The Turn of the Screw

Henry James, acclaimed author of The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians (1886), and The Ambassadors (1903), published the novella The Turn of the Screw in 1898. While James himself dismissed the ghost story as a “potboiler,” literary critics have argued it is a complex study of the narrator’s psychology. This study guide refers to the 1981 Bantam Classics edition of the text, titled The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction.

Plot Summary

The novella begins with a Prologue, in which a man named Douglas introduces a manuscript he plans to read to a small gathering. It was written by a governess, who entrusted the manuscript to Douglas shortly before she died.

Following the Prologue, the governess’s first-person narrative account begins with her arrival at Bly, a country estate in England. Just 20 years old, she has secured her first job as a governess for two orphaned children, Miles and Flora, who reside at Bly. The children’s uncle lives in London and is their guardian. When the governess interviewed for the position with the handsome uncle, she was beguiled by his charms, but he directed her to take full responsibility of the children and never contact him again.