Most of them [the critics] argue that the governess, in James tale, is neurotic or insane and sees no apparitions: she merely records her own hallucinations and thier damaging effect on two innocent children (Spilka 245). Like the children, she lives in a culture where sexual "horrors" are invested with religious dread, and the term "horror" connects natural with infernal realms (Spilka 248). But in doing so she enables James to establish sometimes more important: the inevitable failure of Victorian domestic sainthood in coping with erotic horror (Spilka 249). The governess was raised in a Victorian society, which were believed by many critics to be her problem. A Victorian child lived a very sheltered life away from all sexual encounters, which would soon catch up with them later in life. Henry James uses conflict, character, and symbolism to express repression and romanticism in a Victorian society in "The Turn of the Screw."
Most of the governess' in the Victorian ages were said to live the loneliest lives in this time and could lead them into insanity. The life of a governess was to take care of the children and that was all, there is no room for friends or a sexual companion. The situation of governess' is one of misery and bad health, even where every kindness is meant to be shown (Bell 95). In many families, especially in the higher ranks, the governess lives so secluded that she is as much out of society as if she were placed in solitary confinement (Bell 95). The result, he thought, was beyond question, that much unhappiness, and not infrequently madness itself, are unintentionally caused by this cold and inconsiderate treatment (Bell 95). If governess' were notoriously lonely, absolute loneliness is what this governess suffers at Bly where no members of the children's family is ever to be met and no company comes (Bell 103). Loneliness was the common complaint of ...