How to be a Cultured Reader: The Turn of the Screw - Henry James

This is a pedantic series of entries about classic novels you should read if you wish to make an impression at uptown soirees catering to cultured types. Look on the bright side: there is no such thing as a born ignoramus. 

The Turn of the Screw - Henry James

Year of publication: 1898

Best edition: Penguin Classics (The Turn of the Screw and The Aspen Papers)

Plot:

An unnamed governess is hired to watch over a young boy and a girl in a gothic mansion. During her tenure she discovers that the previous governess had an illicit affair with another employee, and both died a mysterious death. Something is also not quite right with the boy and the girl. They appear to be able to communicate with the dead governess and her evil lover. Is the mansion haunted? Are the children possessed? Or is the governess not playing with a full set of marbles?

Why this novel:

I could have recommended The Portrait of a Lady (also by James), but its bulk of some 600 pages might just put some of you off. This is a novella, short enough to finish in a day (if you’d just turn off your I-phone for a few hours). It’s also a thrilling story, if you can get through the first few pages and get accustomed to the fact that a Henry James sentence can sometimes run half a page long, riddled with semi-colons and subordinate clauses. In short, this is not a Stephenie Meyer novel.

This novella is a ground-breaking work for several reasons:

1. It’s one of the first modern novels to present an unreliable narrator.

This trope is now old hat, but in James’ time, it wasn’t. (Readers in those days tended to believe everything they read. In some religious circles today, that’s still pretty much the case.) The unreliability of the narrator makes it an ambiguous book. You don’t get definite answers, and this, my reader, is a very good thing. What James is telling you is that you should never trust what you read completely. Isn’t that a priceless message?

2. It’s one of the earliest novels about psychoanalysis.

James never mentioned the Freudian term, which was rather new in his time, but today we can psychoanalyse the narrator to death (and yes, that’s been done many times over by eminent critics). What this means is we have a character that tells us the way we perceive the world is exactly how we perceive ourselves. This is terrifying. What if your perception of yourself is skewed and you aren’t aware of it?

3. It contains some disturbing sexual references.

The dead governess’ affair with the help is tame by today’s standards, but it’s his perverse nature that casts a nasty shadow over the entire story. There are suggestions that he’s a masochist, and that he sexually abuses the boy (and makes him emotionally dependent on him). What makes it even more outrageous is the suggestion that the narrator herself may be sexually oppressed and secretly finds the affair between the two depraved lovers titillating.

So have I got your attention?

Conclusion:

Most Henry James readers will have read this novella. But if you aren’t familiar with James, this is the best place to start. Why should you bother with some American writer who died almost a hundred years ago? Well, maybe because he represents a whole artistic movement called ‘19-century literary realism (and you don’t want to go ‘huh?’ when someone slips it into a conversation). Or maybe, just maybe, you don’t want to miss out on one of the greatest horror tales ever told.