The Turn of the Screw

the turn of the screw Most of them [the critics] argue that the governess, in James tale, is neurotic or insane and sees no apparitions: she merely records her own hallucinations and thier damaging effect on two innocent children (Spilka 245). Like the children, she lives in a culture where sexual “horrors” are invested with religious dread, and the term “horror” connects natural with infernal realms (Spilka 248). But in doing so she enables James to establish …

…with her frustration (Heller 11). The governess hallucinates the ghosts and contrails an account of their purposes in an unconscious attempt to satisfy her unacknowledged sexual desire for the children’s uncle (Heller 11). The governess has many other encounters with these two ghosts, and yet no one else in the entire house has. The governess can clearly be labeled as a neurotic character because the ghosts are of her imagination triggered by her repression and childhood.