in teaching. I argue that the governess was hired simply as a pawn in the master’s plan to kill his nephew. The master realizes that it will take time to accomplish the plan, and therefore, he forges the note to get Miles to return to Bly for as long as possible. He entrusts the rest of the plan to his valet, Quint, who, while devising the plan, has complete knowledge of the governess’ reactions to his tactics. In order to put his plan into effect, Quint involves Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper, and Miss Jessel, his lover and the former governess of the house. As it works out, Miles returns to Bly in June, four days after the arrival of the new governess, and he dies suddenly five months later, in November. Since Miles had no kin other than his bachelor uncle and his eight-year-old sister Flora, the master inherits the entire legacy; this was in accordance with the British inheritance law, which until 1925 favored male relatives.

It is important to add that the timespan in The Turn of the Screw is based on historical time, as R. W. B. Lewis points out: “In no other story, not even in Washington Square, does Henry James invite us so patently to engage in arithmetic.... We won’t be far wrong if we date the ghostly encounters, or the hallucinatory visions, around 1845.”8 In England around 1845, debtor’s prison was a common legal practice with which to imprison persons who failed to pay their debt. Since the law was abolished in 1869 the master in The Turn of the Screw, according to my theory, is under threat of imprisonment for his debt until he would come into a large fortune through Miles’ death. If the master were imprisoned, his household would be greatly weakened; thus, old Mrs. Grose, who has little chance of getting a new job, having no children to depend upon, unwillingly takes part in the conspiracy against Miles’ life.

The criminal acts of the master in The Turn of the Screw and those of John Clay in “The Red-Headed League” are similar. Mr. Jones, the police officer, declares that “John Clay, the murderer, thief, smasher, and forger. He’s a Young man. ... His

7 In “A Scandal in Bohemia” in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Holmes says to the King of Bohemia that it is not difficult for Irene Adler, the former lover of the King, to forge his “writing,” steal his “private note-paper,” and imitate his “own seal” (216). The same thing can be said for the master in The Turn of the Screw to forge the school master’s letter. 8 R. W. B. Lewis, Introduction, ‘“The Turn of the Screw’ and Other Short Fiction,” (Bantam, NY, 1981) xv.



grandfather was a royal duke and he himself has been to Eton and Oxford. His brain is as cunning as his fingers ... we never know where to find the man himself” (245). Similar to Clay, the master in The Turn of the Screw not only appears to be blue blooded, being from “an old family place in Essex” (4), but also “the murderer” for planning the murder of Miles, the “thief” for stealing Miles’ legacy, and the “forger” for forging the expulsion letter. The master’s failure to return to Bly is an adaptation of the remark “[W]e never know where to find the man himself.” By modeling the master on Clay, it is possible that James was trying to lead the reader to infer that the master was immaterial to Miles’ death. With regard to the false expulsion notice, if the governess had only contacted the headmaster, the falsity of the letters would have come to light, serving as concrete evidence for the master’s guilt. However, the governess informs Mrs. Grose that she will neither inquire into Miles’ dismissal nor contact the master. She resolves to tutor Miles herself because she was employed to manage all matters pertaining to her charges. When Mrs. Grose hears this, she reassures the governess of her decision, saying, “Then I’ll stand by you. We’ll see it out” (13). Mrs. Grose’s supposed sympathy for the governess can be seen as a manifestation to utilize her to carry out the remainder of the master’s plan, a crucial part of which had to be carried out by Quint. After the first weeks of her arrival at Bly, the governess is stared at by a man standing at the top of a tower; several days later, she is stared at by the same man outside the dining room window. Upon describing the man to Mrs. Grose, she is told that the person she is seeing is Quint, who died last winter.9 By leading the governess to believe that she saw a specter, Mrs. Grose and Quint succeeded in putting the governess in a situation that was favorable to them: the governess started to watch over her charges vigilantly to protect them from Quint’s ghost. However, soon after Miles’ death, the governess becomes aware that she was taken advantage of by Quint and Mrs. Grose: “Oh it was a trap—not designed but deep. … The best way to picture it all is to

9 In The Turn of the Screw, the governess does not mention who told her about the particulars of Quint’s death: “Peter Quint was found, by a laborer going to early work, stone dead on the road from the village: a catastrophe explained—superficially at least—by a visible wound to his head; such a wound as might have been produced—and as, on the final evidence, had been—by a fatal slip, in the dark and after leaving the public house, on the steepish icy slope, a wrong path altogether, at the bottom of which he lay” (27). The situation of Quint’s death is somewhat similar to those of two characters in “The Five Orange Pips” in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The client in “The Five Orange Pips” tells Sherlock Holmes about the deaths of his father and his uncle: “Well, to come to an end of the matter, Mr. Holmes, and not to abuse your patience, there came a night when he [the uncle] made one of those drunken sallies from which he never came back” (294; my underlines); “My father had fallen over one of the deep chalk-pits which abound in the neighbourhood, and was lying senseless, with a shattered skull (296; my underlines).



