Turn of the Screw: Chapters 1-5 Summary
Turn of the Screw: Chapters 6-10 Summary

In this post, we continue with The Turn of the Screw: Chapters 11-15 summary. The novel is by psychological-horror author Henry James. As we are nearing the end of the book, we should be taking note of the building tension in the manor. The governess has now seen ghosts on two occasions. Meanwhile, the children are acting in strange ways. In the following chapters, more eeriness assails the governess as she comes closer to unraveling the mystery.

Turn of the Screw: Chapters 11-13 Summary

After standing on the lawn at night and frightening the governess, she leads Miles back inside. After questioning him, Miles insists it is because he wants to be “bad” and to prove it to her.

He tells her: “‘Think me—for a change—bad!’ I shall never forget the sweetness and gaiety with which he brought out the word, nor how, on top of it, he bent forward and kissed me.”

While the governess doesn’t entirely understand Miles’s motivations, she forgives the child.

Though Mrs. Grose doesn’t believe the governess, the governess goes into detail about the children’s relationship with Quint and Miss Jessel. She explains that they are either tied to them or are in fact that spiritual slaves. In her opinion, she aims to destroy the children. Mrs. Grose attempts to convince the governess to contact the master of the house in order to spirit the children away. However, the governess denounces any and all plans for various reasons. Mostly, she doesn’t want to seem like she is going insane.

In the text, the governess explains that she could already see the master of the house’s reactions. She saw his, “derision, his amusement, his contempt for the breakdown of her resignation.”

As the season turns to autumn, the governess finds the children still a delight but has her suspicions. Mostly, her suspicions are about how they communicate with the ghosts. Yet, the governess is unable to confront the children about these sightings. As such, she leaves it be for the time. After the children ask to see their uncle, the governess insists that they write letters–letters that she in fact keeps and does not send to the master of the house.

Turn of the Screw: Chapters 14-15 Summary

One day, when walking to church with the household, Miles asks about returning to school. He admits that he has been very good with only one exception. The governess tries to parse Miles’ reasons for being sent out of school. But, she is unable to discover his motives. Miles then insists that he wants to go back to school, and though he is rebuked, he insists. He comes to the conclusion that he will convince his uncle to visit and allow him to return.

In the novel, both the governess and Miles have a brief exchange outside of the church before the child enters:

Miles, on this, stood looking at me. “Then don’t you think he can be made to?”

“In what way?”

“Why, by his coming down.”

“But who’ll get him to come down?”

“I will!” the boy said with extraordinary brightness and emphasis. He gave me another look charged with that expression and then marched off alone into church.

At this point, the governess intends to leave Bly as she feels the events at the manor have been untenable. Entering the house, she sits on the stares but remembers seeing the ghost of Miss Jessel. So, she decides to head to the schoolroom. Regardless, she sees the ghost of the woman once more and has a violent reaction. No doubt this is a consequence of the trauma and anxiety caused by the apparition.

She states of the occurrence: “It was as a wild protest against it that, actually addressing her—’You terrible, miserable woman!’—I heard myself break into a sound that, by the open door, rang through the long passage and the empty house. She looked at me as if she heard me, but I had recovered myself and cleared the air. There was nothing in the room the next minute but the sunshine and a sense that I must stay.”

Conclusion

In The Turn of the Screw: Chapters 11-15, we have more character building and a continued rising of suspense. We discover that Miles is quite precocious and is a conniving child. He makes plans to manipulate people into getting what he wants, such as convincing the governess that he is capable of being “bad.”

In addition, we also learn that the governess has multiple motives for staying on at Bly Manor and not alerting the master of the house. For one, her duty to the children is supreme, and her motherly protection seems to be paramount to her leaving; moreover, she understands that what she has seen at Bly is a little strange and that alerting anybody other than Mrs. Grose may make her seem insane.

In this post, we introduce the first part of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw: Chapters 1-5 (1898). It is a gothic novella that is about a very peculiar haunting at Bly Manor. Meanwhile, the reader is left to question the narrator’s motives and reliability throughout the novella. This is a classic of the ghost story genre, so reading it and understanding it is crucial to writing good ghost stories.

Prologue of The Turn of the Screw

The story begins delightfully on a Christmas Eve, with a group of people gathered around the fireplace. Much as was the tradition of yesteryear in telling ghost stories around Christmas (which can be seen in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol), this group is indulging in much of the same. The narrator, remaining anonymous, discusses Douglas, one of the guests, and the strange story that he tells them that involves two children named Flora and Miles.

Douglas himself seems troubled by the story, and stands “there before the fire, to which he had got up to present his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands in his pockets.” A look of shame crossing him, he states: “Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. It’s quite too horrible.” The crowd of guests of course turn on him and compel him to tell his story: “It’s beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches it.”

