henry james the turn of the screw and other stories

His plots centered on personal relationships, the proper exercise of power in such relationships, and other moral questions. He is primarily known for a series of major novels in which he portrayed the encounter of America with Europe. He spent much of his life in England and became a British subject shortly before his death. Henry James, OM (1843-1916), son of theologian Henry James Sr., brother of the philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James, was an American-born author, one of the founders and leaders of a school of realism in fiction. Is it a subtle, self-conscious exploration of the haunted house of Victorian culture, filled with echoes of sexual and social unease? Or is it simply, 'the most hopelessly evil story that we have ever read'?

'The Turn of the Screw' is probably the most famous, certainly the most eerily equivocal, of all ghostly tales. But are the appearances what they seem? Is what appears to the governess a ghost or a hallucination? Who else sees what she sees? The reader may wonder whether the children are victims of corruption from beyond the grave, or victims of the governess's `infernal imagination', which torments but also entrals her? Like the other tales collected here - 'Sir Edmund Orme', 'Owen Wingrave', and 'The Friends of the Friends' - 'The Turn of the Screw' is to all immediate appearances a ghost story. It is Peter Quint, the master's dissolute valet, and he has come for little Miles. She sees the figure of an unknown man on the tower and his face at the window. A young, inexperienced governess is charged with the care of Miles and Flora, two small children abandoned by their uncle at his grand country house.

Henry james the turn of the screw and other stories