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Episode 527 - The Turn of the Screw - Part 2 (Patreon)

Published:
2020-12-14 17:00:04
Imported:
2021-07
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What do you say to TWO episodes of Henry James classic THE TURN OF THE SCREW?

Special thanks once again to reader Rachel Lackey!

Next up: Comments and a THIRD Turn!

Comments

Anonymous

Turn of the Screw II: Quint's Back!! Governess: I had a hunch it was Quint's back. Mrs. Grose: You had a hunch? Governess: No, I have no hunch. Nor did Quint, now that I think of it, although it would have made his back no more ghastly. Mrs. Grose: So how did you *know* it was Quint? Governess: I didn't *know*, but I had a hunch. Mrs. Grose: ... ... ... How did you get this job?

Anonymous

Next -- Turn of the Screw III: 2 Fine 2 Fair

Andrew M. Reichart

Chad could've just said "my autobiography," but he knew it'd add a whole layer of comedy genius to refer to "*volume 1 of* my autobiography." Picture me standing up and clapping loudly, heedless of whether or not anyone else joins me to make it a standing ovation.

Anonymous

I never had any desire to read this book but on your recommendation I did. I'm going to read it again. It's so chewy and has so many interpretations possible. Bang up job this year sirs!

Anonymous

- "Alright, let's plow through some more of this... incomprehensible text." I know Rachel has her own podcast, which is great, but please bring her on this show as a guest commentator sometime. I indeed found the opening text incomprehensible, but her reading made it much easier to wrap my head around and assimilate and spit out an imitation, just in time for the winter blood test. - It occurred to me that The Turn of the Screw came out between The Great God Pan and The White People — two other supernatural horror stories into which the author seemingly slipped subtext (if not the outright implication) of childhood sexual abuse. They found ways to evoke the ultimate horror in their mere language.

Anonymous

Many thanks for more of your patent (pending) thoughtful silliness. Or silly thoughtfulness. It is much appreciated. Special thanks to Chad for a little extra autobiography of a very dark sort. I do hope you are as comfortable walking with that wound as you can be.

Anonymous

I really don't mean to be flippant, but I always thought sexual abuse of children was the one constant subtext in all gothic horror, so much so that it has become a cliche more or less in modern horror, though King and Barker often imploy it in better (i.e. horrible realism) ways. I think it worth noting how Lovecraft never thought to use this trope at all. Howard has child murder directly and indirectly set in a world of slavery with all that implies, but H.P. never uses the abused child motif. I wonder if he says anything about this in Supernatural Literature or in any of his correspondence.

Anonymous
>>49562989

I don’t think it’s true Lovecraft never used it; he just didn’t use children as characters often. When families exist, there is a whiff of generational predation. Wilbur Whateley and his brother were created as tools, possibly by incest (not sure I agree with that last bit, but). There is an uncomfortable sexuality in Ephraim Waite’s psychic cannibalization of his daughter, and the Case of Charles Dexter Ward has similar overtones. While Lovecraft pretty much never depicts children or open sexuality in his stories, there’s a definite theme of characters being the objects of the goals of previous generations rather than people to be nurtured.

Anonymous

Putting a child sex abuse subtext into the story really changes the horror of the entire story for me. I never read that into it before. Usually I just pick up what is on the surface and don’t even think about diving deeper without prodding. Now that it is pointed out I can totally see that interpretation. It makes me wonder what other classic stories I’m missing the now obvious subtext for.

Anonymous

Are there any good studies on what people of various decades have projected onto this story? My prof in the late ‘80s said nobody for a couple of decades suspected the governess might be somewhat or completely unreliable, and the suggested evil is so very vague. Seems designed to elicit our own deepest anxieties.

Anonymous
>>49555773

Machen was a master at subtext in his stories, especially the White People (no, not the craft brew fanatics). The lack of explicit description of the horrors is what makes that particular tale terrifying. James does much the same, and similarly is the reason his work is equally frightening to the reader.

Anonymous

I am not sure if it has been brought up before, but I believe "Something Wicked This way Comes" may be appropriate for the podcast.

