Criticism > Short Story Criticism > The Turn of the Screw, Henry James - Juliet McMaster (essay date 1969)

The Turn of the Screw, Henry James - Juliet McMaster (essay date 1969)

Juliet McMaster (essay date 1969)

SOURCE: “‘The Full Image of a Repetition’ in The Turn of the Screw,” in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 6, No. 4, Summer, 1969, pp. 377–82.

[In the following essay, McMaster discusses the significance of James's ironic use of image and perception in his novella.]

When the governess in The Turn of the Screw has just been terrified by seeing the apparition of Peter Quint looking in at her through the dining-room window at Bly, she tells us,

It was confusedly present to me that I ought to place myself where he had stood. I did so; I applied my face to the pane and looked, as he had looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, to show me exactly what his range had been, Mrs. Grose, as I had done for himself just before, came in from the hall. With this I had the full image of a repetition of what already occurred. She saw me as I had seen my own visitant.

...

[The entire page is 2817 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass