I'm pretty sure that the governess sees Quint and describes him to Mrs. Grose before the governess has heard any description of his appearance. (in the movie The Innocents, the governess sees Quint's portrait, in a locket I think, before she sees the apparition.)
So that's a case for The Turn of the Screw as a ghost story. James cleverly snares readers who might think they are too sophisticated to be interested in a ghost story.
It’s true the governess' description is pretty exact, which supports your reading as a ghost story. And that is probably one of the trip-wires that have kept critics and academics at odds about how to read the book: Which predominates, the ghost story or the psychological?
Still, what I see isn’t “
an ambiguous ghost story” but
an ambiguous story written using the conventions of the ghost story and that may, or may not, be a ghost story. I don’t think there is a definitive answer and it's an exaggeration to say "story of a nutter" rather than, say, story of someone driven by circumstances to extreme and irrational behavior. I do think that James’ emphasis is on her intense emotional state, on her determination to best Miles, shifts emphasis from the ghost story aspect, though it’s certainly reasonable to argue the ghost story aspect is part of the impetus toward the final resolution.
To the best of my knowledge, James kept mum about whether TotS, letting his audience wrangle with the implications of the novel. Also, I don't recall textual evidence to support your assertion that he was in some way critiquing Angelicanism or the lack of social safety nets; the implication of her being sheltered and so unprepared for what she faced at Bly is, I think, all the text really asserts and going beyond that may stretch into speculation. In fairness, though, I'm not familiar enough with the bulk of his work to know if there is a streak throughout of such criticism, though I don’t recall that as part of his reputation. If I’m wrong about that, though, such a thread through his work would further support your argument while its absence wouldn’t necessarily invalidate your reading.
Frankly, I don’t have much evidence to back my reading, which to some degree corresponds with yours, but I believe James was expanding on something begun in the work of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, a writer he spoke well of, and of which “Green Tea” is an example: Ingesting copious amounts of green tea causes the Rev. Mr. Jennings to see a small, monkey-like creature that sees him, too, and begins to appear to him more and more regularly, afflicting him and causing sleeplessness and great nervousness. The question remains, is the creature real, drawn to the Reverend from a different plane of existence, or is the Reverend’s mind at war with itself? And that ending is rather ambiguous, too.
Something similar happens in
The Turn of the Screw. By the time we reach Quint the governess has already demonstrated in her description of getting the job and arriving at Bly a tendency toward drama, certainly encouraged by her interaction with the children's uncle and his adamant conditions of employment. And while one of the innocents here may well be Mrs. Grose, good-natured, dull and unimaginative, the interactions between her and the governess have the quality of an emotional tuning-fork, one's emotions resonating and strengthening off the emotions of the other, magnifying the self-drama already evident in the governess' nature, so that a few times both teeter on hysteria.
I do find the anonymity of the governess suggestive: Why not name her, even if justified as a pseudonym to protect her identity? I suspect James wanted her to represent more than an individual, but then he makes her such a strong personality – and her (metaphoric) wrestling with Miles is nothing if not a conflict of personalities and clash of wills – that I’m not sure how to broaden out my reading. Still, I only mentioned the names as one possible answer to your question of her continued employment as a governess. At that time in England I would expect accurate information about a specific person to be somewhat difficult for prospective employers to access and the potential to build a reputation away from a major catastrophe in your life rather greater than it would become in the 20th century. Ultimately, speculating how she maintained her reputation outside the bounds of the novel is … well, outside the bounds of the novel. We are left with the tragedy of Miles’ death and that somehow she carried on without further extreme incident, also perhaps something of a support of reading it as a ghost story, but also perhaps a support for reading that her extreme behavior stemmed from youth, inexperience and a precise combination of conditions that were not matched in later life, or that she learned enough at Bly to circumvent.
Randy M.
