The Turn of the Screw has been read by some analysts as a simple ghost story and by others as a psychologically accurate portrait – whether pre- or post-Freudian – of mental illness or the breakdown of repression. As nice as it is to view Henry James's short story from one of these or similar viewpoints, it seems to me particularly interesting to view it as a kind of metafiction, a story about storytelling which explores the power of language to create atmosphere. or to elicit emotional or psychological responses through the power of suggestion. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In some ways, this story and its opening setting are reminiscent of the almost archetypal scenario of children sitting in the dark telling scary stories. Additionally, it is reminiscent of a particular scene from the Wonderworks film adaptation of Lucy Maude Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. In this scene, the characters Anne Shirley and Diana Berry are alone together in a dark wood, and they start reciting to each other all the scary ghost stories they remember and talking about how "delightfully frightened" they are. In the novel, Anne admits to her aunt that “Diana and I imagined the wood was haunted. All the places around here are so--so--COMMON. We just made this up for our own amusement. We started it in April. A haunted wood is so romantic… Oh, we have imagined the most heartbreaking things” (Montgomery 229). Similarly, Henry James demonstrates in his Turn of the Screw a deep understanding of the pleasure that typically imaginative people get from being afraid and, of course, from being frightened. James's story is a sort of masterful meta-chiller that works on the reader's imagination while allowing the events narrated by the characters in the story to work on the imaginations of other characters, with sometimes obvious effects and sometimes ambiguous. Part of the ambiguity surrounding the story lies in whether the governess who tells her own story actually frightened herself with fantasies and other observations from her own mind. Its indirect reference to certain then-contemporary works of Victorian horror or Gothic suspense (The Mystery of Udolpho, Jane Eyre) may be an allusion by the author to its subject or to the story in which it is set. “Was there a “secret” in Bly – a mystery of Udolpho or a madman, an unspeakable relative kept in unsuspected detention? (James 312). Although the interpretation of the story and the question of its realism are debatable, it seems clear that James intended, while telling a frightening story, to also explore the imaginative viewer's complicity in the creation of the effect – fright or pleasant terror – such as tales can convey. Whether or not these types of stories are true is less important than the effectiveness of the storytelling style, whether the story elicits the desired response from listeners or readers. Of course, James sometimes uses some pretty brutal means to evoke the nervous mood of The Turn of the Screw, even beginning his story with a discussion of what makes a tale the kind of story that can keep listeners "enough breathless » (James 291), which gives him each successive “turn of the screw” (James 292). Additionally, the author asks his characters to offer their own comments on the emotional impact of their stories – Douglas dramatically refers to "characterterrible” of the story he is about to tell, even declaring that he is “beyond everything”. Nothing I know touches him,” regarding his “strange ugliness, his horror and his pain” (ibid.). This is a pretty dramatic setup for a story that has yet to be revealed. Such characterization builds anticipation, prepares the reader for a strong response, and demands reward. This is a bold move on James's part, as failing to provide sufficient emotional payoff could open the author to accusations of exaggeration or melodramatic superfluity. And speaking of superfluous, throughout the story there is a continual repetition of emotionally evocative derogatory terms like dread, horror, queer, crazy, corrupt, et cetera, as well as frequent use of exclamation marks and italics. The text itself seems emotionally manipulative, bent on achieving an effect, and if the reader is unwilling or unable to go where the text seems to be leading them, the effect would certainly, from the author's point of view, be unhappy, and the story would probably fail. satisfy. James leaves the reader with little reason to doubt that the payoff he has set up is coming. However, one of the author's primary means of manipulation in Turn of the Screw is delayed gratification. There is a lot of hesitation, withholding details after the insinuation of what is to come, inviting the listeners of the story as well as the readers of the story to let their imaginations flow into the gaps. Again, the author is not at all subtle about this; he overtly emphasizes the technique from the beginning (James 297), in an exchange between Douglas, his secondary narrator – in the ordinal sense – and one of his listeners. Until now, Douglas had presented his photo when someone asked him a question. “And what did the old governess die of?” – so much respectability? Our friend's response was quick. “It’s going to come out. I don't plan. “Excuse me, I thought that was exactly what you were doing.” Further down the same page, after giving a few more details, Douglas makes an insinuation, a reference to an unforeseen danger in the governess's story, of which she was initially unaware but of which "she learned." You will hear tomorrow what she learned. Again, Douglas gives more sparse information and, as the unnamed main narrator says, "with this [he] made a pause which, for the benefit of the company, caused him to add" his own tantalizing guess as to what was happening. was yet to come in the story. This prompts Douglas to stand up, turn his back on his audience and stoke the fire before going further with his story, that is, his enactment of the Governess's Tale. Although I count three main stories in Turn of the Screw, nested like Babushka dolls, there are technically several additional stories within the stories of this complex narrative, and even more storytellers mentioned than stories given, rather than summarized or referenced. Notably Douglas begins his allusion to the story of the unnamed governess after at least two other narrators, Griffin and another, have told their own ghost stories to the company, with varying effects. In Douglas's story there is the tale of the governess, in which she speaks of what she learned from Mrs. Grose and, even before that, of her master telling her what he judged to be his own relevant story: “He told her frankly all his difficulty – that for several candidates the conditions had been prohibitive. Somehow they were just afraid. It seemed boring – it seemed strange; and this all the more because of his principal condition” (James 297).: 1981.