say that I was off my guard” (14). With this phrase, the governess acknowledges that the “trap,” namely the ghosts of Quint and Miss Jessel, was “not designed” before she arrived at Bly, but it was worked out by Quint within “the first weeks” (14) of her arrival. Mrs. Grose’s untrustworthiness is apparent. The governess asks Mrs. Grose whether she could bear Quint being in charge, especially regarding the children, and she answers, “‘No. I couldn’t—and I can’t now!’ And the poor woman burst into tears” (26). The words “I can’t now!” reveal that Quint is still alive, and that Mrs. Grose hates this man who still controls the children. In fact, from early on in her manuscript, the governess suggests that Mrs. Grose is a suspicious person: “I felt within half an hour [of my arrival at Bly] that she [Mrs. Grose] was so glad ... as to be positively on her guard against showing it too much. I wondered even then a little why she should wish not to show it, and that, with reflexion, with suspicion, might of course have made me uneasy” (7; James’ italics). These words indicate that Mrs. Grose has judged the governess to be a gullible girl when she first sees her. Furthermore, before Mr. Grose spontaneously blurts out that Quint is alive, she asks the governess, “What if he [Miles] should see him [Quint]?” and the governess says, “He [Quint] wants to appear to them [the pupils].” Then, Mr. Grose begs her loudly, “Ah don’t try [to ask] him [Miles about the circumstances of Quint’s death]” (25). From this, we can see that the housekeeper is afraid Miles will reveal to the governess the truth that Quint is alive.10 That Quint is alive provides a vital clue for solving the mystery of the governess’ second encounter with Quint’s apparition. One afternoon, the governess returns to the house for her gloves that she forgot in the dining room, when she notices that the man who was standing at the top of one of the towers is now looking straight into the dining room from outside the window. Although he stares at her, she becomes aware that “he ha[s] come for someone else” (20). As soon as the man disappears, she goes over to

10 It is probable that Mrs. Grose can read. The governess writes that “[m]y counsellor (Mrs. Grose) c[a]n’t read” (10) because the housekeeper says that “[s]uch things are not for me, Miss” (10), when the governess hands Mrs. Grose the letter from the school master. As Mrs. Grose “had formerly been maid to his [the master’s] mother” (5), according to Douglas, she can probably read and write. Masamichi Higurashi explains that “ladies’ maids, who attended to the personal needs of their mistresses, mostly came from the needy middle-class, were literate, and had a high position among servants” (Higurashi 543). Pretending to be illiterate, Mrs. Grose succeeds in distancing herself from Miles’ expulsion and, even more importantly, in giving the governess a strong sense of responsibility for the children, the major requirement for the conspirators to begin their plan. Moreover, the governess notices Mrs. Grose’s inexplicable behavior when she tells her about the letter: “She gave me a look that I remarked at the moment; then, visibly, with a quick blankness, seemed to try to take it back” (10). Therefore, Mrs. Grose must have known about the letter beforehand.



where he was standing and looks into the room as he did; then, Mrs. Grose comes in the room and sees the governess and turns pale. The governess wonders “[w]hy she should be scared” (21). Later, the governess is convinced that Quint was looking for Miles. However, it can be said that Quint was looking for Mrs. Grose, with whom he had made a promise to meet by the window just before she met the governess in the hall. When Mrs. Grose sees the governess instead of Quint, she fails to comprehend the reason and is frightened. It is important to note that Douglas introduces the background of the governess’ manuscript with ironic allusions in front of a few people. With regard to James’ irony, Edmund Wilson, in “The Ambiguity of Henry James,” states that “the element of irony in Henry James is often underestimated by his readers” (98). This “element of irony” can be found in Douglas’ opinion about the master: “One could easily fix his type; it never, happily, dies out” (4). With this remark, Douglas is insinuating that the master is still alive. He also alludes the existence of the master: although the governess died twenty years ago, Douglas puts her written record “in a locked drawer” (2) and carries the key about himself. This is because he fears for his own safety in case the record should fall into the master’s hands. Douglas’ other ironical comments that signify opposite meanings are “He [the master] was … gay and kind” (4); “Bly … was healthy and secure” (5); “an excellent woman, Mrs. Grose” (5); and “she [Miss Jessel] was a most respectable person … till her death” (5). Douglas informs his listeners about the governess’ impressions of the master: “She figured him as rich, but as fearfully extravagant—saw him all in a glow of high fashion,… of expensive habits” (4). “He had for his town residence a big house filled with the spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase” (4). Her opinion leads us, the reader, to believe that the master was a man of means.11 In reality, the master was faced with financial difficulties, a fact that is hinted at by the reference to Fielding’s Amelia (1751),12 the only book the governess reads at

11 Douglas also tells us important things with irony. When the governess accepted the job, the master “held her hand, thanking for her the sacrifice. ...” (6); Douglas foretells her “sacrifice” for the master’s plan. The governess “saw him [the master] only twice” (6). The governess “never saw him [the master] again” (6); by emphasizing having seen him only twice, Douglas implies that the governess felt she was in danger after realizing the master’s involvement in Miles’ death. 12 The summary of Amelia: William Booth ... has married ... Amelia against her mother’s wishes. The couple run away and fall foul of the predatory world of London, which is the focus of the book’s intense social scrutiny. Unjustly imprisoned in Newgate, William is seduced by Miss Matthews, an unscrupulous adventuress; his weakness is contrasted to the resolute behaviour of Amelia in rejecting the attentions of several men. She forgives William, but their situation grows still more miserable as his folly then leads him to gambling in an attempt to release them from poverty, and he is imprisoned for debt. Their desperate suffering is alleviated by the happy



