Henry James

(1843-1916)
a writer who not only bridged the
19th and 20th centuries but
connected America and Europe.
 Henry James
• American-born writer,
gifted with talents in
literature, psychology,
and philosophy. James
wrote 20 novels, 112
stories, 12 plays and a
number of works of
literary criticism.
• Studied as part of
American Literature
although he lived and
wrote mainly in England
More photos of Henry James
 Major Achievements and
Specific Features of His Works

• He is one of the founders and leaders of a

school of realism in fiction; the fine art of
his writing has led many academics to
consider him the greatest master of the
novel and novella form.

• He is primarily known for a series of major

novels in which he portrayed the encounter
of America with Europe.
 Major Achievements and
Specific Features of His Works

• His plots centered on personal

relationships, the proper exercise of
power in such relationships, and other
moral questions.
• His method of writing from the point of
view of a character within a tale allowed
him to explore the phenomena of
consciousness and perception, and his
style in later works has been compared to
impressionist painting.
• paternal grandfather, William James
– an Irish immigrant

– played a significant role in helping support the James

family
– left a fortune of $3 million to support the lives of his
heirs
 Henry James, Senior ↓
The fortune that William James
left was used to help Henry
James, Senior earn himself a
place in the history of
American thought
• William James:
– the oldest

– turned out to achieve

intellectual importance

• Henry James, Jr.:

– the 2nd child

William and Henry James

 William James
(1842 –1910)

a pioneering American:
• psychologist

• philosopher
 Early Years
• Second of five siblings
• Born in New York city to Irish immigrant
parents
• Educated in schools and by private tutors
• Influenced by famous friends: Margaret
Fuller, Washington Irving, William
Makepeace Thackeray, and George Ripley
 Defining Moments
• In 1855 the James family
spent three years in
Geneva, London, and Paris
• This affected Henry’s
decision to live and write in
Europe during his adult years
• The family moved to
Cambridge when they
returned from Europe
• Again near prominent writers
of the time: Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Henry David
Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott.
• Henry James’s father moved the
whole family to England to live for
a year before Henry James reached
his 1st birthday.

← Henry James Jr. and Sr. in 1854.

• Henry James traveled extensively
to Europe.
• His love for European travel was
instilled in him at a very young
age.
←A Small Boy and Others (A book in the
Henry James’ Memoirs series)
Extended visits to European cities
such as London, Geneva, and
Paris occurred throughout most of
James’s childhood.
• The extensive traveling resulted in
Henry James receiving a kind of erratic
education in which Henry James
attended a variety of day schools and
was taught by private tutors in a range
of cosmopolitan settings.
Young James:
• uncomfortable with formal education

• a remarkable interest with languages

• read books in French, German and Latin

• his favorite novelists: Scott, Dickens, and

Thackeray
• In October 1861, suffered what he later
called a “horrid even if an obscure
hurt”.
• injured himself severely in trying to
put out a raging fire in a group of
Newport stable near some houses,
Henry James at age 16 →
• As a result, the injury was a good
reason for Henry James to avoid
service in the Civil War
• In 1864, attended Harvard Law
School
• He had no intentions of

becoming a lawyer

• He attended only one

academic year.
• His time was spent attending

James Russell Lowell’s lectures

in literature and making literary

friends.
• Amongst all his literary friends,
Henry James treasured William
Dean Howells whom at the
time was the editor of the
Atlantic Monthly.
• James treasured Howells as his
single most important
American professional friend.
• James believed that it was
Howells who first accepted his
work.
• He made several trips to
Europe, and while there he
became associated with such
notable literary figures as
Turgenev and Flaubert.
• His models were Dickens, Balzac,

and Hawthorne.
• James once said that he learned more of the craft of
writing from Balzac “than from anyone else”.
• After both Henry James’ parents
died in 1882, Henry James didn’t
see America again for more than 20
years.
• James spent the last 53 years of his life in
England, becoming a British subject in 1915,
one year
before his death.
Honorary degrees from
• Harvard University in 1911

• Oxford University in 1912

• Just after he suffered a stroke in

December 1915, George V awarded James the

Order of Merit.
• Two months after he received the Order of Merit,
Henry James died on February 28, 1916.
II. Literary career

