82 pages • 2 hours read
Henry JamesThe Turn of the Screw
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1898A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Prologue-Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
The novella opens on a Christmas Eve in the last decade of the 19th century, some 50 years after the events of the main story. In an old house a group has gathered by the fire to exchange ghost stories. Among the party is the Prologue’s narrator, whose identity remains unknown. A tale of a boy haunted by spirits has just ended, and someone remarks that such stories rarely feature children. This prompts a man named Douglas to say, “If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to two children—?” (3). The room resounds with calls to hear his story. Although Douglas initially demurs, saying, “It’s quite too horrible” (3), he finally relents. He cannot immediately relieve his audience’s suspense, however, as he must first send for the story’s manuscript, which is at his house in town.
The manuscript, existing “in old faded ink” (4), was written by a woman whom Douglas met when he was a university student, during a holiday at home. She was his sister’s governess, and 10 years older than Douglas, but they became fond of one another and spent hours together, walking and talking. She eventually confided in him a story concerning her first position as a governess, which she took at the age of 20, after leaving the village where she grew up as the daughter of a parson. Arriving in London, she answered an advertisement for a position. When she met with her prospective employer, she found he was a handsome gentlemen, “such a figure as had never risen, save in a dream” (7) before her. He was looking for a lady to school his orphaned niece and nephew, who lived at his country home, Bly. Their previous governess died, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, was caring for them in the meantime. Should she accept the job as governess, she would have “supreme authority” (7) over the children, but “she should never trouble him” (9) or contact him about any matter. Although she sensed something unsettling about the proposition, the gentleman expressed such gratitude toward her, and his charms so beguiled her, that she accepted against her better judgment.
Chapter 1 Summary
The governess’s voice takes over at the beginning of this chapter, as Douglas reads aloud her first-person account, and the novella ends without returning to the frame narrative.
The governess experiences anxiety as she travels by coach across the countryside to assume her role at Bly, but her self-doubts are alleviated when she sees the expansive estate. From inside large windows facing the drive, curious maids watch the new governess alight from her coach. The housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, stands at the door with one of the governess’s young charges, a beautiful girl named Flora. Although the governess had feared she and the housekeeper might not get along, the older woman seems so “inordinately glad” (10) to see her that the governess decides they will be agreeable companions. Moreover, Flora’s otherworldly beauty dispels her doubts about her own ability to govern small children. She remarks that “there could be no uneasiness in connexion with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my little girl” (10). Flora’s older brother, 10-year-old Miles, is currently at boarding school but will return in two days for his summer holiday. After Mrs. Grose assures the governess that Miles, too, is so angelic that she will be “carried away” (12) by him, the governess admits she “was carried away in London” (12) by the boy’s uncle.
The governess devotes the following day to winning over Flora’s affections as they tour the estate together. She follows the girl along corridors, through empty chambers, and up twisting staircases, eventually arriving “on the summit of an old machicolated square tower” (12). Writing her account of that day years later, the governess notes that she imagined herself in a romantic castle, but she would soon realize “it was a big, ugly […] house, […] in which I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship” (13).
Chapter 2 Summary
The evening before Miles returns from boarding school, the governess receives a letter from the headmaster, who reports that Miles has been expelled without any explanation. Alarmed by the notion that Miles misbehaved, the governess solicits Mrs. Grose’s opinion on the matter. The housekeeper is outraged at the suggestion that Miles could conduct himself dishonorably and pleads, “See him Miss, first. Then believe it” (14). While these words comfort the governess, her doubts about Miles’s character resurface later that evening. She corners Mrs. Grose, who concedes that the boy has been naughty on occasion. When the governess wonders if Miles’s misconduct is of a degree that imputes corruption, the housekeeper laughs and asks, “Are you afraid he’ll corrupt you?” (15).
The following morning, nagging questions about the children’s former governess—and the circumstances of her demise—compel the governess to seek out Mrs. Grose again. The housekeeper compares the governess to her predecessor, saying she is equally young and pretty, and noting, “it was the way he liked everyone!” (16). These last words perplex the governess, as they seem to refer not to the children’s uncle but to another unknown man. She sidesteps this odd remark, however, as she is eager to learn about her predecessor’s death. According to Mrs. Grose, the former governess left Bly for a short holiday at home, after a year of service. Although Mrs. Grose expected her to return to Bly, she never did. The children’s uncle eventually delivered the news of the young woman’s death but not the details.