Bly. In this book, Amelia settles her husband’s gambling debt by using the legacy received from her mother. The master also wishes to clear his own substantial gambling debt, and therefore hatches a plan to become heir to Miles’ legacy and murder him. To claim that the allusion to Amelia implies the master’s gambling debt may seem like a logical leap. However, given that James writes “my values are positively all blanks,” in order to solve the mystery of Miles’ death the reader must interpret such trifling details as textual hints from James. Considering the “debt of honor” of some English nobles in the 1800s, the master in The Turn of the Screw probably has significant debt also. According to Masaru Yamada, “until 1909, when the government began to raise tax on land and property,”13 “it was common knowledge that nobles did not work except when entering a profession upon a strong request or as a hobby; for nobles, making money through work meant corruption and disgrace; the only way to boast about money was to win it at the races as the owner of a racehorse, or by making a lot of money through gambling; when they had a large gambling debt they called it a ‘debt of honor.’”14 Yamada also explains that “nobles and big landowners found their virtue in extravagance,”15 as is exemplified in the “fearfully extravagant” life of the master in The Turn of the Screw. George “Beau” Bryan Brummell (1778-1840), an arbiter of men’s fashion in Regency England, reminds us of the master in The Turn of the Screw, who is “all in a glow of high fashion.” Suggestively, Brummell “fled to France in 1816 to escape debtor’s prison, and most of his debt consisted of debt of honor.”16 Although for nobles to lose a massive amount of money in gambling was a “debt of honor,” Yamada writes that “some English nobles played games for a part of their land or even for a cathedral.”17 Considering these details, there is no doubt that the spendthrift master, whose big town residence in Harley Street is “filled with the spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase,” has accumulated an enormous debt to usurers, not only for gambling, but also for his luxurious lifestyle, as well as for the costs of maintaining his residence and country house at Bly.18

discovery that her mother’s will was a forgery and that Amelia, not her sister, is the rightful heiress to her property. William is released, and the couple retire to the country (Ian Ousby, Ed, the Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1993) 20. 13 Masaru Yamada, “Igirisu Kizoku: Danditachi no Bigaku to Seikatu” [“English Nobles: the Esthetics and Lives of Dandies”] (Osaka: Sogensha, 1994) 288-89. 14 Ibid. 62-63. 15 Ibid. 77. 16 Kaori Nakano, Dandizumu no Keifu [The History of Dandyism] (Tokyo: Shincho, 2009) 68. 17 Yamada 238. 18 According to Akio Kobayashi, “after Gambling Act 1845—of which the principal provision was to deem a wager unenforceable as a legal contract—received Royal Assent and was implemented



Douglas makes another noteworthy remark. He affirms to a friend, “‘You’ll easily judge,’ … ‘you will’” (James’ italics; 2). Douglas is sure that his friend will be able to decipher the governess’ manuscript just as he did. Quint’s artifice is brought to light for Douglas by Flora’s peculiar behavior, which is cleverly used, even though the governess fails to identify this artifice. In the next chapter, I deal with a clever tactic employed by James, namely hypnotism, from the perspective of Doyle’s “The Parasite.”

2. Allusions to “The Parasite”

Doyle’s “The Parasite” is a novella written in diary form, in which Professor Gilroy narrates his experiences as a hypnotic subject of Miss Penclosa, a hypnotist. The most notable occurrence in “The Parasite” is that the phrase “turn of the screw” appears three times: “‘We must try another turn of the screw’ said she’” (88); “So this was what she meant by another turn of the screw!” (90); “Yes, this is the other turn of the screw” (91). Miss Penclosa desires Gilroy, and having failed to seduce him, tries to get even with him by “another/the other turn of the screw.” By this, she means to put him under additional hypnotism to make him rob a bank and, by doing so, ruin himself. The Turn of the Screw contains other allusions to “The Parasite.” Gilroy curses Miss Penclosa in his diary, referring to her as “she-devil!” (90). In parallel, Miles shouts “you devil!” (85) toward the end of The Turn of the Screw. In addition, the ending of The Turn of the Screw is very similar to that of “The Parasite,” which ends abruptly with the words of Penclosa’s maid: “Miss Penclosa died this afternoon at half-past three!” (106). Correspondingly, the governess’ manuscript ends with Miles’ sudden death in the afternoon. Thus, each novel ends with the sudden death of one of the main characters at approximately the same time of day.19

on August 8, 1845, gambling places became the subject of control by the police. However, gambling in membership clubs for the upper classes was mostly permitted by the authorities” (Ganburu to Igirisujin [Gambling and the British], Tokyo: Chikuma, 1995, 160). Defined as “a debt contracted by a verbal promise, or by betting or gambling, considered more binding than if recoverable by law (Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield: C. & C. Merriam, 1913), it is safe to say that Gambling Act 1845 was ineffective for relieving a gentleman in a debt of honor. 19 Since around 1990, critics have pointed out the close resemblance between James’ The Aspern Papers (1888) and Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades (1883). Joseph S. O’Leary states that “Many of James’s tales are a parody and critical commentary on some literary model” (“Pushkin in The Aspern Papers” (<http://www2.newpaltz.edu/~Hathawar/ejournal2.html>, 1) and that “the chief argument for the presence of Pushkin’s story in The Aspern Papers is the correspondence of the first climaxes in their respective plots: in each case the protagonist intrudes at midnight in the old lady’s chamber, causing her to die as a result of the shock” (4). In 2003, I also realized the obvious similarities between characters, situations, and plots of the



