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A good ghost story never fades. 113 years after publication (spooky!) and still bringing shivers and squirms of discomfort to a reader near you, I can’t see that Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw ever will. In spirit, it’s your classic Victorian horror story - it’s got restless souls, a lonely country house and even a distant but dashing bachelor - but like the enigmatic child subjects of the book, there’s something a little different about this one…
The scene is set with a jolly but sardonic bunch gathered around the proverbial fireplace for that great Victorian Christmas tradition of the telling of ghost stories (as I said, a jolly bunch). There’s a slightly odd delay while our storyteller realises he’s forgotten his notes, but patience friends, and take this chance to nestle in amongst your ‘fellow listeners‘. It is all, as they say, part of the act.
Notes duly sent for, we meet our protagonist and narrator, an emotionally volatile, and nervous girl of 20 and a new governess to two beautiful but disturbed children. She is given complete autonomy over their education and care in exchange for complete silence on the matter, while their guardian (the aforementioned bachelor) attends to his prerogative - a busy schedule of brooding. All set for a life of social isolation and halcyon schoolroom days, she is enamoured with her position. However her naivety soon gives way to deepening suspicion as it transpires the ethereally charming charges are being pursued by the shades of two former household staff.
With a clear brief of ‘no communication’ and perhaps just a small candle held high for her standoffish employer, our girl musters all the courage and worldly knowledge to be expected of a refined and angsty girl of her time and grasps the chance to prove her governing mettle as she sets about trying to rescue her charges from a fate worse than…well, she’s not entirely sure…
James slickly jumps the clichéd gothic ghost story gate, at which so many writers have fallen, and swoops in at the finish with the cruellest of twists to the heartstrings. The novella plays on a fear of something far more real than vampires and headless horsemen, one that will never lose its aversion: the loss of childhood innocence. He remains tantalisingly speculative about the ghosts’ ‘corrupting influence’, his Victorian reserve only tautening the suspense surrounding the children’s past and fate. Finally, after a forte of intrigue and disquiet, James draws the ‘weird’ episode to a poignant and pensive close with one final obscurity, leaving in its wake a surging sense of empathy, despair and unabated curiosity.
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