• 1. The 1st stage

• 2. The 2nd stage
• 3. The 3rd stage
 1. The 1st stage

• It was in Europe that he wrote

– The American (1877)
– Europeans (1878)
– Daisy Miller (1879)

– The Portrait of a Lady (1881)

• his first acknowledged masterpiece
James’ major themes:
• (1) international themes

• (2) the entanglements of love

(1) international themes
• James treated with great care
– the clashes between two different
cultures
– the emotional and moral problems of
• Americans in Europe

• Europeans in America
• In his early novels, James contrasts
– Europeans----sophisticated, though
somewhat serious
– Americans----the innocent, eager,
though often arrogant
• The Europeans in

James’ novels are

– more cultured

– more concerned with art

– more aware of the subtleties of

social situations
• The American usually have a
morality and innocence which the
Europeans lack.
• James seemed to value both

– the sophistication of Europe

– the idealism of America

 (2) the entanglements of love

• According to Bishop, only

Jane Austen has explored the
theme of love with equal
refinement.
 2. The 2nd stage

• 1882~1895

• moved from a concentration on the international

theme to an investigation of the varieties of
“realism”.
• Daisy Miller (play)

• The Bostonians (1886)

• The Princess Casamassima (1886)

• The Tragic Muse (1890)

 3. The 3rd stage
• 1895~1900

• the major phase of his life

• returned to the international theme
• The Ambassadors
• The Wings of the Dove
• The Golden Bowl
• They are considered the finest

achievements of the late phase and

the capstone of James’s long and

distinguished career.
• a return to the international theme

• James reached his highest development in

– the portrayal of the intricate subtleties of character

– the use of a complex, convoluted style to express

delicate nuances of thought
 Jamesian style

• 1. subtleties of literary form

• 2. extremely complex and refined prose

• 3. profound psychological insight

• 4. more interested in the
development of consciousness
than in portraying character
types and social reality
• 5. Language: highly-refined, polished, insightful,
accurate
• 6. Vocabulary: large
• 7. Construction: complicated, intricate
Literary Achievements

• James was a writer who

– bridged the 19th & 20th century
– connected America & Europe
• James first achieved recognition as a
writer of the “international novel”
– international theme
• James’s style has been

studied over the years, and many

critics believe he shaped the modern
novel
• Perhaps more than any previous
writer, James
– refined the technique of
narrating a novel from the point
of view of a character
– thus established the foundations
of modern stream of
consciousness fiction.
 Literary Criticism & Aesthetic
ideas
• The Art of Fiction:
– 1884

– an indispensable part of his contribution to

literature
– Including his influential principles of fiction 
• (1) The aim of the novel is
– to present life
• In “The Art of Fiction”, James writes,
– “A novel is in its broadest definition a
personal, a direct impression of life.”
– “the province of art is all life, all feeling, all
observation, all vision ... it is all experience.”
• (2) The freedom of the artist is to write about
anything that concerns him, even the
disagreeable, the ugly and the commonplace.
• (3) Psychological realism:
• Henry James is generally regarded
as
– the forerunner of the 20th century
“stream of consciousness” novels
– the founder of psychological realism
• the writer should
– not simply present the surface of
social life
– but probe the deepest reaches of the
psychological and moral nature of
human beings.
• His fictional world is
concerned
– more with the inner life of
human beings
– than with overt human actions
• The emphasis on psychology and
human consciousness
– is a breakthrough in novel writing

– had great influence on the coming

generations
• James has been called

– the first of the “modern psychological

novelists”
– “a realist of the inner life”
• (4) Central consciousness through
whom events are observed.
– Avoiding omniscient point of view

