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I Respond to a Famous Ghost Story 1/4/2017 6:50:51 AM
Some of the most interesting fiction I've read is by modernist writers who were active at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th -- Thomas Mann, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf (most recently a novel called "The Years"), and Marcel Proust (I've read his great series of novels in English translation and not too long ago I finished listening to 7 audiobooks of the work by the English actor Neville Jason, who brought the great epic to life for me.)
Henry James has long been a favorite, too. He was a master writer with a great gift that passed through an extraordinary development. The other day I finished rereading his novella "The Turn of the Screw", which I found original and well-written. The language and subject matter are well-suited to each other, and each new development is expertly placed.
The story concerns a youthful governess who arrives at an English manor house to take charge of a ten year old boy named Miles and his younger sister Flora. She is quite taken with the children and enjoys caring for them, even after ghosts of household servants appear on the scene. Or are these visitors from the dead creatures of the governess's mind?
Most of the time as I read, I thought the answer to this question was "yes". The story proceeds like the case study of a troubled mind. At moments, I thought, moreover, the author had temporarily taken on a perverted way of thinking himself, a feeling I don't recall having while reading other of James's workss. At times, I put the question about the reality of the ghosts aside as irrelevant, for James draws a convincing picture of a woman in a difficult situation who is subjected to the experience of contact with malign supernatural beings. At the end, though, I wondered if the ghosts had real existence in the environment that James created.
**
"The Turn of the Screw" is a work of fiction. James himself called it "irresponsible". From one point of view, it is also preposterous. The unnamed governess has only her own consciousness to guide her. Her one interlocutor is another employee of the household, who is a loving person without much strength of will. The governess relies for verification chiefly on her and her colleague's capacity for speculation. The world outside doesn't impinge on their environment. Not credible. It's very close to being a story about incompetence and mental derangement.
But still...
James raises several questions without answering them definitively. Do the ghosts exist outside the governess's mind? Have they brought the two youngsters under their control? How would a person with a stronger mind deal with the troubling situation?
Evil exists in the world and there's an abundance of it in this country estate (which the owner, Miles' and Flora's uncle, has abandoned). As the question of evil comes up, the story takes on another dimension for me -- the governess becomes an example of ordinary humanity encountering the world at large, which can be hard to understand and rife with fear-inspiring occasions."Am I safe? What's going on? Where does my anxiety come from? Will people I'm responsible for be okay? Will I make a dreadful mistake? " The apprehensions of beginners.
The governess is neither well-equipped nor well-protected, an orphan in the storm, to appropriate the title of an old silent film. Civilized society does offer protection, of course, while education, experience, and good sense help many people to cope competently with a changing and complicated world that's full of dangers. Besides that, communities nourish and sustain. The governess had no friends or family or teacher or professional association to consult.
No doubt some young people enter the world as unarmed as James's governess. What terrors they pass through! May they find the faith to strengthen them and social structures to support them.
I wish James had written a sequel to this novella in which he showed the governess working her way through her difficulties with the guidance and encouragement she needs. Heaven knows there's plenty of help available, though sometimes the delivery gets interfered with. That's not always the case, though, and there are surely success stories we ought to hear about.
