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Henry James's Reading of The Turn of the Screw: Part I by Donal O'Gorman, St. Michael's College, University of Toronto I. Introduction The Turn of the Screw has shown admirable durability over the years both as a thriller and as a puzzle. As a thriller, this brief novel by Henry James has cast its spell on several generations of readers and, more recently, has gained notable success with movie, opera and television audiences. As a puzzle, moreover, it has proved not only a superb training ground for freshman English classes but also a happy hunting ground for curious scholars. Of these two types of response to the tale, the first—that of the general public—has been given adequate attention.' Thus our sole concern here will be the literary enigma which has so intrigued the world of criticism. It should be stressed, in all fairness, that The Turn of the Screw might never have achieved fame (not to say notoriety) as a puzzle had it not been for Edmund Wilson's wildly controversial article In a 1934 issue of Hound & Horn. By trumpeting the word "ambiguity" on a most unambiguous note, Wilson managed to stir the sporting blood of countless academics—and immediately the chase was on. The annals of that chase, featuring commentaries, exegeses, anatomies, rebuttals, rejoinders, even retractions, would today fill an ample library shelf; nor would anyone maintain that the end is yet in sight. Meanwhile, serene amidst the hue and cry. The Turn of the Screw continues to "gleam" and to "gloom" with consummate artistry, confirming year after year Thurber's judgment of it as "one of the greatest of all literary mysteries."2 What is a literary mystery? It might be defined as a text which, under rigorous questioning by a number of responsible critics, has yielded Irreconcilable "meanings" at a given level of inquiry. Confronted with one of these rare works, criticism tends after a time either to stagnate or to fly off Into eccentricity or whimsy. When that point has been reached (and who can deny that it has been reached with The Turn of the Screw?), would It not appear a sound procedure firmly to set aside the various solutions that have been proposed and to re-examine the elements of the problem? That is the task undertaken in these pages. While studiously avoiding polemics, they seek to open fresh perspectives on James's much controverted work—not, however, by the application of new methods but by the more rigorous use of old ones. It is presumed from the outset that The Turn of the Screw is a deliberate mystification and that, as such, It involves in a special way the matter of authorial intention. Our first concern, therefore, will be to ascertain as accurately as possible what meaning James wished to give to his ghostly fable. A well-trodden path, to be sure; according to a recent writer, Dorothea Krook, the intentions implicit in this novel "have been more exhaustively documented than those of perhaps any other modern work." Yet, despite such persistent efforts, there is presently as little agreement on that point as there is on the sense of the story itself. Leon Edel has suggested that this general "bewilderment" might stem either from a failure of communication on the part of the author or from a failure of perception on the part of critics. I shall endeavor to show that critics have in fact failed to treat the author's Preface to the searching analysis it demands and that a closer reading of it yields enormous benefits for our understanding of the text. The ultimate aim (perhaps too ambitious) of this study Is to clear the way for a consensus among scholars as to James's conscious 1. See Thomas M. Cranfill and Robert L. Clark, Jr., "The Provocativeness of The Turn of the Screw," Texas Studies In Literature and Language, 12 (1970), 93-100. 2. Edmund Wilson, "The Ambiguity of Henry James," Hound and Horn, 7 (1933-34), 385-406; James Thurber, "The Wings of Henry James," The New Yorker, 35 (7 Nov. 1959), 196. 125 Intentions. If that goal can be attained, criticism may then...

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