SOURCE: van Peer, Willie, and Ewont van der Knaap. “(In)compatible Interpretations? Contesting Readings of The Turn of the Screw.” Modern Language Notes 110 (1995): 692-710.

In the following essay, van Peer and van der Knaap recount various critical responses to Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, attempting to resolve the conflict between critics who view the tale as a ghost story and those who interpret it as a Freudian text.

1. Introduction

The small community of listeners gathered around the fire in Henry James's The Turn of the Screw expect to hear a real ghost story,¹ and with them we modern readers can share the same horizon of expectations—if we want to. It is not only the very text itself that makes the reader think in terms of a ghost story; in a real linguistic sense,² it is the reader who is free to deal with the “‘pure...