The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (Epub)

Description

The Turn of the Screw is a novella (short novel) written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story. Due to its ambiguous content, it became a favorite text of academics who subscribe to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive. Many critics have tried to determine the exact nature of the evil hinted at by the story. An unnamed narrator listens to a male friend reading a manuscript written by a former governess whom the friend claims to have known and who is now dead. The manuscript tells the story of how the young governess is hired by a man who has become responsible for his young nephew and niece after the death of their parents. He lives mainly in London and is not interested in raising the children himself. The boy, Miles, is attending a boarding school, while his younger sister, Flora, is living at a country estate in Essex. She is currently being cared for by the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. The governess’s new employer, the uncle of Miles and Flora, gives her full charge of the children and explicitly states that she is not to bother him with communications of any sort. The governess travels to her new employer’s country house and begins her duties. Miles soon returns from school for the summer just after a letter arrives from the headmaster stating that he has been expelled. Miles never speaks of the matter, and the governess is hesitant to raise the issue. She fears that there is some horrid secret behind the expulsion, but is too charmed by the adorable young boy to want to press the issue. Soon thereafter, the governess begins to see around the grounds of the estate the figures of a man and woman whom she does not recognize. These figures come and go at will without ever being seen or challenged by other members of the household, and they seem to the governess to be supernatural. She learns from Mrs. Grose that her predecessor, Miss Jessel, and another employee, Peter Quint, had had a sexual relationship with each other and had both died. Prior to their deaths, they spent much of their time with Flora and Miles, and this fact has grim significance for the governess when she becomes convinced that the two children are secretly aware of the presence of the ghosts. Later, Flora leaves the house while Miles plays music for the governess. They notice Flora’s absence and go to look for her. The governess and Mrs. Grose find her in a clearing in the wood, and the governess is convinced that she has been talking to Miss Jessel. When she finally confronts Flora, Flora denies seeing Miss Jessel, and demands never to see the governess again. Mrs. Grose takes Flora away to her uncle, leaving the governess with Miles. That night, they are finally talking of Miles’ expulsion when the ghost of Quint appears to the governess at the window. The governess shields Miles, who attempts to see the ghost. The governess tells him that he is no longer controlled by the ghost, and then finds that Miles has died in her arms.

User’s Reviews

Review Novella by Henry James, published serially in Collier’s Weekly in 1898 and published in book form later that year. One of the world’s most famous ghost stories, the tale is told mostly through the journal of a governess and depicts her struggle to save her two young charges from the demonic influence of the eerie apparitions of two former servants in the household. The story inspired critical debate over the question of the “reality” of the ghosts and of James’s intentions. James himself, in his preface to volume XII of The Novels and Tales of Henry James, called the tale a “fable” and said that he did not specify details of the ghosts’ evil deeds because he wanted readers to supply their own vision of terror. –The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ WARNING! Do not buy this version!!! It appears to have been translated into another language, then translated back into a broken, unintelligible facsimile of English. Yes, I know Henry James’s language is dense; I’ve read several of his novels and I promise you that is not the issue with this “edition”. I cannot imagine what transpired to result in this bizarre mutilation. Amazon/Kindle, I am a most unhappy customer, and I would like my money returned!Shameful. Pay for editors, for crying out loud.

⭐ I’ve tried to read this story three times, at three different points in my life, and I can’t. I don’t understand it at all, and have no idea why this has been given so much praise. I fully expect that it’s some deficiency in me, and I really don’t want anyone to “explain” it to me. I just don’t get it.

⭐ I read this over 50 years ago in high school. Wanted to read it again with many decades of reading since the first time I read it. I love Victorian and Edwardian writers. Love the detailed descriptions and rich atmosphere these writers so well infuse into their stories. Turn of the Screw was not one of them. The narration was filled with obscure mental ramblings. The sentences rambled, beating, not about the bush, but about a number of bushes until the final point of the thought is reached.Many of the wonderful writers of this period can pull me into their story and take me on a wonderful journey. Not Turn of the Screw. I kept having to unravel the governess’ sentences and could not get into the story. Horror? If any, it was in the main character’s imagination, certainly not passed on to me. I kept wanting something to happen for 80% of the story, and I was sick of the governess’ constant mental micro speculations.If I had submitted writing like this in my college literature classes, I would have gotten an F for over-run sentences, rambling, unclear references. At least the fairly short story was free. This was a 30 page story expanded to over three times the length it should have been. I do not understand why any serious literary critics even bother trying to interpret this. I wonder if James wrote it as a joke on his contemporaries. He never discussed what he was saying in this story, he left it up to the reader to interpret everything for themselves, and stayed mysteriously silent on any intpretations.

