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The Turn of the Screw, Part 1 , by Henry James
Henry James was raised as a member of the American elite—shuttling between the New and the Old Continent—under the watchful attention, customary to the time, of governesses and household staff. How titillating it must have been to reflect these attentions back in devising a plot for “The Turn of the Screw.” This renowned ghost story unfolds on the grounds of a refined English estate, home to two orphaned children. Here, James pushes the question of sanity onto their governess, and the question of propriety onto two prior members of the estate’s staff, both since deceased under suspicious circumstances, and the question of collusion onto the young wards.
How deliciously twisted.
So quietly terrifying is this tale that James, rather marvelously, scared even himself in its preparation, telling poet Edmund Gosse, “I had to correct the proofs of my ghost story last night, and when I had finished them I was so frightened that I was afraid to go upstairs to bed!”
It is quite a feat, frankly, that James was able to develop such an authentic scare given that he rather regretted having to write it. Despite his well-heeled upbringing, the author found himself in financial straits. To solve for this, he lowered himself to taking on serialized magazine work, acknowledging his pained reluctance in a letter to friend William Dean Howells:
All thanks for your appreciation, & your wife’s, of my Literature drivel. I have succumbed, in that matter, purely to the pecuniary argument, backing H. Harper’s earnest approach. It means £40 a month, which I simply couldn’t afford not to accept. But I am too out of it all, & too ignorant. Perhaps, indeed, that helps & is a merit. You’re delightful about the T. of the Screw-the most abject, down-on-all-fours pot-boiler, pure & simple, that a proud man brought low ever perpetrated. He will do it again & again, too, even for the same scant fee: it’s only a question of a chance!
Drivel! History certainly doesn’t think so. “T. of the Screw,” as he called it, became one of those stories that refused to fade away, largely because its many ambiguities prompt continued intrigue and interrogation, and James eventually came to appreciate it as a valid pillar of his catalog.
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