Introducción (quién es el autor, datos sobre el libro, resumen y el por qué del nombre)

The Turn of the Screw is a horror novella written by Henry James in 1898, who became the
most popular piece of short fiction from this author. He is regarded as a key transitional
figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be
among the greatest novelists in the English language.

For many of us, it is difficult to understand the real meaning of the book’s title, and it
depends on how each one interprets it. However, this title's meaning is exposed on the very
first page of the story; after hearing a ghoulish tale in which a child is menaced by some
ghostly terror, a party guest suggests that the fact that the story's protagonist was a child is
what gives a certain "turn of the screw", that it is like the dramatic tension.

Párrafo 1 (Los personajes)

Before telling a little about the story, it is important to know about the characters that will
participate in it.

The Governess
The protagonist of the novella, a young woman who has been put in charge of educating
and supervising Flora and Miles at the country estate of Bly, where she had to face dark
forces of the house.

Mrs. Grose
Mrs. Grose is a servant who listens patiently to the governess’s constantly changing
theories and insights.

Miles
Miles is a charming boy and one of the governess’s two charges He was expelled from
school for an unspecified reason.

Flora
Flora is a beautiful and well mannered little girl and the younger of the governess’s two
charges. The governess eventually becomes convinced that Flora sees the ghost of Miss
Jessel.

Peter Quint
Quint was “infamous” throughout the area of Bly. The governess believes Quint’s ghost is
haunting Bly with the intention of corrupting Miles.

Miss Jessel
Miss Jessel apparently had an inappropriate relationship with Quint. The governess believes
Miss Jessel’s ghost is haunting Bly with the intention of corrupting Flora.

Párrafo 2 (resumen cuento)

This story involves two children—Flora and Miles—and his sister’s governess, with whom
he was in love. She started to work at Bly, being in charge of the children, but as the time
passes, she started to see ghost and to get crazy.

Multiple mysteries are unleashed about the children's relationship with the paranormal
events that happen in the house, since it is shown as if two ghosts want to come and take
over the children.

Párrafo 3
Basically, the story leaves us right in the middle of things. Does the ghost of Peter Quint
finally overwhelm Miles and kill him? Were the events that the governess saw true or was
it all a product of her imagination? Also, it was possible to analyze that the story has two
narrators. One exists only in the prologue. The rest of the tale is Douglas's reading of the
governess's story.

Also, besides being a ghost story, it explores and complicates the relationship between
youth and innocence, because the children seem precocious and wicked, but at the same
time they are presented as innocent and honest victims of a difficult situation.

Párrafo 4 (Figuras literarias)

The use and importance of literary devices falls in providing the story an expressiveness
greater than that which can be achieved with the conventional use of words. Throughout the
text, the author uses a large number of literary devices:

1. The Governess first alludes to ships when she arrives at Bly and comments on how
strange it is that she should be metaphorically steering the household, which she compares
to a "great drifting ship" (1.9) full of lost passengers. Metaphor

2. Mrs. Grose also uses the word to describe her fear of Quint – she's afraid of him, she
says, because he "was so clever – he was so deep". Hyperbole

3. Here is a inference that knowledge is light and ignorance is darkness: “deep obscurity
continued to cover the region of the boy’s conduct at school”. Metaphor

4. “A small shifty spot on the wrong side of it all still sometimes brushed my brow like the
wing of a bat”. Simile

5. Here, knowing is seeing while ignorance is being blocked from seeing: “I felt the
importance of giving the last jerk to the curtain”. Metaphor