The Turn Of The Screw: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation

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many questions. Primarily those concerning the ghosts, the sanity of the governess and the goodness of the children. A psychoanalytic reading of the novel reveals that the governess is a mad sexual hysteric, which, in turn, leads to the ghosts being read as hallucinations or projections of her sexual fears brought about in hysteric fits. This has been proven to be a feasible reading of the text for many reasons, one being that James' sister had been classed as a sexual hysteric. On the whole it is clear that many of the points in the novel that can be interpreted psychoanalytically are related to repressed sexual desires in one way or another.
The most prominent features of The Turn of the Screw that invite psychoanalytic interpretations are the instances when the governess encounters the 'ghosts', more importantly that of Peter Quint. In terms of psychoanalysis it is the first time that the 'ghosts' of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, respectively, appear that is the most ...

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she able to give a recognisable description to Mrs Grose. This is convincingly explained by Stanley Renner, who believes that the features of the figure described by the governess are stereotypical "of the predatory sexual male"(p228). This is suggested through the use of physiognomy, in particular the fact that the apparition had "red hair, very red, close curling"(p46). Red hair, in physiognomy, is said to represent evil, in particular Satan. This is certainly true of characters in many other works, one example being Chaucer's Miller of The Canterbury Tales. These ideas would have been known to the governess, therefore it would be natural that an apparition brought about by sexual ...

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