The Turn of the Screw Essay -- Literary Analysis, Henry James

Superficially, Henry packs The Turn of the Screw seems to reinforce the view quo of American literature as male, whereby men are viewed as having power oer women leaving women to become mere objects. James creates a nameless female person protagonist whose story is told through the guise of a male narrator. She becomes an object viewed by Douglass audience and is used simply as means for the arrive at on Harley Street to avoid being bothered by his charges. She is then set up as nave and love-struck, willing to do just slightly anything, including risking her let sanity, for the sake of keeping the master undisturbed. However, on closer examination, James actually creates a novella that subverts the traditional idea of men having power over women as it is the governess who has the final word in her story, not the male Douglas, and it is the male heir Miles who becomes the scapegoat leaving the governess free, awfully clever and nice (James 24).Jamess unfinished frame tale create s frustration and confusion but his experiment with form also draws attention to what has largely been left unconscious. Through Douglass initial telling of the governesss story she is reduced to a nameless object that they all raptly listen about rather than listen to. While at the start, Douglas does micturate power over the governesss story, in the end it is the governess who has the final word and Douglas, who disappears after only the first seven pages, is never to be heard from again. James relinquishes power to the governess and allows her to participate as there is no need to return to the male voice once she takes over. Furthermore, as the governess does remain nameless throughout her own narrative this hardly is a power issues as both the master on... ...til finally the air was clear (116-117). In this way the governess is able to reverse the roles of passive voice/female and active/male as she denies Quint the power of his gaze and instead forces him to be the object of her gaze.Through his distortion of traditional male dominated structures and ideas, James is able to not only draw attention to the inequality of mens power over women but he also uses the similar devices to subvert this binary opposition. Through a distortion of the assumed patriarchal order the governess is able to adopt male characteristics in order to wrest tush some of the power initially taken from her. Whether consciously or unconsciously Jamess unfinished frame, disturbing death of Miles, and the disappearance of Quints ghost all point to a hidden power within the governess allowing her to survive long after her weaker male counterparts.