⭐ A young governess is hired to care for a young girl named Flora and her brother, Miles. Miles has been expelled from a prestigious school and never explains why he has been sent home. Over time, the governess who is the narrator along with the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose believe that the children are in contact and being controlled by the evil Peter Quint, a former resident and Miss Jessel, their former governess. The children have a sweet demeanor but at times their cunning ways are apparent. Will they be successful in extricating the children from these dark forces? Read Henry James’ popular The Turn of the Screw and see how things pan out!

⭐ This is a classic novel set in the gothic style of early horror. It was interesting to read the way things were written ‘back in the day,’ but it was a bit tedious to get through.The story covered the retelling of a localized haunting that was related to a small group of avid listeners from someone that was told this tale first hand by the character it supposedly happened to. Already, there is a distancing of the reader from the story.Reading the way people spoke back then took a lot of getting used to. People didn’t get to the point, make a lot of sense, and used a lot of innuendo to move the story along. What would now be seeing as a desperate need for editing, was then viewed as good writing. Long, winding sentences, sometimes paragraphs long, led to glossy eyed reading for much of this, especially in the beginning.The subject matter had some good material to work with, but modern day readers are too sensible to accept this at face value. We are so numb to intense hauntings and movies, that the scare value on this book wouldn’t even register a blip on any scare meter scale.But if we remember how long ago this book was written, it sets a decent stage for those that were to come later.The only really bad part was the choppy manner of haunted sightings, and the blunt ending attached to it.Stories back then ended abruptly, as did this one, leaving the reader to wonder what was the reason to write it at all.For a Sunday afternoon read and stroll down memory lane, I give it a 3. Not the greatest but definitely not the worst, either.

⭐ After finishing it I re-read parts to look for clues, and even went to internet to check theories. I seldom do that! :O This is a ghost story that reads also as a detective story and a psychological thriller. Read it as a ghost story and it’s about a wealthy and invisible man that has set, being by design or by fear, a cursed place with wicked and beautiful people with an agenda over two children, the apparition of the ghosts is formidable and scary through their silent threat. As a detective story it is about murders and hidden romances, for moments seems a way to plan an assassination; each utterance is a clue, each data has a background, the ghosts could be an alibi. And lastly it could be psychological, the narration is told at first by a group that accepts the existence of ghosts, and then by the governess hired by the wealthy gentleman under stressing conditions; she tells us her story but we cannot trust her, she hides her feelings, if she is convinced (and convinces others) about the ghosts existence is in grounds of mostly her word. There is a clear answer? there is not, but it is done in a way that it gives you curiosity to read it again.I mention it reads as a manga for the language used, Japanese authors tend to write characters to be a tad more dramatic, they speak in a suspicious and indirect way, a tone similar to: ‘”he” is arriving’, ‘this is “his” choice’, the awe felt through the revelations,the persecutions and in general dynamic narration. I love this book, I am not sure if I could recommend it though, I have a fascination with 19th century British literature, a fascination that few share. If you like that period as me then “The Turn of the Screw” is amazing. Without this story maybe the cinema genre of ghosts would not exist as we know it.The AmazonClassics Edition is excellent. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is the best available: it has useful X-Ray, modern typography and a limpid and comfortable to read formatting, as always the only absence is the original year of publication in the first page. Beyond that minor detail is a pleasure to read it in this edition, the text is pure as if had just been published, just a short author biography at the end. Highly recommended.