Anonymous

There isn’t any doubt that we can interpret that the children could have been sexually abused. Whether James intended this to be an interpretation is left to some question. I have been reading through his correspondence and writings about the novel (some are reprinted in the Norton Critical Edition I’ve owned), but none really discusses the experience intended by the children. He does write at length about what he intended to be the role of the ghosts, which I think helps us understand his general intentions for the reader. In the preface for the original 1908 New York edition, he wrote: “I had to decide in fine between having my apparitions correct and having my story ‘good’ - that is producing my impression of the dreadful, my designed horror. Good ghosts…make poor subjects, and it was clear that from the first my hovering prowling blighting presences, my pair of abnormal agents, would have to depart altogether from the rules. They would be agents in fact; there would be laid on them the dire duty of causing the situation to reek with an air of Evil. This is to say, I recognise again, that Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are not ‘ghosts’ at all, as we now know the ghost, but goblins, elves, imps, demons as loosely constructed as those of the old trials for witchcraft.” He goes on to suggest that the literary device of Quint and Jessel is to be vehicles that others experience as the sinister, and to be preyed upon and brutalized by that evil. As for what he intended for those experiences to be for the children, he did write one very illuminating statement: “What, in the last analysis, had I to give the sense of? Of their being, the haunting pair, capable, as the phrase is, of everything - that is of exerting, in respect to the children, the very worst action small victims so conditioned might be conceived as subject to. What would be then, on reflexion, this utmost conceivability?… There i s for such a case no eligible absolute of the wrong; it remains relative to fifty other elements, a matter of appreciation, speculation, imagination - these things moreover quite exactly in the light of…the reader's experience. Only make the reader's general vision of evil intense enough…and his own experience, his own imagination, his own sympathy (with the children) and horror (of their false friends) will supply him quite sufficiently with all the particulars. Make him think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications.” So this is the brilliance of James’ novel. He realized that it was far more effective to introduce the implications of evil enough that the reader would fill in the gaps with ideas far more sinister, far more discomforting than any he could state overtly. Further, James realized that there were too many possible interpretations of evil acts that it would be better to give the reader the ability to decide those. It’s entirely within reason that the children would have been sexually abused (or worse, whatever that could be), as James intended us to read what we wanted into the story. Whether James himself thought of this as an interpretation is likely, but I haven’t found him writing about it yet. But the choice by James to write the story in this manner is what makes it one of the most disturbing of its genre, and one of the scariest of its era.

Anonymous

Oh my lord, I hopped in the way back and listened to supernatural horror in literature, specifically part two and you guys are super interested in this story, so cool to see you guys hitting this one ^-^ and gal! Rachel is incredible. As an aspiring VOA I love it when you bring in all sorts of wonderful narrators

Anonymous

I do think that assuming child sexual abuse is "the answer" to the story is probably a mistake. It's certainly an answer, but there are others. Maybe it is ghosts, and Miles got sent home for saying creepy ghost shit to the other students. Maybe Quint and Jessel made him dissatisfied with the class system, and he was agitating with his classmates. Maybe he was rude to a nasty teacher and was dismissed for it, and he and Flora are taking pleasure in mildly harassing an authority figure, but they don't realize how fragile she is. We only have the Governess's word that they are nice children; she's not the best judge of character.

Anonymous

While I really liked The Haunting of Bly Manor, once of the most criticized aspects of it that I have seen, is that it isn’t “scary” or “horror”. If they took the feel good love story out of it and put in your interpretation of the child abuse. That show would have honestly been far far more intense and horrifying and I’m shocked they glorified these characters now. Even if that’s not the “accepted” vision of the author as we really can’t know. After hearing the analysis by you, I cannot believe they wouldn’t have picked up on this. It could have added that true horror aspect and dread that was missing

Anonymous

Thanks for finally covering this story! I've been waiting on it since I've started listening to your podcast. Being a musician I of course knew Britten's haunting opera first, and only came to actually read the novel recently. Talking about a slow burn...oh Lord. The way the narration tightens towards the end is a truly sickening experience, and surely intentionally a literally depicition of the "turning of the Screw". If you don't know the opera yet, give it a shot...it's something else.

Anonymous

Just finished this story (picking up from where this episode left off) in a feverish burst on a stormy winter night (it’s about 2:30 am now) and boy, was I wrong about this story. The story itself really does feeling like a slow, deliberate turn of a screw. With each passing incident and revelation, the confusion and uneasy feeling slowly builds giving the reader a sick feeling in the pit of the stomach. I won’t spoil anything, but I think that the genius of the story is how open to interpretation it is. Personally, I think the sexual abuse angle does fit and seems to be one of the most plausible answers. However, there is as much contradiction for it as there is evidence for it. That goes for pretty much every interpretation I’ve read online. I don’t think it’s a story I’ll ever reread but it is one that I will carry with me for the rest of my life, lurking in my mind.

Anonymous

As others have said, I believe James intended the ghosts to be real. I think there is some evidence in his correspondence with other writers that Quint and Jessel were supposed to be manifestations of evil. I can see the ghosts as being representations of abuse both literal and metaphorical. The effects of trauma don't necessarily go away once the physical source is removed. The impacts can linger and have long lasting consequences for the victim and those around them. Further, the ghosts appear in the places and manner they do to highlight the idea that Bly manor used to be someplace safe for the children and no longer is. No matter where they go in the house or on the grounds they are confronted with the events they experienced in the past. The Governess seeing the ghosts and everyone around her denying their existence is another good metaphor for how abuse victims are often discredited by others because nobody wants to acknowledge what is taking place. It is much easier to pretend that something isn't happening rather than confront the evil. My reaction to this story was much more visceral than most of the other horror or weird fiction I've read. It left me feeling much more unnerved and sickened than an Elder Thing ever could.