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    The Turn of the Screw
    The Turn of the Screw
    The Turn of the Screw
    Ebook159 pages2 hours

    The Turn of the Screw

    By Henry James and Mint Editions

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    "[James] is the most intelligent man of his generation." -T. S. Eliot

    "The economy of horror is carried to its last degree."-Edith Wharton

    "The most hopelessly evil story that we could have read in any literature"-The Independent

    Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw (1898) is one of the most gripping psychological novellas ever written; a grim tale that could equally be a tale of madness or a tale of the supernatural. The depths and meaning of this story has been one of the most fascinating literary debates in all of literature. The intriguing asymmetry of The Turn of the Screw, between the seen vs. unseen, the internal v. the external, and good vs. evil, rises this book beyond what can be described as a simple ghost story.

    The novella begins on Christmas Eve with the recitation of a letter. The story quickly shifts to the perspective of a governess, who is the subject of the strangely ambiguous story. She had been employed by a dashing bachelor to take care of his niece and nephew in a remote country home. To her surprise, she is requested not to reach the uncle of the children under any circumstance. She is smitten by Flora, the little girl, but receives a letter that the boy, Miles, has been expelled from his school and would not be able to return. One evening, strolling outside, the governess is shocked to see a man in the tower of the house, and later in a window. When she describes him to Mrs. Grouse, the maid, she is informed that the description matches that of a former valet, who had died. Later, while at the lake with Flora, the governess sees a second apparition, that of the governess who proceeded her. As the ghosts eventually occupy the house, the governess develops a fearful obsession of the corruption of the children by the terrifying spirits. This gripping work of the unknown and moral decline is one of the most haunting pieces of fiction in the western canon.

    With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Turn of the Screw is both modern and readable.

    Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

    With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMint Editions
    Release dateOct 6, 2020
    ISBN9781513268064
    Author

    Henry James

    Henry James was born in New York in 1843, the younger brother of the philosopher William James, and was educated in Europe and America. He left Harvard Law School in 1863, after a year's attendance, to concentrate on writing, and from 1869 he began to make prolonged visits to Europe, eventually settling in England in 1876. His literary output was both prodigious and of the highest quality: more than ten outstanding novels including his masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady; countless novellas and short stories; as well as innumerable essays, letters, and other pieces of critical prose. Known by contemporary fellow novelists as 'the Master', James died in Kensington, London, in 1916.

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    Reviews for The Turn of the Screw

