The Turn of the Screw Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Robert B. Heilman

Critical Essay by Robert B. Heilman

SOURCE: “The Freudian Reading of The Turn of the Screw,” in MLN: Modern Language Notes, Vol. 62, No. 7, November, 1947, pp. 433–45.

In the following essay, Heilman disputes the Freudian interpretation of The Turn of the Screw and instead perceives the story as a Christian allegory.

The Freudian reading of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, which has had some currency in recent decades, does violence not only to the story but also to the Preface, which, like the story, demands scrupulous attention. The Freudian reading was first given public expression by Edna Kenton in 1924; her view is that the ghosts and the attendant horrors are imagined by the neurotic governess, “trying to harmonize her own disharmonies by creating discords outside herself.”¹ Miss Kenton, however, adduces almost no evidence to sustain her interpretation, but simply enjoys a gracefully gleeful revel in the conviction that James, by permitting...
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