Turn of the Screw: The Source of Evil
Asking whether the ghosts in The Turn of the Screw exist is not a rich enough question. Throughout the novella, there are many hints as to whether the ghosts exist. There is one indisputable fact though. The governess, within the confines of the novella, could have no notion of what Peter Quint looked like unless she saw him herself. According to Mrs. Grose, the person the governess had seen with "red hair, very red, close-curling, and a pale face, long in shape, with straight good features and little rather queer whiskers that are red as his hair" was Quint (173). By the virtue of this one event, the ghosts had to have existed. Thus, a better question, and one with quite some substance, is what is the source of evil in the novella? It could be contested that the governess was a source of evil. Her actions had, in fact, through the course of the novella, become more and more neurotic. After all, the things she saw were never admittedly seen by anyone else. But, because of the above determination that the ghosts had to have existed, it seems justified that she would start to go a little crazy. She becomes neurotic; fearing the worst about what these images may mean. Some critics may attribute the ev
After realizing that the evil in the house is causing the girl's illness, she s!ends her away. The governess performs, what amounts to be, an exorcism. Miss Grose was the disseminator of most of this information. The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw. To play with (Miles), I mean -to spoil him. In the beginning of the novella, the governess describes the children as "angels. il in the novella to her constant insistence on the ghosts' existence, striking a mortal fear in the children, specifically Miles. Flora, on the other hand, blatantly shows her sexual corruption at the lake with the governess earlier in the novella, She had picked up a small flat piece of wood which happened to have in it a little hole that had evidently suggested to her the idea of sticking in another fragment that might figure as a mast and make the thing a boat. After this, Flora gets "so markedly feverish that an illness was perhaps at hand" (243).
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