Before sharing his ghost story, and in a bit of back story, Douglas gives some details: a governess, who was a young and poor daughter of a country parson, accepts a position as governess with a charming bachelor in a grand house on Harley Street. She is hired to care for the two aforementioned children. The children are under the current care of the housekeeper Mrs. Grose and other servants. Meanwhile, the previous governess has died. Preparing himself, Douglas reads from papers he has collected, which apparently contain The Turn of the Screw: Chapters 1-5, and the rest.

The Turn of the Screw: Chapters 1-2 Summary

The story begins most unseemly at first, with the governess starting her position at Bly. She meets Flora and the maid, Mrs. Grose. Flora calms the governess’s nerves about her new job through her beauty and spiritedness. The next day, the governess receives a letter from her employer who informs her that Miles’s headmaster refuses to let him return to school. Nervous about the boy due to probably behavior problems, the governess is anxious, but Mrs. Grose assures her that Miles is simply acting out as boys are want to do at their age and in some circumstances.

In a concerning moment, the governess learns that the previous governess was a young, pretty woman who was well-liked by both children and the master. However, she left Bly on holiday and never returned, and was later reported dead due to mysterious circumstances. In the exchange between the new governess and Mrs. Grose, there is both shock and surprise from both parties:

“She was not taken ill, so far as appeared, in this house. She left it, at the end of the year, to go home, as she said, for a short holiday, to which the time she had put in had certainly given her a right. We had then a young woman—a nursemaid who had stayed on and who was a good girl and clever; and she took the children altogether for the interval. But our young lady never came back, and at the very moment I was expecting her I heard from the master that she was dead.”

I turned this over. “But of what?”

“He never told me! But please, miss,” said Mrs. Grose, “I must get to my work.”

The Turn of the Screw: Chapters 3-4 Summary

The governess begins these chapters by thinking about her respect for Mrs. Grose, and then she meets Miles, and is likewise charmed by the young man, as he is both innocent and as beautiful as his sister, Flora. Both the governess and Mrs. Grose decide to ignore the letter detailing Miles’ expulsion and move on.

Her summer continues without error, and she actually finds that she quite enjoys her time at Bly. One evening, she sees a mysterious man on the tower, thinking that he was somebody she knew. Though, without knowing who he is, she finds the episode eerie. The man stares at her for some time before moving on.

As she states: “So I saw him as I see the letters I form on this page; then, exactly, after a minute, as if to add to the spectacle, he slowly changed his place—passed, looking at me hard all the while, to the opposite corner of the platform. Yes, I had the sharpest sense that during this transit he never took his eyes from me, and I can see at this moment the way his hand, as he went, passed from one of the crenelations to the next. He stopped at the other corner, but less long, and even as he turned away still markedly fixed me. He turned away; that was all I knew.”

Afterward, the governess thinks about this episode as being very strange, and wonders about a hidden mystery within the house. She walks home and meets Mrs. Grose in the hall. She realizes that the maid knows little and so does not mention it. Being careful and inquisitive when it comes to encounters in the house, the governess returns to her duties with little fear. Though, later, the governess sees the man staring through a window; she attempts to confront him but finds nothing. However, this time around, Mrs. Grose seems shaken, so she too has seen the mysterious figure.

The Turn of the Screw: Chapter 5 Summary

The governess describes the man to Mrs. Grose who is shocked by the entire affair. The governess also notes the man’s red hair, pale face, and handsome features. Mrs. Grose tells her that he was a man named Peter Quint, who was a former valet for the housemaster. However, it turns out that it would be impossible for him to have been in the window.

The story states:

She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified. “He went, too,” she brought out at last.

“Went where?”

Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. “God knows where! He died.”

“Died?” I almost shrieked.

She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more firmly to utter the wonder of it.

“Yes. Mr. Quint is dead.”

Conclusion

In The Turn of the Screw: Chapters 1-5, we have here the classic trappings of a ghost story. One that features a doting governess, two small, innocent children, and a mystery of gothic proportions. James’s style is very calming and explanatory. It lulls the reader into a sense of calm before dropping a mysterious plot point down, which both entice and excite the reader. It may be slow, but it gives us the sense of foreboding we can expect in a gothic thriller.

Read this description of Mrs. Grose’s fear:

“She turned white, and this made me ask myself if I had blanched as much. She stared, in short, and retreated on just my lines, and I knew she had then passed out and come round to me and that I should presently meet her. I remained where I was, and while I waited I thought of more things than one. But there’s only one I take space to mention. I wondered why she should be scared.”

The language is clearly from 1889, but it is not ostentatious. It tells the story in a very straightforward manner, highlighting the fear that these strange occurrences cause to the people who are baring witness. In moving ahead, we have to keep in mind that the author is going to establish many norms for future ghost stories, but that should not deter us from how engaging and interesting this story is in reality.

Works Cited

Henry James. The Turn of the Screw. Project Gutenberg, 10 Oct. 1997, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/209. Accessed July 29, 2024.