The Role Of The Governess In The Turn Of The Screw

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One factor that a reader may have trouble with when reading the book is understanding whether the apparitions that the governess sees and indeed ghosts or just figments of her imagination. It is an ambiguous plot within the story and the choice of them being real or not will eventually come down to reader and their interpretation of the story. From the beginning of the novella it is easy for the reader to have faith in the governess. There is no reason why we should not believe and her convictions are certain. She does, whether the reader believes it or not. As we continue reading the novella, no more proof of these apparitions is given. The children and Mrs Grose do not see the apparitions of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. The governess becomes an unreliable narrator through her tale as we are not given the story from any other …show more content…

It is also relevant to say that there are not only psychoanalytic readings of the text. In fact, some deny such an approach. He continues that the criticism can be divided in two main areas. In one group he writes that “the apparitionists have defended a reading in which the governess’s state of mind has little or no weight at all” (Siota p.207). This idea would suggest that there is no psychological interpretation of the story needed, therefore denying and ideas put forward by a psychoanalytic reading. He clarifies this comment in that they provide a more radical explanation “of the symbolism present in the characters, elements and events that take place in the story, so that the religious allegory they support is free of any inconvenient psychic references to the governess’s mind” (Siota p.207-208). This is of course opposed to the psychoanalytic reading that has already been discussed. However, this is only another was of interpreting the

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