![]() ![]() Yet neither metaphysical nor psychological readings proved able to contain this story, whose details stubbornly refuse to be explained away. She, in turn, was a “neurotic case of sex repression”, possibly acting out of a sublimated desire for her employer, the children’s uncle. Metaphysical readers chose to “ believe the governess ” and believe in the ghosts, while psychological readers – most famously American writer Edmund Wilson in his 1934 essay – maintained that “the ghosts are not real ghosts … but merely the hallucinations of the governess”. This influence is not only spectral but quite possibly sexual in nature.Īs James’s opening line predicted, “ the story … held us ”, and its readers quickly fell into two main camps. It is the story of a young governess who comes to suspect that her deceased predecessor, Miss Jessel, and the late valet Peter Quint, are exerting a continued influence over her orphaned charges, Miles and Flora. Adaptors’ enduring fascination with James’s “ irresponsible little fiction ” can be summed up in a word: ambiguity. Since then, there have been more than 25 others. ![]() New on Netflix, The Haunting of Bly Manor is the latest in a long line of adaptations of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898) that began in 1954 with Benjamin Britten’s opera. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |