Spooky, spooky Henry James

I have found myself defending Henry James on many occasions in my life.  His work is subtle and often delves deeply into the inner lives of his characters, working to suss out the intricacies of who knows what and how characters perceive one another.  His work is generally profoundly psychological in the sense that he can recreate thought processes on the page: a rare talent for any writer, but something that James does consistently throughout his fiction.  I have taught The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller in a handful of classes in my teaching career because they are both shorter works that still convey the breadth of James' talents (Edith Wharton's short story "Roman Fever" pairs well with Daisy Miller for anyone interested).  Both of these stories can be hard sells, but I have always been able to convert a few students to seeing their merits.
The Turn of the Screw stands out from James' other work because, as far as I know, it is the only ghost story he ever wrote.  But it is typical in the way that he uses triangulated perception to create ambiguity in the text.  That is, James funnels characters' observations of one another through one another.  He nearly always shies away from providing exposition on a character's actions, preferring instead to allow one character to describe or think about the actions.  This means that the reader always gets these perceptions second- or third-hand, creating a distance between the action of the story and the reader's interpretations.  Each distancing creates greater ambiguity that the reader must wade through in order to put together the narrative or to make judgements about characters and actions.
In The Turn of the Screw, James uses a series of techniques to distance the action of the narrative from the reader and, thus, to create ambiguity in the text.  The greatest question that is left is whether or not there is actually a haunting.  From here spawn several other questions that James refuses to answer.
Here is a basic plot outline: James uses a frame narrative to introduce the main story.  In the frame, a group of people are sharing ghosts stories on Christmas Eve when Douglas reveals that he knows of a story involving two children and a ghost.  Douglas defers telling the story by claiming it is someone else's story and that he must send for a manuscript containing the story.  Douglas builds suspense on James' behalf.  After acquiring the manuscript, Douglas tells the story of the governess of Bly.
The governess is charged with caring for Miles and Flora.  At Bly she sees a couple of ghosts and then hears the story of Quint and Miss Jessel's deaths, two former servants at Bly, and reasons that they must be the ghosts that she sees.  The governess freaks out Mrs. Grose - another servant at Bly - and the two work each other up about the haunting.  Things continue to escalate until Miles eventually dies in the governess' arms, whether he dies of fright at the sight of the ghost or because the governess smothers him is left unknown.
What I want to focus on here are the encounters that the governess has with the ghosts and how she attributes these sightings to others around her as well.  In each of these encounters James builds tension in the story by creating doubt as to what is going on.  He does this by subtly leaving out certain attributions and by strategically ending scenes so as to give the impression of conveying one perspective, but that actually relies on the reader completing the idea on his/her own and believing that it is in the story.
Early in the novella, the governess walks through the gardens surrounding Bly thinking, "One of the thoughts that, as I don't in the least shrink now from noting, used to be with me in these wanderings was that it would be as charming as a charming story suddenly to meet someone."  She continues to imagine a sort of meet-cute with a handsome stranger in the garden.  While in this reverie, she is surprised to actually see someone: "What arrested me on the spot -- and with a shock much greater than any vision had allowed for -- was the sense that my imagination had, in a flash, turned real.  He did stand there!"  But rather than meeting someone face-to-face, the governess reveals that the stranger she "meets" is standing far off on the top one of the house's towers.
This scene begs a bit of analysis because it is a good encapsulation of what James does throughout the story.  First is the odd sentence construction.  The governess perpetually writes in these circuitous sentences that are filled with subordinated clauses and digressions.  These sentences serve to distance the reader from the action because they are filled with reflection.  They keep reminding the reader that they are not reading a progressive narrative (one that develops in time with the action of the characters), but a retroactive narrative in which the narrator has the ability to layer in their own take.  The phrase, "as charming as a charming story," builds on this same premise; the governess is distanced from the immediate action that she narrates.  The next bit is more telling, she has a sense that her imagination has become real.  However, she had just described the circumstances of her imagination and the reality does not match it at all.  She imagines turning a corner and running into a handsome stranger face-to-face, but in reality she sees someone very far off and cannot see his face.  So, the governess describes a scene in this halting manner, but is distanced from it by time and her own memory.  She then tells the reader that what she imagines seems to become real, even though the reality is quite different from what she experiences.  This has the potential to leave the reader taking the governess' word while still keeping the knowledge of the description of what is actually in the text.  These are the seeds of confusion that James plants early on.  The control over his prose is so masterful that he uses details, down to sentence structure, to sow the beginnings of ambiguity throughout the story.

This is getting to be a bit long, so I am going to leave off here and continue in a second post.  I have two more passages to analyze, so be sure to tune in next week for the spooky continuation of my analysis of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw.