![]() ![]() Grose of a conversation she has had with Ms. Her memory is unstable and we see that, at certain points, her choice of language betrays more than the words themselves are intended to. The story has been written by the governess herself, in her later life, which means that it is seen solely from her perspective and taken from her memory. James lets the inner narrative have the last word and this could be seen as a deliberate attempt to avoid a definitive resolution. The story is told at a double remove and the narrative frame is never completed. “In revisiting tale for the New York edition, James changed the governess’s ‘I perceived’ to ‘I felt’ at least twice”. Edmund Wilson’s 1934 essay entitled ‘The Ambiguity of Henry James’ has led to serious critical division in relation to the questioning of the surface tale and its subversive undertones. ![]() The most frequently asked question is whether the tale delineates a supernatural haunting or the breakdown of a pathological governess. ![]() “Ambiguity is the essential attribute of The Turn of the Screw, and the issue of whether or not the governess is hallucinating is never intended to be resolved.”Īmbiguous: having more than one meaning, unclear because not distinguishing between alternatives.Īmbiguity is the art of deliberately giving something more than one meaning and ‘The Turn of the Screw’ can certainly be described as an ambiguous tale. ![]()
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