Henry James Jr (1843–1916)

This is one of those books that I hadn’t read despite it being mentioned pretty much every time someone called for a good ghost story. During our latest winter storm I decided it would be a good time to dive into it and for the most part I really liked it. It had excellent pacing and the story was trim, not a lot of extraneous detail. There’s the set up, which is folks gathered around a fire to hear a scary story, the prologue which puts our protagonist in place and then we’re off. show more Strangely the tale just ends and we never get back into the room with the fire. I wonder if James forgot or his editor or what, but those people never show up again. Kind of sloppy if you ask me.

And there’s that ending. Wow. It came on extra suddenly for me because I read it as a Project Gutenberg ebook which has a lot of publishing info at the back so it’s hard to tell exactly where the book ends. Is it me, or does everyone have to read the ending three times to get it straight? And by straight I mean bendy and weird and what?

Spoilers on the move -

I knew it was a psychological horror story going in and that there might be more to the story than what’s on the surface. I don’t want to go so far as to declare an unreliable narrator, but it’s close. Even if what Jane perceived wasn’t real, she believed that it was and to me, that’s not an unreliable narrator, merely a fallible one. Are there the ghosts of servants past haunting the old pile, or is Jane crazy? Does Miles have some sort of symbiotic connection to Peter Quint? Does getting Flora away from the place break hers to Miss Jessel? There are no concrete answers. Instead, James relies on the reader’s interpretation of some pretty unspecific information. For example, just why are these ghosts so evil and is their evil different now than it was in life? Both are branded as villains, but nothing is specifically stated about what they did exactly. It’s hinted that there was an illicit affair going on between them, very improper, and somehow because the children were aware of it, the knowledge corrupted them. Did that lead to Miles’s unknown crime that got him kicked out of school? And speaking of unfathomable and unresolved...what’s with the uncle’s condition that Jane never contact him about the kids? That’s just weird. The whole thing is weird and that’s what makes it fun.

The actual writing, I should warn you, is convoluted. James is fond of the very long sentence populated by many, many commas. At first it was a job getting into the rhythm of his writing, but reading out loud helped, something I find useful for older novels. As you might have guessed, if you’re the type of reader who needs everything explained and tied up neatly, The Turn of the Screw isn’t the ghost story for you. show less

“I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity the appalling alarm of his perhaps being innocent. It was for the instant confounding and bottomless, for if he were innocent, what then on earth was I?”

A young governess accepts a position in a beautiful estate in the English countryside, in Essex. The cosmopolitan uncle entrusts his niece and nephew into her hands and asks not to be disturbed under any show more circumstances. Bly is enormous, the acres endless, the house full of corridors and closed doors. Our unnamed narrator couldn’t be happier. Flora and Miles couldn’t be lovelier. And then, darkness arrives. A man standing on a tower, a woman in black standing by the lake. A strange song and a face at the window.

“I could only get on at all by taking "nature" into my confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course, and unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair front, only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue.”

Having recently watched (for the tenth time…) the marvelous 1961 film The Innocents, I thought that it was time to read one of Henry James’ most controversial works once again. I always choose this as a part of my summer readings. Its sultry atmosphere soon becomes eerie, its underlying sensuality grows within an environment of secrets and charged sexual tension. Suffocating and enticing, cryptic and provoking. Challenging. Hungry. The questions are many. Is everything real? Is the young woman ‘’imagining things’’? Has she created a world of her own, projecting her frustrations upon the ‘’innocents’’? Or has she found herself in a whirlwind of lust and obsession orchestrated by two malevolent spirits who use the children as vessels and instruments? Each reader needs to draw his/her own conclusions. James is not a writer who provides every solution at the end of his works. Even daily, mundane issues and snapshots of ordinary life acquire a different ‘’colour’’ in each novel. The Turn of the Screw is in a league of its own.

“The summer had turned, the summer had gone; the autumn had dropped upon Bly and had blown out half our lights. The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after the performance--all strewn with crumpled playbills.”

Whatever your expectations may be, James created one of the best - if not THE best- Gothic novels of all time. Unique descriptions, commanding atmosphere, a background full of contrasts and dark imagery. The idyllic estate that changes when night falls. Two charming, gifted children that seem rather fascinated with Death, a housemaid that seems to protect every secret of the house. The Turn of the Screw defined the Gothic genre and paved the way for the trope of the Haunted House that is still extremely popular. More than ever, in fact. Whispers, apparitions, murmurs, nightly windows, shadows, a troubled young woman who wants to help and understand. Add desire and a potential incestuous relationship lurking in the future and you have a timeless story.