    3.5/5

    2,157 ratings61 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This story is about a young lady who work in a rich house as governess.She looks after two children.Their name are Flora and Miles.They enjoyed living in that house.But they get to realize existence of ghost.I think she is very brave woman.If I saw a ghost,I move immediately and quit job.Perhaps I couldn't think about two children and protect them.
    • 4/5
      Like most novels with ambiguous endings, this one has had me thinking over the past few days. It's a haunted house story, in the sense that the narrative follows a young governess as she moves into a country estate to be faced with the pair of ghosts that haunt the two children in her care, but it's by no means the typical "chills & thrills"-type horror novel. There's little scary about these supernatural beings but the fact that they seem bent on corrupting the children in some way, continuing the negative influence they'd had while alive. An influence towards what, one wonders, as there are implications but it's never made explicit. In fact, the majority of the novel is concerned with this sense of taboo - wrongs so unspeakable but titillating the characters can only speak around them in innuendo, trying to force each other into revelation first. I'd definitely recommend giving this a read, but expect (and embrace!) the loose ends.
    • 3/5
      James certainly creates a haunting atmosphere, relentlessly ratcheting up the tension throughout this tale of the evil forces confronting the young governess who arrives at a large Victorian house to look after two seemingly cherubic orphans, Mile and Flora.However, at times I found James's highly stylized writing almost impenetrable (to a far great er degree than I had experienced with some of his longer works). Thomas Hardy said of James that he wrote with "a ponderously warm manner of saying nothing in infinite sentences". Well perhaps he should know!, However, on this occasion I wouldn't disagree at all. In this story James seems more concerned with showing how elaborately he could write than in delivering a flowing story.
    • 3/5
      The antiquated grammar and long sentences makes this book a little difficult to read. However, once the cadence is mastered, the story is filled with brilliant insights. The great thing about this book is that it can be read at face value as a ghost story or more in depth as a psychological and sexual thriller.
    • 2/5
      I tried to read this classic Victorian story of haunted children years ago, but quickly gave up as I could not cut my way through the impenetrable language in which it was written; this time, I have succeeded in reading it, but I cannot say I have enjoyed the experience (and if it had been a full length novel rather than a novella of 117 pages in my edition, I probably would have failed a second time to get through it). I am a considerable reader of classic Victorian novels and have no problem with the more challenging language in which they are often written, compared to more modern writing, but here the language is often so opaque that I frequently read a sentence four or five times and still could not divine its meaning. The effort in doing so does not repay, as I found the story to have no real atmosphere and to be hardly chilling at all, except at brief moments and at the very end. A disappointment that for me does not deserve its high reputation.
    • 4/5
      I don't think it has to be interpreted as either/or imagination or ghosts. I think it can be both. I also think there's some interesting things implied about the relationship between the governess and the older boy.
    • 3/5
      The story of a governess whose sexual repressions cause her to believe that the children she is caring for are in danger of attack by an evil male spirit. So real is the spirit to her that she in turn terrorizes the youngsters. The reader likewise becomes confused. Is the ghost real or is it a figment of her repressed imagination? Hence the supernatural element of the story. The Freudian themes and symbols, she sees him on a tower (phallic anyone?), as well as the possibility of implanting in others one's own beliefs and memories, keeps the work suspenseful and the reader engaged.
    • 3/5
      Not much to say about this one. It had great potential to be a really creepy Halloween tale, but just fell flat for me.

      The writing was very good and typical of the writing in the late 1800s.
    • 2/5
      A tale of a ghost in Victorian England.
    • 4/5
      I like the ambiguity of the ghosts, it is the redeeming aspect of the story. Otherwise, I am convinced that woman is crazy and much of the dialogue seemed annoyingly unrealistic. "oh you know you know!" I guess no one could speak plainly back then? It is a quick read. I gave four insead of three stars because I think some aspects just didn't translate over time and the book deserves some credit for originaity when written.
    • 4/5
      Terrific and short little ghost story -- ends with lots of unanswered questions. As I was reading, the tone really reminded me of the movie "The Others." After finishing the book I found out that the movie is in fact very loosely based on the book. This is one of the books referenced on "Lost" as well.
    • 1/5
      Against my better judgment, I read this, my second Henry James story. So tedious! The exquisite sensitivities of his protagonist are absurd and prevent her from achieving a simple solution on every page. The protagonist and James' prose were exasperating enough to overwhelm the psychological tension and creepiness that this story is supposed to exhibit so well. William remains my favorite of the James brothers, for sure. I'll do my best to avoid Henry in the future.
    • 3/5
      I really wanted to find this scary, but it's just too Victorian for me to take it seriously. (Oh, the scandal of a governess having a romantic fling! Oh, the horrors of young children keeping secrets from their elders! *sigh*)
    • 2/5
      Intense? No. Boring.
    • 1/5
      Disappointing ending. I wanted more talk from the men in the room in which the story was being told. Annoying superfluous narratives.
    • 3/5
      I had a hard time with the language on this one...tough to follow. And I was continually frustrated with the governness in regards to Miles--if she wanted to know why he was kicked out of school, she should have asked him from the beginning, or written a letter to the headmaster!! It just seemed really odd that she decided not to mention it to him at all when he first came home. There was a lot of communication that was not happening. I did like the psychological element to it, and the possibly unreliable narrator. I was hoping it would be creepier than it turned out to be! I just didn't feel as much of an emotional connection to the characters.
    • 3/5
      This book by Henry James is a ghost story. The story is told by an unnamed governess who takes her first job as governess of two children. She is delighted with her charges but soon thinks they are scheming against her and then she gets them alone and accuses them. The author's style is ambiguous and I have more questions than answers after reading this novella.
    • 1/5
      I've never read any Henry James before (a terrible admission for an English graduate) so I really wanted to love this book. I didn't.I thought the language was stilted and unnecessary, the story was something and nothing hugely padded out with superfluous narrative and the characters two dimensional. Plus it didn't scare me at all. Some ghost story!!
    • 3/5
      A second chance at Henry James. This one was still pretty wordy, but it pulled you along. Are there really ghosts? Do the others see them or know? Are they evil spirits? What is it they want?