In The Turn of the Screw, hypnotism is used by Quint and Miss Jessel on Miles and Flora, respectively. It is reasonable to believe that Quint uses hypnotism to suggest to Miles that his governess is the devil, and Miss Jessel does the same to Flora. By the very name of the novel, “The Turn of the Screw” borrowed from “The Parasite,” James suggests that hypnotism forms a crucial part of Quint’s plan. Thus, “The Turn of the Screw” itself implies hypnotism.20 In The Turn of the Screw, hypnosis is suggested by two scenes. First, the governess sees “a woman in black, pale and dreadful” (30) across the lake and intuitively perceives the woman to be the apparition of the former governess, Miss Jessel. Then, the governess notices that Flora suddenly starts playing with her back toward the water. Later, the governess describes the woman to Mrs. Grose: “She only fixed the child [Flora]” .... “Ah with such awful eyes!” (31) “[w]ith a determination—indescribable. With a kind of fury of intention” (31). It is therefore conceivable that Flora’s strange behavior is the result of hypnosis. Dr. J. Milne Bramwell—a practitioner of hypnotherapy—explains in “Personally Observed Hypnotic Phenomena” (SPR, Vol. 12, 1896-1897) that “[a] connection undoubtedly exists between the subject’s powers of attention and the facility with which hypnosis can be induced. … Once hypnosis has been induced, the condition can be evoked at any time, and practically instantaneously, in response to a previously arranged signal” (226). Flora has been repeatedly hypnotized by Miss Jessel, and this time, her hypnosis involves staring hard at Miss Jessel’s hypnotic gaze with “a determination—indescribable.” Miss Jessel’s gaze also functions as “a previously arranged signal” that makes Flora play by herself with her back toward the water; the purpose of this is to manipulate Flora into forgetting who Miss Jessel is as soon as the former sees the latter. James implies Miss Jessel’s aim by “a kind of fury of intention,” with which Miss Jessel succeeds in ensuring that only the governess sees her (the ghost). The fact that Flora’s eyes are open under hypnosis can again be explained by Bramwell: “The primary hypnosis … need not resemble sleep, and the subject may at once pass into the alert state (hypnosis) with the eyes open” (226). Following this event, the governess is sure that her pupils secretly meet the two ghosts. She therefore

two novellas. I suppose that James used vaguer and fewer allusions in The Turn of the Screw in order for the reader not to notice Doyle’s works so easily. Additionally, the first issue of The Strand Magazine (January, 1891) included Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades. 20 As early as the second paragraph of The Turn of the Screw, James implies the relationship between hypnotism (the phrase “turn of the screw”) and the two children [Miles and Flora] through Douglas’ words: “If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to two children?” (1; James’ italics).



tightens her supervision of the children to protect them from the evil spirits.21 In passing, around the time The Turn of the Screw was published there were many books dealing with hypnosis. Mary E. Leighton—in her article “Under the Influence: Crime and Hypnotic Fictions of the Fin De Siècle”—echoes Donald Hartman’s opinion that “During the late 1880s and 1890s, as the debate on hypnotism and criminal activity reached its height in both the medical and mainstream presses, authors churned out novels on the subjects of hypnotism and mesmerism in great numbers” (Willis and Wynne 213). Leighton then explains, “By 1895, the generic features of novels about hypnotism were recognizable to readers” (Willis and Wynne 215). According to Leighton, was safe to say that by the time The Turn of the Screw was published in 1898, the features of hypnotism in novels were widely known to readers. Accordingly, James might have assumed that his reader would be able to identify such allusions to hypnotism in The Turn of the Screw.

The second scene that is suggestive of hypnosis is the governess’ second encounter with Miss Jessel. It is possible that Miss Jessel and Mrs. Grose have plotted to deceive the governess. The governess finds Flora near the lake, and as soon as the governess mentions Miss Jessel’s name to Flora, the child turns pale; at the same instant, Mrs. Grose lets out a shriek. Then, after a few seconds, the governess sees Miss Jessel spring up across the lake, but Mrs. Grose and Flora deny seeing anything. Flora is described as being a sweet and gentle child; however, immediately after the governess sees Miss Jessel, she notices a visible change in Flora’s behavior:

To see her, without a convulsion of her small pink face, not even feign to glance in the direction of the prodigy I announced, but only, instead of that, turn at me an expression of hard still gravity, an expression absolutely new and unprecedented and that appeared to read and accuse and judge me—this was a stroke that somehow converted the little herself into a figure portentous .... I called her passionately to witness, “She’s [Miss Jessel] there, you little unhappy thing—there, there, there, and you know it as well as you know me!” .... My elder companion [Mrs. Grose], the next moment at any rate, blotted out everything but her own flushed face and her loud shocked protest, a burst of high disapproval. “What a dreadful turn, to be sure, Miss!

21 The roles of both Quint and Miss Jessel can be summarized in James’ words: “They would be agents [of the master] in fact; there would be laid on them the dire duty of causing the situation to reek with the air of Evil (evil; profound immorality and wickedness from Oxford Dictionary of English 2003)” (NYE xx).



Where on earth do you see anything?” (69, James’ italics and my underlines)

It is obvious to the reader that the women had a plan ready for when the governess found Flora: if Mrs. Grose hears the governess mention Miss Jessel’s name near Flora, she should utter a scream to Miss Jessel, who is hiding on the other side of the lake; Miss Jessel takes the shriek as her cue to play ghost.