Chapter 3 Summary
When the governess arrives at the coach stop to retrieve Miles, he is waiting for her. His incredible beauty extinguishes any doubts about his goodness, and the governess declares, “I had seen him on the instant, without and within, in the great glow of freshness, the same positive fragrance of purity, in which I had from the first moment seen his little sister” (17). By the time they reach Bly again, the governess has grown indignant over the clearly false accusations lurking behind the headmaster’s letter. She resolves to ignore the letter altogether and not discuss its contents with anyone, including Miles.
The summer days pass quickly. Although the governess is expected to conduct the children’s daily lessons, many years later she reflects, “I now feel that for weeks the lessons must have been rather my own. I learnt something—at first certainly—that had not been one of the teachings of my small smothered life” (18) as a parson’s daughter. She learns how exhilarating space and freedom are, and how they encourage flights of fancy. Every evening, after the children are in bed, the governess enjoys what she calls “my own hour” (19). She strolls the gardens, reflecting on how well she has met her employer’s expectations. With a thrill, she imagines suddenly encountering him on the pathway and receiving his approving gaze. One evening, while lost in this habitual reverie, the governess turns to face the house and sees a man standing atop one of the towers. After momentarily believing him to be the man of her dreams, materialized, the governess realizes he is entirely unfamiliar. The stranger stares impudently at her for some time, then vanishes.
Prologue-Chapter 3 Analysis
When The Turn of the Screw was first published in 1898, and for several decades afterward, reviewers and critics largely dispensed with any consideration of the novella’s Prologue, centering their attention on the governess’s tale, as she tells it. Later critics recognized that, beyond the value of the “facts” it provides, the Prologue is rich with cues as to how readers should interpret the story that follows. Some critics have argued that, from its cozy setting to its exaggerated play of suspense, the Prologue parodies the conventions of storytelling and fiction, thereby signaling that the forthcoming tale is designed to captivate and thrill without regard for reality. While the novella showcases classic ghost-story elements, it also engages with other narrative traditions. The conventions of the gothic novel were well established by the end of the 19th century, and invariably included an old manor house in an isolated, countryside location and an atmosphere of foreboding dread. The governess finds herself in just such a setting at Bly. Immediately after she sees the man on the tower, the governess wonders, “Was there a secret at Bly—a mystery of Udolpho or an insane […] relative kept in unsuspected confinement?” (21). She thus fancies herself entangled in a gothic romance, such as Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) or Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847).
If some critics argue the Prologue sets the stage for the sheer artifice and entertainment of the “ghost story” proper, others contend that it works to destabilize the understanding of the story as just a ghost story, or as just entertainment. These critics maintain that the main narrative is unreliable, both because uncertainty haunts the governess’s account and because several narrative displacements remove the reader from the original events of the story. The governess does not recount her story as it happens. She records it as a memoir years, possibly decades, later. While this long interval may raise questions about the accuracy of her memories, the governess repeatedly interrupts her narrative to suggest that, with the benefit of retrospection, she now understands her experience more clearly than she did at the time. By acknowledging alternate ways of perceiving the story’s original events, however, the governess may cloud the truth more than clarify it.
The Prologue itself adds more filters to the governess’s tale. She entrusted her manuscript to Douglas—the esteemed raconteur of the Prologue—shortly before she died. Douglas, in turn, gave the manuscript to the unnamed narrator of the Prologue, whose “exact transcript […] made much later” (6) serves as the novella’s text. Thus, the governess’s story has undergone numerous iterations before becoming the book in the reader’s hands: The Turn of the Screw. This narrative-within-a-narrative structure creates gaps between the story, the storytellers, and the story’s audience, and so invites—even promotes—speculation on the omissions, evasions, repressions, and distortions that may riddle the text. James’s novella might be what it appears—a fantastic ghost story—or it could be the manifestation of hidden agendas and desires.
These first three sections also hint at a slippage between innocent appearances and reality with respect to 10-year-old Miles. Christian ideals inform the governess’s description of both children, reflecting her upbringing as a parson’s daughter. She marvels at Flora’s “angelic beauty,” deciding “there could be no uneasiness in a connexion with anything so beatific as the radiant image of” (10) the little girl. Likewise, the governess swoons over Miles’s incredible beauty and proclaims he has “the same positive fragrance of purity, in which I had from the first moment seen his little sister” (17). Associating pure innocence with such beauty, the young governess discredits the schoolmaster’s intimations of Miles’s wickedness, but her older self—the story’s narrator—warns, “it was a trap” (18). Ambiguity and doubt will soon confound easy assumptions about beauty, innocence, childhood, and corruption.
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