SOURCE: “Reading the Unreadable: Meaning in The Turn of the Screw,” in The Turn of the Screw: Bewildered Vision, Twayne Publishers, 1989, pp. 123–40.

In the following essay, Heller utilizes the device of the implied reader to explore the ambiguity of the ending of James's novella and explores the roles of meaning and ideology in the narrative.

To Catch Those Not Easily Caught

In his preface to the New York Edition, James characterized The Turn of the Screw as a piece of “cold artistic calculation, an amusette to catch those not easily caught, … the jaded, the disillusioned, the fastidious” (NCE 120). It appears as a toy, a minor amusement like telling ghost stories before the fire at Christmas, but at its end The Turn of the Screw returns upon itself, refusing to end in the customary way. The tale insists upon its own unresolved ambiguity. We do not know what Miles's...