The best account for Flora’s strange behavior can be found in Psychology, Briefer Course (1892) by William James, Henry James’ brother and philosopher, and the first professor of psychology in the USA. William explains, “In the hypnotic trance we can easily produce an alteration of the personality … by telling him he is another altogether imaginary personage, in which case all facts about himself seem for the time being to lapse from out his mind, and he throws himself into the new character with a vivacity proportionate to the amount of histrionic imagination which he possesses” (210). Since Miss Jessel had presupposed that the governess would come to the lake looking for Flora and that she would question Flora on her relationship with her former governess, Miss Jessel hypnotized the child so that when she hears the words “Miss Jessel,” she should become “another altogether imaginary personage.” Flora’s instantaneous reaction of becoming “a figure portentous” with “an expression absolutely new and unprecedented” is an echo of William’s words: “She throws [her]self into the new character with a vivacity proportionate to the amount of histrionic imagination which [s]he possesses.” Flora’s “new character” forgets “all facts about [her]self,” which “seem for the time being to lapse from out [her] mind.” As a result, Flora fails to recognize Miss Jessel when she sees her across the pond. Therefore, Miss Jessel succeeds in her plan to make the child momentarily forget about their secret relationship; consequently, she also succeeds in creating the situation wherein only the governess sees her (the ghost).22 It is important to note that, in The Turn of the Screw, James likens Douglas to Sherlock Holmes. Douglas’ friend reminisces, “I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to present his back, looking down at this converser with his hands in his pockets” (1; my underlines). Holmes is also depicted as follows: “Holmes

22 The day after the governess witnesses Miss Jessel for the last time, Flora has a high fever; in Susceptibility to Hypnosis, Ernest R. Hilgard points out the ill effects of hypnotic suggestion, such as convulsions, headache, a stomachache, and neurosis (Gosaku Naruse, ed, Saimin Kanjusei [Susceptibility to Hypnosis], Saito Toshimasa, trans, Tokyo: Seisin Shobo, 1973, 65). Sigeo Hayashi writes that “compared with adults, children are more susceptible to hypnosis because it is assumed that their standards of decision and sensory perception are often dependent on those of adults” (Shigeo Hayashi, Saimin Numon [An Introduction to Hypnosis] Tokyo: Seisin Suobo, 1973, 28).



stuck his feet up on the corner of the mantelpiece and, leaning back with his hands in his pockets, began talking…” (“A Case of Identity” in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 264; my underlines); “Putting his hands into his pockets, he [Holmes] stretched out his legs in front of the fire and laughed heartily for some minutes” (“A Scandal in Bohemia” 218; my underlines). By borrowing the phrases “his hands [in/into] his pockets” from “A Case of Identity” and “A Scandal in Bohemia,” James parodies Holmes in The Turn of the Screw by having Douglas assume the role of Holmes. Therefore, Douglas, who rivals Holmes in reasoning power, can solve the mystery of Flora’s unusual words and deeds. Beidler claims in “Ghosts, Demons, and Henry James: The Turn of the Screw at the Turn of the Century” that James must have purposely cast Douglas as a Cambridge graduate and that “Douglas might himself have been a member of the Cambridge Ghost Club and a psychical researcher of at least amateur standing” (Beidler 39). It is also plausible that the character Douglas, being a Cambridge man, was a member of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) when he deciphered the governess’ personal account. As Christmas Eve in the text falls on a Tuesday, as it actually did in 1895, I will now explain why Douglas was a member of SPR by considering the history of the Ghost Club, as follows:

The Club has its roots in Cambridge when in 1855 [Douglas was twenty years old at Cambridge] fellows at Trinity College began to discuss ghosts and psychic phenomena. It formally launched in London in 1862 .... The Ghost Club seems to have dissolved in the 1870s [Douglass was thirty five years old or more] ... [and] it was relaunched in 1882 [Douglas was forty seven years old] simultaneously with the Society for Psychical Research with whom there was an initial overlap of members.23

Since then, the members of the SPR have been studying hypnotism and supernatural phenomena from a scientific viewpoint. Based on the above, when the governess sent her note to Douglass in 1875 (he was forty years old), the two research groups did not exist. As the members of the Ghost Club remained “convinced believers for whom psychic phenomena were an established fact,”24 if Douglas was a member of the Club when he deciphered the governess’ note, he was not able to see through the hypnosis hidden in Flora’s strange acts. Thus, Douglas interpreted the governess’ manuscript

23 “A Brief History of the Ghost Club” (<http://www.ghostclub.org.uk/history.htm>). 24 ibid.



when he was a member of SPR.25 James had also read his brother William’s SPR report in 1890 (Beidler 38).26 It is reasonable to say, then, that with James’ knowledge of hypnotism, the character of Douglas must have been imparted with the wisdom to see through Flora’s strange actions as well as the facts surrounding Miles’ death. In The Turn of the Screw, when Douglas, before his death, sends the governess’ manuscript to his friend, it can be assumed again, that the friend must also be a member of the SPR. Although James obscures the cause of Flora’s unusual behavior in the text and does not directly associate it with hypnotism, it is true that he has dealt with this subject in previous works. In “Professor Fargo” (1874), the self-proclaimed professor Fargo tries to mesmerize a deaf-and-mute young girl: “the young girl’s eyes remained fixed on the man’s face; he was holding her spellbound by an influence best known to himself” (6). The “influence” implies hypnotism, and Fargo’s fixed gaze at the girl overlaps with the description “She [Miss Jessel] only fixed the child” in The Turn of the Screw. In Bostonians (1886), a hypnotic curer gives his daughter a hypnotic suggestion, and as soon as she opens her eyes, she begins to deliver amazing brilliant speech to the audience as if she were quite another person.27 Drawing a parallel with Professor Fargo, where Fargo makes a show of hypnotism in theaters, it can be said that Quint also learned hypnotism at a theater when he was an actor and that he later taught it to Miss Jessel. Mrs. Grose’s reaction to the governess’ words reveals that Quint used to be an actor: when the governess tells

