Criticism > Short Story Criticism > The Turn of the Screw, Henry James - Edmund Wilson (essay date 1934)

The Turn of the Screw, Henry James - Edmund Wilson (essay date 1934)

Edmund Wilson (essay date 1934)

SOURCE: “The Ambiguity of Henry James,” in The Question of Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by F. W. Dupee, Henry Holt and Co., 1945, pp. 160–90.

[In the following essay, originally published in 1934, Wilson presents a psychoanalytical interpretation of The Turn of the Screw in which he regards the ghosts of the story as illusions seen only by the governess.]

A discussion of Henry James's ambiguity may appropriately begin with The Turn of the Screw. This story, which seems to have proved more fascinating to the general reading public than anything else of James's except Daisy Miller, apparently conceals another horror behind the ostensible one. I do not know who first propounded the theory; but Miss Edna Kenton, whose insight into James is profound, has been one of its principal exponents, and the late Charles Demuth did a set of illustrations for the story...

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