• (5) Social function of art

(6) James in not easy to understand.
• because of the subtle,

mature, and urbane

Jamesian style
 The Turn of the Screw
• Written in 1897
• Published in
installments between
January and April 1898
• The most widely read of
all of James’s works of
fiction
 Plot
• The novel starts off with a prologue about a group
of teenagers in an abandoned house in the middle
of no where telling ghost stories.
• One of the teenagers, Douglas, tells everyone that
he has a story that is scarier than the ones told
earlier.
• The story is about his sister’s governess and her
experiences in the past.
• He starts telling her story and that’s where The
Turn of the Screw begins.
• The governess is a young women who gets a job
taking care of two young orphans, Miles and
Flora, because their uncle doesn’t have time for
them.
• They live in an old country home in Bly along
with many servants and a housekeeper named
Mrs. Grose.
• The governess soon finds out that the children are
being haunted by their uncle’s former valet Peter
Quint, and their former governess Miss Jessel who
both died mysteriously a long time ago.
• After many occurrences of Peter and Miss Jessel
terrorizing the governess and trying to possess the
children, Flora suddenly becomes ill and the
governess orders Mrs. Grose to take Flora away to
her uncle.
• The governess and Miles are now alone in the
house until Peter appears and the governess,
holding onto Miles for dear life, orders Peter to
leave them.
• She then looks down to find Miles dead in her
arms.
 Setting
• The Turn of the Screw takes place in an old
isolated country mansion called Bly in Essex,
England. The mansion is very old and eerie,
and has a haunted feeling to it.
• When the governess first settles into the house after
meeting Mrs. Gorse and Flora, Flora gives the
governess a tour of the mansion and the governess
asks herself if she is in a fairytale or a storybook
that she had fallen into and tells herself “No; it was a
big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, embodying a
few features of a building still older, half replaced and
half utilized, in which I had the fancy of our being
almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great
drifting ship. Well, I was, strangely, at the helm!” The
governess sees herself as the one in charge at Bly
with a great deal of responsibilities. She describes
the mansion she is living in and reminds herself that it
isn’t some sort of fairytale castle.
 Plot
• Exposition: The governess arrives at Bly for her new job at taking
care of two young orphans, Miles and Flora.
• The exposition is displayed in Chapter one.
• Rising Action: The governess starts seeing the ghosts of Peter Quint
and Miss Jessel and tries to protect Miles and Flora from being
possessed by them.
• The rising action is displayed in chapters three to nineteen
• Climax: Miss Jessel shows up when the governess is with Mrs.
Grose and Flora and the governess tries to show them she’s there but
they don’t see her. Flora then becomes ill in fear of the governesses
mental state. The governess orders Mrs. Grose to take Flora to her
uncle.
• The climax is displayed in chapter nineteen up to twenty one
• iFalling Action: Miles and the governess are now
alone at Bly until they encounter Peter Quint. The
governess orders him to leave Miles alone. She finds
Miles dead in her arms.
• The falling action is displayed in chapters twenty one
to twenty four
• Resolution: There is no resolution to The Turn of the
Screw. Henry James ends the novel at Miles’ death and
there is no real explanation of how he died. He leaves
the ending blank and it’s up to the reader to choose the
ending
• There is no part in the novel where the resolution is
displayed because t does not exist.
Characters

• Protagonist
• The protagonist in The Turn of the
Screw is the governess. She is a
hardworking, dedicated, woman who
is in charge of taking care of Miles and
Flora.
• The governess is 20 years old, she
grew up in a poor country family, and
she seems to fall in love easily because
she fell in love with Miles and Flora’s
uncle after only meeting him twice for
the interviews (but that is the only part
in the novel in which she discusses her
feelings for him). She acts out in the
good of the children and is a strong-
willed, noble, intelligent woman and
is the heroine of this novel.
• The governess cares a lot for Miles and Flora and will do
anything to keep them safe from Peter and Miss Jessel. The
governess is talking to Miles about his feelings and how he
wants to be by himself more often, until the governess asks
what happened to him before she came to Bly. Miles wouldn’t
give her the answer she was looking for and then she broke
down saying “Dear little Miles, dear little Miles, if you knew
how I want to help you! It's only that, it's nothing but that, and
I'd rather die than give you a pain or do you a wrong—I'd
rather die than hurt a hair of you. Dear little Miles"—oh, I
brought it out now even if I should go too far—"I just want
you to help me to save you!” (pg. 373). All the governess
wants to go is keep Miles and Flora safe from the horrors of
Bly but she wanted to know if Miles knew anything before she
would tell him what was going on. The governesses only
priority is to keep them safe and that is why she is the
protagonist.
• Antagonists
• The most obvious antagonists in The Turn of
the Screw are Peter Quint and Miss Jessel
because they terrorize the governess and try to
possess the children.
• Peter Quint is a red haired, attractive, clever
young man who used to be the children’s
uncle’s valet until he mysteriously died. He
now haunts Bly in search of possessing Miles.
• Miss Jessel is a young beautiful woman who
was the children’s former governess who also
mysteriously died and had an inappropriate
relationship with Peter Quint. She then became
pregnant because of the affair. Miss Jessel
roams Bly to try to possess or “corrupt” Flora.
 Conflict
• The main types of conflict in The turn of the Screw are mainly man vs.
supernatural, man vs. man, and man vs. self, depending on how you look
at the novel.