I read this novella when I was 17. It frustrated me because I was impatient, wanting to have every answer delivered on a silver plate. We discussed the hell out of it in university and I fell in love. I understood that the majority of the finest books written create more questions when their final page is turned. It was this work that gave birth to my fascination with dubious closures. Now, no matter how many times I have read it, its magnetism stays strong.

And I am one of those who side with the heroine. I firmly believe that it was all true. There are many dark forces around us and beyond us. Who's to say for certain?

“I take up my own pen again - the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles. To myself - today - I need say no more. Large and full and high the future still opens. It is now indeed that I may do the work of my life. And I will.”

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ show less

I've read The Turn of the Screw in the past, and though I don't often re-read books, the recent Netflix adaptation inspired me to come back to it. And, it was an interesting experience. Henry James is a master of the uncanny and the eerie, when he chooses to be, and even all these years after The Turn of the Screw was first published, the sense of ungroundedness in this book is still such a powerful thing. All through the book, it's difficult to know what's real and what's not, who to trust show more and who can't be believed. And yet, from moment to moment, the discomfort the reader feels is built from just how realistically this story is presented. All these years later, that style and power remain undiminished.

This is one of those reads that, I suspect, can only truly be experienced to its full potential once. What I mean by that is that the first read has such incredible power--so many twists, eerie moments, and surprises--there's no way to unremember what you've once read. Even though I hadn't read this book for more than a decade, coming back to it was both familiar and unfamiliar--but I couldn't revisit that first reading experience, and the horror and fascination I felt upon first discovering it. Was it still a powerful, worthwhile read? Absolutely. It just wasn't the same as it once was. Perhaps that can be said for most books, but because of the eerie, unfolding progression of this book, I suspect it's more true for this book than most others.

This book is so well-known, what more can be said? If you haven't yet read this book, you should. show less

In The Wings of the Dove, Henry James pours on layers of conscious and subconscious motivations, knowing characterizations, banal (on purpose) dialogue, a whole host of enigmatic "Oh!"s, some delightful Venetian settings, and a perfect last line to what is, on its surface, a pretty standard love triangle / inheritance story with a dash of British classism. Kate Croy is beautiful and sassy, but she has no money and her father is a scoundrel. Her rich aunt Maude has brought her into her home show more as a companion with sights on making a very good marriage to a rich someone, but Kate has fallen in love with the penniless journalist Merton Densher (when else has a romantic lead been named Merton?). Separately, the very rich and very alone and also semi-secretly dying of a mysterious illness American heiress Milly Theale has struck up an intense and sudden friendship with the very New Englandy Susan Stringham and the two of them head off to Europe to have adventures on Milly's dime. Prior to their departure, Milly meets Merton while he is on assignment sending dispatches from America to his paper. And when Milly and Susan get to London, Susan thinks to look up her old boarding school friend, who happens to be Aunt Maude. Merton loves Kate but feels a sisterly friendship for Milly, Milly loves Merton and is fascinated by Kate, Susan is desperately loyal to Milly, Maude loves Milly for her social currency, and Kate loves Merton but also seems to be keeping her options open. Things get ethically dicey when Kate works Merton into agreeing to pretend to love Milly so that she will leave him her money when she dies, which would allow Kate and Merton to get married with Aunt Maude's blessing. While this sounds like a soap opera, the style of writing and the structure of the book make this a much slower and more floaty affair. And, as a person who is not as rich or oddly beautiful or strange as Milly, but who is (not so secretly) living with a terminal illness, I loved that she was more than just a plot point for Kate and Merton's actions to hang off of. Her relationship with her doctor, her intense friendships, and her views on how she wants to spend her remaining time are all complex and unique and very refreshing.

Here's a taste of James, and one of the most delightful descriptions of love at first sight I've ever read:

"They had found themselves looking at each other straight, and for a longer time on end than was usual even at parties in galleries, but that, after all, would have been a small affair, if there hadn't been something else with it. It wasn't, in a word, simply that their eyes had met; other conscious organs, faculties, feelers had met as well, and when Kate afterwards imaged to herself the sharp, deep fact she saw it in the oddest way, as a particular performance. She had observed a ladder against a garden wall, and had trusted herself to to climb it as to be able to see over into the probable garden on the other side. On reaching the top she had found herself face to face with a gentleman engaged in like calculation at the same moment, and the two enquirers had remained confronted on their ladders. The great point was that for the rest of that evening they had been perched they had not climbed down; and indeed, during the time that followed, Kate at least had had the perched feeling -- it was as if she were there aloft without a retreat." show less