25 Beidler writes that “simple arithmetic suggests that Douglas could have been at Trinity in 1851, when the Ghost Club was started” (40). Tom Ruffles also considers “the origins of the Ghost Club ... at Trinity [to be] in 1851” (“Review,” <http://www.spr.ac.uk/publication/cambridge-ghosts>). If we count Douglas’ age based on the calendar, he was sixteen years old in 1851. However, Douglas tells his listeners that he “was at Trinity, and found her [the governess] at home on [his] coming down the second summer” (2), and one of the listeners reacts to him by saying that it was “[f]orty years!” (3) before the Christmas Eve of 1895. Therefore, it was 1855 when Douglas was at Trinity; thus Beilder’s “simple arithmetic” contradicts the actual time. 26 Francis X. Roellinger writes in “Psychical Research and The Turn of the Screw” “that James had read and studied the reports of the Society (SPR) is evident,” while Deborah Esch and Jonathan Warren, the editors of A Norton Critical Edition explain that “Roellinger refers to James’s New York Edition preface and its use of terminology and apparition accounts drawn from the Society’s reports” (Norton 136). 27 With regard to the misuse of hypnotism in crimes, Leighton explains that as the 1880s progressed, “[o]utlandish suggestions involving crime and violence became increasingly de rigueur in both medical investigations and public exhibitions of hypnotism, so much so that the British Medical Journal condemned public lectures and experiments by non-medical practitioners because they often involved the moral degradation of the hypnotized subject” (Willis and Wynne 209). From this explanation, it can be said that The Turn of the Screw reflects the abuse of hypnotic suggestions to commit crimes at the time at which the text was written.



Mrs. Grose that a man [Quint] standing at the top of a tower looks “like an actor” (23), Mrs. Grose cries out, “An actor!” (23). Then, her face “blanched” (23) and “her round eyes started and her mild mouth gaped” (23). The governess’ intuition that Quint looked like an actor is indeed right, as registered by the shock on Mrs. Grose’s face. Moreover, the governess states, “They [Miles and Flora] not only popped out at me as tigers and as Romans, but as Shakespeareans, astronomers and navigators” (37). “[A]nd the strangest if not the brightest thread in the pensive embroidery (Miles’ small intellectual life) I just spoke of was the impression I might have got, if I had dared to work it out, that he was under some influence operating in his small intellectual life as a tremendous incitement” (37–38). Miles is ten years old and Flora is eight, and as such, it seems difficult for them to dress up “as Shakespeareans.” However, Quint, who used to be an actor, is able to teach the children how to dress up as those characters. The governess implies the strong influence that Quint has on Miles by the phrase “he [Miles] was under some influence operating in his small intellectual life as a tremendous incitement.” This “incitement” undoubtedly includes Quint’s teaching the children how to dress up “as Romans.” With regard to the relationship between Quint and Miles, Mrs. Grose reveals it to the governess. The housekeeper says that Quint wanted “[t]o play with him [Miles], I mean––to spoil him” (25); Miles “had gone off with the fellow [Quint] … and spent hours with him” (35). Therefore, it can be said that Quint must have ordered Miles to keep their close relationship secret from the governess in order to accomplish his plan. Considering that the theme of hypnotism was very apparent in the abovementioned novels, why did James obscure this theme in The Turn of the Screw? This can be explained in two points. First, James presupposed that any reader who would be able to detect allusions to “The Parasite” would suspect the hidden existence of hypnotism in The Turn of the Screw, for hypnotism is the main theme in “The Parasite.” Second, it is only by hinting at hypnotism in a vague manner that James could allow the governess to be ignorant of the connection between the crime and the hypnotic suggestion. After the governess saw Miss Jessel, she reports, “They [the pupils] were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally fond of me” (37) and that “[t]hey had never, I think, wanted to do so many things for their poor protectress; I mean … in the way of diverting, entertaining … her … in disguises, as … historical characters, … I should never get to the bottom—were I to let myself go even now” (37). William explains, “In the hypnotic trance any suggested object is sensibly perceived. In certain subjects this happens more or less completely after waking from the trance” (William 323). This theory proves that the children were influenced by



Quint and Miss Jessel, who led them to believe that their governess was the devil. Even upon “waking from the trance,” the children could “sensibly perceive” the “suggested object,” namely, the devilish governess; therefore, they showered her with affection for fear of offending her and incurring her wrath. As far as hypnotic suggestions are concerned, the line “I should never get to the bottom—were I to let myself go even now” indicates that the governess was never able to detect this falsity in the children.

