How could you doubt her? The Governess is totally sane. Let's take a look at both of these cases-we leave the final verdict up to all of you. Both sides have passionate adherents if you ever want to pick a nasty fight in a room full of English majors, bring up The Turn of the Screw. There are traditionally two ways of viewing her character-as either a sane heroine or a insane anti-heroine. Now that we've got the easy stuff out of the way, it's time to tackle the more complicated elements of the Governess's personality. Though she only meets her employer twice, she's sufficiently swept off her feet, and spends the rest of the story secretly in love (or lust) with him. She's clearly something of a romantic, at least at the beginning, and this inclination contributes to her acceptance of the job at Bly. And we mean flawed-flawed-we're never quite sure how trustworthy she is as a narrator.Īs for the facts, they are relatively few and far between: we know that she's only twenty years old, and that she's the daughter of a poor country parson. The Governess is the only character we can really sink our teeth into in this story-in fact, maybe we should just go ahead and say that she's the only real character.Įveryone else is a bit ghostly (pun very much intended) but the Governess is a flawed human.
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