⭐ First off, this story is freely available on Project Gutenberg, in several formats. It’s public domain, so I’m presuming this version’s arranger used Amazon’s wonderful self-publishing platform to easily throw this together, self-design a simple cover, and put it up for sale. All for FREE. Amazon prints the books on-demand, takes a cut of the reasonable price, and ships them out. I’ve done this with my self-published tween space adventure Treachery in the Sky–what a great way to get things out in eBook AND print format. Now, even though you can get Screw for free, as mentioned, I like to have a physical book to read, so this format is great–not expensive, and I found no loose pages, as some reviewers mentioned.Now to the actual review. I read Henry James’ The Beast in the Jungle (long short-story), by downloading it from Project Gutenberg and then printing it out. Absolutely loved that story, and especially the writing style. It was very comma-sparse–so much so that I had to reread often to be sure of the meaning. Getting used to that style got me into a frame of mind that became part of the story, and enhanced it in a way I thought must be part of James’ basic style (Hadn’t read any other James works since college). So I was taken aback starting Screw…where commas seem to be tossed in at random (especially compared to Beast). I imagined the Amazon book seller had pulled the text of of Gutenberg, and threw in commas as s/he desired. This was not the case, however. Comparing to Gutenberg’s text, yep, the commas are all there.Perhaps I’m overly sensitive to commas. Here’s an example from my own thought process: I couldn’t, actually, get through the text, as least, this version, because, in my humble, yet considered, opinion, there were, in fact, TOO MANY COMMAS.Screw was published in 1898, Jungle in 1903. Oh, Mr. James, you learned so much about commas or the lack thereof in those five years! Still, in rereading parts of Jungle, I see that my impression of the lack of commas came from some notable instances, and that as a whole, the story is not quite so dramatically comma-dosed as I have made it sound.From Screw’s first page: “…waking her not to dissipate his dread and soothe him to sleep again, but to encounter also, herself, before she had succeeded in doing so, the same sight that had shaken him.”I imagine that in the style of Beast, this might have read, “”…waking her not to dissipate his dread and soothe him to sleep again but to encounter also herself before she had succeeded in doing so, the same sight that had shaken him.”

⭐ This book is a tough read. It is very Baroque despite being late 19th century. The prose is heavily ornamented with many asides and qualifications. It explores every avenue of a particular thread of thought.The story is a woman’s narrative of her haunted surroundings and her duty to protect the children she is to care for. While some author’s would focus on scenery or character, this story focuses, obsessively so, on the narrator’s thoughts, examinations, and speculations – almost akin to Poe.The story told is ultimately satisfying and rewarding. I would guess the book would lend itself well to a second reading because it is complex in its ambiguities and subtleties.

⭐ Composed of dense, convoluted sentences, THE TURN OF THE SCREW is a tough read. I would imagine it to be a more difficult read for the generation now using more emojis and acronyms than words. The very first sentence… “The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child.” … was enough for me to not read this many years ago. Go back. Read it again. I’ll wait.I can understand the reasons for reading this classic tale; however, that does not change the fact that I found myself reading, re-reading, and sometimes re-reading again, the single sentences that occupied nearly an entire screen on my Kindle. This ruined any chance of feeling any kind of atmospheric horror for me.”The Turn of the Screw” is a novella that first appeared in 1898. That is significant because it is the same year that Bram Stoker introduced the world to Count Dracula. I’ve read DRACULA a number of times and have always found the language exudes horror as Jonathan Harker writes of his experiences in Dracula’s castle to his fiancé Mina. Granted, every author has a style, but I found Henry James’ style to be confusing obfuscation.In defense of obfuscation, many writers use this as a way to advance the story providing bits and bobs of information along the way. I found the usual breadcrumbs offered very early here without ever bringing anything to its conclusion. Were the beautiful children evil? Was the unnamed governess simply mad? Were Peter Quint and Miss Jennings fabrications of an overactive imagination? I do admit that that last question does often go unanswered in the best of ghost stories however much atmosphere they present.Perhaps with careful sentence by sentence study, I might feel some of the touted greatness of this work.

⭐ Please note that this book was published in the 1800’s so the language is very different! It’s a hard read, as is every book published in the 19th century, but it’s a good story! The comme splice and run-on sentences might make you cry at some points but its spooky and keeps you guessing throughout the book.I don’t recommend this to anyone who is looking for an easy read or doesnt appreciate literature.I read this because I saw The Turning!

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