3. Hidden meanings at the end of The Turn of the Screw

As the story draws to a close, the devil manifests itself in the governess’ actions. In one scene, when the governess and Miles are in the dining room after lunch, he goes over to the dining room window as many as four times because, in my view, he believes that Quint is hiding outside the window to rescue him when the occasion demands.28 In the meanwhile, Miles admits to stealing the governess’ letter addressed to the master, but he denies stealing things at school. Suddenly, at this point, Quint frightens the governess by staring at her from outside the dining room window; Miles is unable to see Quint because the governess, while watching Quint’s movements, holds the child tightly to her chest, blocking his view. She describes the scene as follows:

I sprang straight up, reduced … to the mere blind movement of getting hold of him [Miles], … instinctively keeping him with his back to the window. … [W]hile I held him to my breast … I could feel in the sudden fever of his little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart. … Meanwhile the glare of the face was against at the window … as if to watch and wait. … [T]here again … as if to blight his [Miles’] confession … was the hideous author of our woe. … “It’s there—the coward horror, there for the last time!” … “It’s he [Quint]?” … “Whom do you mean by ‘he’?” “Peter Quint—you devil!” … “Where (is Quint)?” … “What does he [Quint] matter now, my [the governess’] own?” … “I have you [Miles],” I launched at the beast, “but he

28 In The Turn of the Screw, James uses “number four” from the title of Doyle’s The Sign of Four (1890) to describe the four kinds of matters that occur four times: the scene when Douglas is by the fire is described four times (1, 2, 6 l.1, and 6 l.22); the Governess sees Quint and Miss Jessel four times, respectively; when Miles and the governess are in the dining room after lunch, Miles goes over to the window four times (78, 79, 81, and 84); there are a total of four criminals in The Turn of the Screw—the master, Quint, Miss Jessel, and Mrs. Grose.



[Quint] has lost you for ever!” … We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped. (81–85, James’ italics)

Assuming that Miles believed the governess to be the devil, he must have been terrified when she clutched him tightly to her breast. There is no consensus among critics about who the phrase “you devil” refers to; some say Quint, while others say the governess. As Armour puts it, “If ‘you devil’ had been directed at Peter Quint, Miles would surely not then have asked ‘Where?’ before turning from the governess toward the window” (19; n18). Moreover, “Peter Quint—you devil!” was Miles’ reply to the governess’ question, “Whom do you mean by ‘he’?” Therefore, Miles’ phrase, “you devil,” must have been directed at his interlocutor, the governess, and not at Quint, who was a third person (an outsider), from the very nature of this conversation. Miles dies of shock the moment he realizes that he has been deserted by Quint. Miles’ fear of his governess appears to reach its zenith when she springs “straight upon” (84) him after seeing Quint appear “as if to blight his [Miles’] confession.” However, Miles does not die of shock at that instant; instead, his death cry, “the cry of creature” (85), is uttered immediately after he fails to see Quint, after looking in the direction the governess indicates. Miles is already seized with fear at being caught by his demonic governess, and when he hears her say, “I have you [Miles]” “but he [Quint] has lost you for ever,” he is certain that Quint has abandoned him forever, and his devilish governess soon takes his soul. It is reasonable to say that Quint manages to refrain from being seen by Miles to make the child uneasy, while paying attention to each act of the governess. The governess believes Quint to be a specter, and Miles believes the governess to be the devil; their misconceptions and the governess’ protection of Miles against Quint’s ghost are essential requirements for Quint to murder Miles indirectly, by exploiting the governess.

However, soon after Miles’ death, the governess begins to gather the details behind his death from his words: “[Y]ou devil!” she recalls, “They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name (“you devil!”)” (85). Having been called a “devil” by Miles, she starts to doubt whether “the name” was true of her character. She feels that Quint beguiled Miles into believing her to be the devil and that she herself was deceived by Quint, Miss Jessel, and Mrs. Grose.

Such an insight into Quint’s designs enables the governess to cleverly hide the root cause of Miles’ death at the end of her written record. The ending is usually read as “We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed [of his soul], had stopped.” However, the latter part of the sentence can also be read as “and his little



heart, dispossessed [of his property], had stopped.” In those days, it was lawful for the master to inherit the property of his nephew, which is implied by “dispossessed.” Further, the first entry for “dispossess” in OED is, “To put [any one] out of possession; to strip of possessions; to dislodge, disseize, oust.” Therefore, the final phrase, “his little heart, dispossessed [of property], had stopped,” has another meaning: since the governess was aware of the actual nature of Miles’ sudden death, she helped Douglas solve the mystery surrounding his death with the word “dispossessed.”

Therefore, Douglas’ remark on how the governess “struck me as awfully clever” (2) is not a compliment. The governess narrates her experience at Bly from the viewpoint of a woman of twenty in appearance. However, when she is writing the manuscript she is past her prime. She can confidently describe past events by mixing the hasty deductions or partly correct reasoning of her younger viewpoint with a touch of sarcasm and self-derision from her viewpoint at the time the manuscript was written. In so doing, she can conceal herself, whom was exploited in the master’s plot. If she is a person who lacks intelligence, James would not have written “She has ‘authority,” which is a good deal to have given her, and I could n’t have arrived at so much had I clumsily tried for more” (NYE xix). To add, the governess in “The Copper Beeches” is also clever, given that she becomes “the head of a private school at Walsall” (452); thus, she seems the model of the intelligent governess in The Turn of the Screw. Based on the above perspective, it is reasonable to gauge why the governess trusts Douglas with the manuscript before she dies. She hopes that he will be able to solve the mysteries she was never able to and finally make the case known to the public. Since Douglas’ friend is a member of the SPR, after Douglas’ death, he was able to publish the governess’ manuscript that was necessary for his research on crimes on the misuse of hypnotism. A noteworthy question is why the governess concealed her suspicions about the master being the brains behind the crime; but this can be answered readily: she had no concrete evidence. Moreover, she only hinted at the truth in the manuscript because she did not want to make it known that she herself was taken advantage of by the master to fulfill his murderous plan. By throwing the literary allusions to Doyle’s “The Copper Beeches,” “The Red-Headed League,” and “The Parasite” into sharp relief, I have revealed that The Turn of the Screw deals with a world of betrayal and deceit associated with wealth, which is a theme that James pursued throughout his writing career. The Turn of the Screw has generated extensive discussion and multiple critical interpretations because of its numerous mysterious characteristics; this can be chiefly attributed to critics being



