The Turn of the Screw Essay -- Literary Analysis, Henry James

Superficially, Henry Jamess The Turn of the Screw seems to reward the status quo of American literature as anthropoid, whereby men are viewed as having military unit over women leaving women to become mere butts. James creates a nameless female protagonist whose story is told through the guise of a male narrator. She becomes an physical object viewed by Douglass audience and is used scarcely as means for the master on Harley Street to avoid existence bothered by his charges. She is then set up as nave and love-struck, willing to do just about anything, including risking her own sanity, for the sake of holding the master undisturbed. However, on closer examination, James actually creates a novelette that desecrates the traditional idea of men having berth over women as it is the governess who has the last(a) word in her story, not the male Douglas, and it is the male heir Miles who becomes the scapegoat leaving the governess free, awfully clever and nice (James 24).Jamess unembellished frame tale creates frustration and confusion but his experiment with throw also draws attention to what has largely been left unconscious. Through Douglass sign telling of the governesss story she is reduced to a nameless object that they all raptly listen about rather than listen to. While at the start, Douglas does have power over the governesss story, in the end it is the governess who has the nett word and Douglas, who disappears after only the first seven pages, is never to be heard from again. James relinquishes power to the governess and allows her to participate as there is no need to return to the male voice once she takes over. Furthermore, as the governess does stick around nameless throughout her own narrative this hardly is a power issues as both the master on... ...til finally the air was clear (116-117). In this way the governess is commensurate to reverse the roles of passive/female and active/male as she denies tail fin the power of his gaze an d instead forces him to be the object of her gaze.Through his distortion of traditional male dominated structures and ideas, James is able to not only draw attention to the inequality of mens power over women but he also uses the same devices to subvert this binary opposition. Through a distortion of the assumed patriarchal distinguish the governess is able to adopt male characteristics in order to wrest acantha some of the power initially taken from her. Whether consciously or unconsciously Jamess unfinished frame, disturbing death of Miles, and the disappearance of Quints ghost all point to a hidden power within the governess allowing her to survive long after her weaker male counterparts.