About this title: In THE TURN OF THE SCREW, an innocent, impressionable young governess takes over the education of two delightful children, Flora and Miles, at an isolated country estate. She becomes convinced that the children's former governess and a valet once employed on the estate--both now dead--have returned and are trying to gain control of the children's souls. Her hysteria builds to a terrifying and tragic climax. James's novella demonstrates the idea that the horrors concocted by the imagination are far worse than reality.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: Second Printing, 12/1963
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Signet
Date Published: 1963
Description: Fair. No dust jacket as issued. Signed by previous owner. Nice soft cover, lightly read, creases on spine, shelf wear to cover. 453 p. Includes bibliography. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Dover Publications
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780486266848ISBN:0486266842
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 96 p. Dover Thrift Editions. Audience: General/trade. Used, but a great reading/study copy. Dover Thrift Edition. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Dover Publications
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780486266848ISBN:0486266842
Description: New. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 96 p. Dover Thrift Editions. Audience: General/trade. New and Instock read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton, New York
Date Published: 1966
ISBN-13:9780393096699ISBN:0393096696
Description: Very Good in No jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Very good clean flat paperback with only very light overall wear. pages clean and unmarked. nice copy! read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Dover Publications, Inc., New York
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780486266848ISBN:0486266842
Description: Good. No Jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Moderate wear. Small water stain a several pages near top of page. Cover has crease and cover page has crease. No tears or rips. Several pages have notations in ink. Light edge wear. read more
"I finished this book in about two hours and, from the first page, enjoyed the build-up that became more and more suspenseful as it went along. The tension was nearly unbearable right until the very end...and then it all went to pieces. I had to read and re-read the final two pages, unsure of what exactly had happened in the end.
To begin with, the book starts off with a man named Douglas telling a captive audience a story that is "quite too horrible" - a story that wasn't his to tell; he would have to read it to them, because it was "in old faded ink and in the most beautiful hand...a woman's. She's been dead these twenty years. She sent me the pages in question before she died."
He starts reading her pages, and that's the last we ever hear from Douglas. The book never returns to the room and the captive audience to get their impressions of what's just been read to them. What do they believe occurred?
Do they wonder, as I do, if the governess went mad and killed the boy at the end? Did she do it because, as stated at the beginning of the story, she was in love? Did she love her employer and wish to spare him the burden of raising at least one of his wards - the one she felt sure was "bad" because he had been expelled from school?
I don't have a clue. I don't know if there were actually ghosts determined to get at the children; I can't determine if the children were indeed aware of the ghosts, or if the entire thing was all a well-devised ploy by the governess to explain her eventual actions.
In my opinion, for a story that started out so promising, it ended up being quite disappointing."
"When I put the question to Miles, he played on a minute before answering and then could only say: "Why, my dear, how do I know?"-breaking morever into a happy laugh which, immediately after, as if it were a vocal accompaniment, he prolonged into incoherent, extravagant song. - p. 85So much made of so little. On one hand, I keep thinking, oh, I should like this as the thrill is psychological. She's scaring herself. Making herself batty. I mean every time Miles speaks anything it's significant and startling. Even just "I see, I see" or "Is she here?" sends the poor governess reeling.
Then I start to think that it's all so slathered in hyperbole... well, it starts to be all exaggeration and no true moving pictures.I can't name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given to such a speech by such a speaker... - p. 112So many things in this tale are purported to be beyond description. Then, earlier: He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two words-"Do you?"-more discrimination than I had ever heard two words contain. - p. 106And so I now adjourn, saying only, with more austere condemnation than two words have ever been appointed: "This blew.""
"This is my first experience reading "literary horror" -- if you would call it horror since I don't know the genre at all. To me, it seemed in some ways unfinished. The frame story was dropped (it introduced but didn't close the inner story). The same is true of the original "first person" character, who is only barely introduced. I suppose the frame story is meant to contribute to the sense of it being a "true" second-hand account, but its narrative style is too... "novelly" to make that fly. There are also lots of unanswered mysteries. How did Quint really die? How did Miss Jessel die? Is there a connection between the deaths? Why/how were they so intentionally corrupting of the children before they died? What was their truly malicious action when living? -- An unorthodox love affair and an impression of dishonesty are not logically satisfying to a modern reader (or at least, to me), though our emotional sense of their evil and antagonism is easily guided by the narrator. What does it mean that Peter Quint "did what he wished" with everyone? And what happens to Flora and to everyone else after the ending? If you're looking for a mystery thriller, this is not the story for you; the loose ends are still flapping in the wind. I think the true genious of the story is that you begin to wonder if the narrator of the inner story, the governess, is going mad or if she is trustworthy. You want to believe her, and you think you have good reason to, but everything is from her perspective, and her instincts, which she depends on extensively as a source of 'absolute' knowledge, are not your own. When you're no longer "scared," this tension drives "the turn of the page.""
""The Turn of the Screw" is the near perfect Victorian ghost story, continually asking the question "Are the ghosts real?" A governess is sent to a lonely country estate to care for two children along with the housekeeper; the children are possibly attacked by sinister specters of former servants who want to possess them. Or is the situation all in the governess' mind, a product of a Freudian-like sexual repression brought on by her wish to be indispensable to the mysterious absent father. Just encapsulating the story into a couple of sentences sends a chill up the spine. I re-read this every couple of years and am chilled every time."
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