unaware of the many loaded allusions to Doyle’s works and style. It is safe to say that with the view of winning over fans of Doyle who were “disillusioned” with ordinary Sherlock Holms parodies, James wrote The Turn of the Screw, a parody of Holmes with no fixed solution, cleverly interwoven with Doyle’s works, while also demonstrating marvelous ideas and a profound experimental writing technique.

Works Cited “A Brief History of the Ghost Club.” (<http://www.ghostclub.org.uk/history.htm>). Armour, Andrew. “Ghosts Real and Imagined: Detecting Genre Diversity in The Turn of the Screw.” Hiyoshi Kiyo, Keio U, no. 47 (2005): 1–20. Beidler, Peter G. “A Critical History of The Turn of the Screw.” The Turn of the Screw. NY: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010. 235-70. ---. Ghosts, Demons, and Henry James: “The Turn of the Screw” at the Turn of the Century. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1989. Bramwell, J. Milne. “Personally Observed Hypnotic Phenomena.” SPR, Vol. 12 (1896-1897) 204–258. Doyle, A. Conan. The Parasite. Rockville: Wildside Press, 2004. ---. Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novel and Stories Vol. I. NY: Bantam, 1986. Doyle, Steven and David A. Crowder, Sherlock Holmes for Dummies. Indianapolis: Wiley, 2010. Eliot, T. S. “Sherlock Holmes and His times.” The Criterion, April 1929. Felman, Shoshana. Writing and Madness. Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 2003. Greene, Graham. The Lost Childhood and Other Essays. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1954. Hayashi, Shigeo. Saimin Numon [An Introduction to Hypnosis] Tokyo: Seisin Suobo, 1973. Heilman, Robert B. “The Freudian Reading and The Turn of the Screw.” Norton 177-84. Higurashi, Masamichi. Translator’s notes, Sharokku Homuzu no Boken [The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes]. Tokyo: Kobunsha, 2006. James, Henry. Complete Stories 1874–1884. NY: Literary Classics of the United States, 1999. ---. The New York Edition of Henry James. Vol. XII. NY: Charles Scrinber’s Sons, 1936. ---. The Turn of the Screw. Eds. Deborah Esch and Jonathan Warren, NY: Norton, 1999. ---. The Turn of the Screw. Ed. Peter G. Beidler. NY: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010. James, William. Psychology, Briefer Course. NY: H. Holt, 1923. Kenton, Edna. “Henry James to the Ruminant Reader: The Turn of the Screw. Norton 169-70. Kobayashi, Akio. Ganburu to Igirisujin [Gambling and the British]. Tokyo: Chikuma, 1995. Leighton, Mary Elizabeth. “Under the Influence: Crime and Hypnotic Fictions of the Fin De Siècle. Eds. Martin Willis and Catherine Wynne. Victorian Literary Mesmerism. NY: Rodopi, 2006, 203–22. Lewis, R. W. B. Introduction. ‘“The Turn of the Screw’ and Other Short Fiction.” Bantam. NY, 1981. Lukacher, Ned. “Hanging Fire”: The Primal Scene of The Turn of the Screw.” Norton 241-45. Nakano, Kaori. Dandizumu no Keifu [The History of Dandyism]. Tokyo: Shincho, 2009. O'Leary, Joseph S. “Pushkin in the Aspern Papers.”



<http://www2.newpaltz..edu/~Hathawar/ejournal2.html>. Ooshita, Yoshiyuki.<thinkcopyright.org/Ooshita-Homes.pdf>. Ousby, Ian, ed. the Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1993. “Review.” <http://www.spr.ac.uk/publication/cambridge-ghosts>. Strand Magazine. <http://www. strandmag. com/htm/strandmag_history. htm>. Sussman, Henry. “James: twist of the Government.” Norton 228-37. Wilson, Edmund. Edmund Wilson’s Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s & 40s. NY: Literary Classics of the United States, 2007. Yamada, Masaru. “Igirisu Kizoku: Danditachi no Bigaku to Seikatu” [“English Nobles: The Esthetics and the Lives of Dandies,” Osaka: Sogensha, 1994. Afterword: Having enjoyed Sherlock Holmes in my early teens, when I first read The Turn of the Screw I recalled when the governess secures a high salary job through classified ads; Wilson in “The Red-Headed League” is also employed at a large salary for easy work after responding to a newspaper ad, but eventually Holmes reasons that Wilson was deceived by John Clay, the arch-villain. Therefore, I expected that the governess would be involved in the crime. When I noticed that Quint’s hair is red, I thought that James might use Doyle’s works in The Turn of the Screw. When Miles dies at the end, as the master is the only heir to Miles’ property, I thought the master had something to do with Miles’s death. Later, I discovered “The Parasite,” which became helpful in writing this paper.

Michiko Okuno


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