      There is a tension that runs through the whole book that ebbs and flows. There is also the thought that maybe some one is mad.

      Definitely a good ghost story.
    • 3/5
      A little novel about a dear little boy and a dear little girl, who are plagued by ghosts of of their previous caretakers, who may or may not have taken part in little perversions. The little children live in a mansion full of little rooms, run by a governess who may be a little crazy. The plot suffers from a little bit of ambiguity. I guess it's time to read a dozen critical essays on this classic. Until then, 3 - more than a little generous - stars.
    • 5/5
      A great edition of the FIRST edition of Henry James's most popular story.
    • 4/5
      'The Turn of the Screw' isn't really about ghosts. James explores the debilitating effects of the sexual repression pervasive under the absurd 'morals' of the Victorian age. The governess is clearly unstable - the 'turn of the screw' is a reference to her insanity. The spooks in the novel are pedophilia and patriarchal repression, both the direct product of Victorian mores.I found James's style too heavy. Between his long, tortuous sentences, and the subject matter, the novel is a tough read - despite its brevity. To James's credit, his execution of the unreliable narrator technique is impressive.The most remarkable aspect of the book is the sensitive subject matter, and James's success in avoiding censorship.'The Innocents' (1960) with Deborah Kerr is a great screen adaptation of 'Turn of the Screw.' Look it up, it's well worth watching!
    • 5/5
      Haunting and haunted and ambiguous. Don't read this for a pat ending.
    • 4/5
      Very interesting gothic ghost (maybe?) story. Wonderful unreliable narrator who may be mad and imagining the whole thing. Or maybe the ghosts are real. Or perhaps she is mad, but isn't imagining it at all.
    • 4/5
      Tangled Victorian prose spoils this otherwise good ghost story. The scene where the governess meets the spectre of Peter Quint on the stairs is genuinely scary. I don't think I would read this one again just for enjoyment, so I'm going to register & release it on BookCrossing.
    • 4/5
      Any writer can make a cemetery or haunted house scary, but a good writer can make terrifying the absolutely ordinary. Henry James does this in Turn of the Screw, which is a ghost story about a governess who finds herself stuck with loving but haunted charges.This mini-novel is densely written, so if you're fresh off Stephen King and want blood, gore, and one-liners, you're not going to find it here. Turn of the Screw is an old-fashioned gothic story, full of expensive manors and apparitions in the study. But if you can get through the dense language, you'll find a terrific atmosphere. At first everything will seem normal, but a sense of unease will creep up on you. You'll realize that there's something not quite right with the children or the governess. You'll feel the macabre before you can even put a name to it, and you'll start to question what is real and what is psychological. This is horror the way it used to be, and the way it should be again.
    • 5/5
      Even though the English is not the easiest, the books reads like a charm. The turn of the screw really is a great story that gets under your skin.
    • 4/5
      Is the absence of explanations that makes this book interesting. Too many unknowns and just some answers
    • 4/5
      Read this about 4 times in college, and I was thinking about it today (thinking about how much I enjoyed discussing literature at length and writing essays about my crazy interpretations). I enjoyed arguing a thesis about what was actually haunting the house...I believe I argued that it was a forbidden lust or something.
    • 3/5
      Well, this was a strange little book and not at all what I expected from Henry James. I think I need someone to explain it to me. This is what I understood:a young governess is hired by a London gentleman to go to his country house and teach his young niece and nephew; the nephew was away at boarding school but has been sent home in disgrace and is not welcome back; the governess sees a strange man peering into a window but when she goes outside to find him he has disappeared; later she sees him on an upper story of the house; while out with the little girl the governess also sees a strange woman standing across the lake from them; these two ghosts seem to have some hold over the two children; the housekeeper identifies the two phantoms as a man who was the owner's valet and the previous governess who had a sexual relationship.Strange little book although I must say Carole Boyd did a great job of narrating it.

