Henry James: THE TURN OF THE SCREW
The
narrative structure is particularly complex: the first narrator, Douglas, who is one of the
guest assembled in a hold house one winter evening. After a series of
anticipations, Douglas consents to read to the
little group the whole story as it was written by the woman who was the
protagonist of the events: she was his sister's governess, and sent him the
manuscript before dying. Much later Douglas
will send to the first narrator the same manuscript before dying.
The story
is about a young girl who is employed as a governess to two orphan children by
their rich uncle who is a gentleman and she immediately is conquered by him. He
offers her a very generous salary but on one condition: she must never trouble
him, and she accepts. The two children, Flora and Miles, are very charming but
soon the governess learn that Miles has been expelled from school for
mysterious reasons, which are not mentioned. She likes walking in the ground
and one day, during her solitary walks, she sees a man at the vary top of one
of the two towers and for a moment she thinks that her fantasy, that's about
the children's uncle, has become reality, but then she realises that the man is
not him. After some time there is a second apparition, when she is in the
dining-room she sees the same man one the other side of the window, so she
decides to tell Mrs Groose, the housekeeper, about
her two apparitions. Mrs Groose wants to know more
and the governess describes the man: he's tall, his hair are red, he has a pale
face, eyebrows dark and arched, sharp and strange eyes, red whiskers, and he
gives a sort of sense of looking like an actor. At the end Mrs Groos say that the man that the Governess had seen was
Peter Quint and that he's dead; it creates a sense of
suspance and mystery and obviously when the Governess
understand it she's shocked.
