The Turn of the Screw

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. The governess sees Mrs. Grose as a “simple plain clean wholesome woman” (10), but her narrative allows readers to speculate that the housekeeper is a complex character who is manipulating the governess for her own reasons.

• Taking both positions into account, is Mrs. Grose as simple as she appears to the governess? (topic sentence)
• Identify 2-3 examples from the text and analyze how they exemplify the true nature of Mrs. Grose.
• In which ways does Mrs. Grose’s characterization speak to the novella’s larger theme of Ambiguity and The Limits of Knowledge?

2. Although there are no explicit textual references to sexuality, the novella invites the reader to interpret Mrs. Grose’s claim that “Quint was much too free” (32) with the children as having sexual connotations.