    Book preview

    The Turn of the Screw - Henry James

    Chapter I

    I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in town, to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad days—found myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake. In this state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping, swinging coach that carried me to the stopping place at which I was to be met by a vehicle from the house. This convenience, I was told, had been ordered, and I found, toward the close of the June afternoon, a commodious fly in waiting for me. Driving at that hour, on a lovely day, through a country to which the summer sweetness seemed to offer me a friendly welcome, my fortitude mounted afresh and, as we turned into the avenue, encountered a reprieve that was probably but a proof of the point to which it had sunk. I suppose I had expected, or had dreaded, something so melancholy that what greeted me was a good surprise. I remember as a most pleasant impression the broad, clear front, its open windows and fresh curtains and the pair of maids looking out; I remember the lawn and the bright flowers and the crunch of my wheels on the gravel and the clustered treetops over which the rooks circled and cawed in the golden sky. The scene had a greatness that made it a different affair from my own scant home, and there immediately appeared at the door, with a little girl in her hand, a civil person who dropped me as decent a curtsy as if I had been the mistress or a distinguished visitor. I had received in Harley Street a narrower notion of the place, and that, as I recalled it, made me think the proprietor still more of a gentleman, suggested that what I was to enjoy might be something beyond his promise.

    I had no drop again till the next day, for I was carried triumphantly through the following hours by my introduction to the younger of my pupils. The little girl who accompanied Mrs. Grose appeared to me on the spot a creature so charming as to make it a great fortune to have to do with her. She was the most beautiful child I had ever seen, and I afterward wondered that my employer had not told me more of her. I slept little that night—I was too much excited; and this astonished me, too, I recollect, remained with me, adding to my sense of the liberality with which I was treated. The large, impressive room, one of the best in the house, the great state bed, as I almost felt it, the full, figured draperies, the long glasses in which, for the first time, I could see myself from head to foot, all struck me—like the extraordinary charm of my small charge—as so many things thrown in. It was thrown in as well, from the first moment, that I should get on with Mrs. Grose in a relation over which, on my way, in the coach, I fear I had rather brooded. The only thing indeed that in this early outlook might have made me shrink again was the clear circumstance of her being so glad to see me. I perceived within half an hour that she was so glad—stout, simple, plain, clean, wholesome woman—as to be positively on her guard against showing it too much. I wondered even then a little why she should wish not to show it, and that, with reflection, with suspicion, might of course have made me uneasy.

    But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a connection with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my little girl, the vision of whose angelic beauty had probably more than anything else to do with the restlessness that, before morning, made me several times rise and wander about my room to take in the whole picture and prospect; to watch, from my open window, the faint summer dawn, to look at such portions of the rest of the house as I could catch, and to listen, while, in the fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter, for the possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural and not without, but within, that I had fancied I heard. There had been a moment when I believed I recognized, faint and far, the cry of a child; there had been another when I found myself just consciously starting as at the passage, before my door, of a light footstep. But these fancies were not marked enough not to be thrown off, and it is only in the light, or the gloom, I should rather say, of other and subsequent matters that they now come back to me. To watch, teach, form little Flora would too evidently be the making of a happy and useful life. It had been agreed between us downstairs that after this first occasion I should have her as a matter of course at night, her small white bed being already arranged, to that end, in my room. What I had undertaken was the whole care of her, and she had remained, just this last time, with Mrs. Grose only as an effect of our consideration for my inevitable strangeness and her natural timidity. In spite of this timidity—which the child herself, in the oddest way in the world, had been perfectly frank and brave about, allowing it, without a sign of uncomfortable consciousness, with the deep, sweet serenity indeed of one of Raphael’s holy infants, to be discussed, to be imputed to her, and to determine us—I feel quite sure she would presently like me. It was part of what I already liked Mrs. Grose herself for, the pleasure I could see her feel in my admiration and wonder as I sat at supper with four tall candles and with my pupil, in a high chair and a bib, brightly facing me, between them, over bread and milk. There were naturally things that in Flora’s presence could pass between us only as prodigious and gratified looks, obscure and roundabout allusions.

    And the little boy—does he look like her? Is he too so very remarkable?

    One wouldn’t flatter a child. "Oh, miss, most remarkable. If you think well of this one!"—and she stood there with a plate in her hand, beaming at our companion, who looked from one of us to the other with placid heavenly eyes that contained nothing to check us.

    Yes; if I do—?

    "You will be carried away by the little gentleman!"

    Well, that, I think, is what I came for—to be carried away. I’m afraid, however, I remember feeling the impulse to add, I’m rather easily carried away. I was carried away in London!

    I can still see Mrs. Grose’s broad face as she took this in. In Harley Street?

    In Harley Street.

    Well, miss, you’re not the first—and you won’t be the last.

    Oh, I’ve no pretension, I could laugh, to being the only one. My other pupil, at any rate, as I understand, comes back tomorrow?

    Not tomorrow—Friday, miss. He arrives, as you did, by the coach, under care of the guard, and is to be met by the same carriage.

    I forthwith expressed that the proper as well as the pleasant and friendly thing would be therefore that on the arrival of the public conveyance I should be in waiting for him with his little sister; an idea in which Mrs. Grose concurred so heartily that I somehow took her manner as a kind of comforting pledge—never falsified, thank heaven!—that we should on every question be quite at one. Oh, she was glad I was there!

    What I felt the next day was, I suppose, nothing that could be fairly called a reaction from the cheer of my arrival; it was probably at the most only a slight oppression produced by a fuller measure of the scale, as I walked round them, gazed up at them, took them in, of my new circumstances. They had, as it were, an extent and mass for which I had not been prepared and in the presence of which I found myself, freshly, a little scared as well as a little proud. Lessons, in this agitation, certainly suffered some delay; I reflected that my first duty was, by the gentlest arts I could contrive, to win the child into the sense of knowing me. I spent the day with her out-of-doors; I arranged with her, to her great satisfaction, that it should be she, she only, who might show me the place. She showed it step by step and room by room and secret by secret, with droll, delightful, childish talk about it and with the result, in half an hour, of our becoming immense friends. Young as she was, I was struck, throughout our little tour, with her confidence and courage with the way, in empty chambers and dull corridors, on crooked staircases that made me pause and even on the summit of an old machicolated square tower that made me dizzy, her morning music, her disposition to tell me so many more things than she asked, rang out and led me on. I have not seen Bly since the day I left it, and I daresay that to my older and more informed eyes it would now appear sufficiently contracted. But as my little conductress, with her hair of gold and her frock of blue, danced before me round corners and pattered down passages, I had the view of a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy sprite, such a place as would somehow, for diversion of the young idea, take all color out of storybooks and fairytales. Wasn’t it just a storybook over which I had fallen adoze and adream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, embodying a few features of a building still older, half-replaced and half-utilized, in which I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship. Well, I was, strangely, at the

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