• Man vs. supernatural has to do with the fact

that there are ghosts haunting Bly trying to corrupt
Miles and Flora and the governess is the one
trying to save them from being possessed.
The governess faces many occurrences of Peter
and Miss Jessel around Bly and eventually they
get the best of her.

• Man vs. man is the struggle between the

governess and Mrs. Grose and the children. The governess tries very hard
to prove that Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are really there and trying to get
the children but they never actually see them which makes the governesses
struggle to save them that more difficult.
• Man vs. self is the other perspective
in The Turn of the Screw because one
can argue that the governess is insane
and is imagining Peter and Miss
Jessel. She stresses herself out with
the idea that there are “horrors” at
Bly and how she tries to save the
children from something that might
not even be there. There are theories
that she went insane because of her
desires for Miles and Flora’s uncle,
but they haven’t been proven. She is
in a constant battle with herself in
“seeing” the ghosts and trying to grip
onto reality.
 Themes

• The Supernatural
• The supernatural refers to the fact that there are two ghosts in this story
and is the base of the novel. It has an effect on the characters’ minds and
actions and what the ghosts physically do to the governess and possibly
even the children. The supernatural could be just in the governesses mind,
or it could be shockingly real.

• After Mrs. Grose and Flora left, the governess was alone with Miles and
Bly. Until Peter Quint showed up and the governess orders him to leave
them. Henry James writes “But he had already jerked straight round,
stared, glared again, and seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss
I was so proud of he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and
the grasp with which I recovered him might have been that of catching
him in his fall.
• I caught him, yes, I held him – it
may be imagined with what a
passion; but at the end of a minute
I began to feel what it truly was
that I held. We were alone with the
quiet day, and his little heart,
dispossessed, had stopped.” (pg.
403) Peter Quint seemed to have
somehow killed Miles by either
dispossessing him or leaving and
taking his life with him. This is
just one example of how the
supernatural is a big part of The
Turn of the Screw.
• Innocence
• The theme of innocence can refer to the children’s child-like innocence
that is fading away because they are being corrupted from Peter and Miss
Jessel, or even innocence in imagination, Mrs. Grose and the children not
being able to see the ghosts because of their lack of imagination.
Innocence can also refer to ignorance, how the children and Mrs. Grose
don’t realize the reality of what’s happening around them.

• One night the governess wakes up to see Flora out of her bed looking
out the window at the field. The governess quietly got up and went to
another window to see what she was looking at. She didn’t see anything
at first but “Then [she] saw something more. The moon made the night
extraordinarily penetrable and showed [her] on the lawn a person,
diminished by distance, who stood there motionless and as if fascinated,
looking up to where [she] had appeared – looking, that is, not so much
straight at [her] as at something that was apparently above [her].
• There was clearly another person above [her] – there was a
person on the tower; but the presence on the lawn was not in
the least what [she] had conceived and had confidently hurried
to meet. The presence on the lawn – [she] felt sick as [she]
made it out – was poor little Miles himself.” Miles was out on
the lawn to prove to the governess that he can be bad because
she sees him as an innocent angel. Even though he was being
bad, she saw it as “poor little Miles” and didn’t punish him.
His child-like innocence is tricking the governess.
• Good Vs. Evil
• The governess is in a constant battle in keeping the “evil”
away from the children. The governess is essentially the good
in this and the ghosts are obviously the evil. She is trying to
defend innocent children from the corruption of evil spirits.
However, the roles of good and evil can vary depending on if
you see the governess as insane or sane.

• One day when the governess took Flora over to the lake to
play, the governess notices a women standing across the lake
looking at Flora. The governess thought to herself “Another
person – this time; but a figure of quite as unmistakable horror
and evil: a woman in black, pale and dreadful – with such an
air also, and such a face! – on the other side of the lake.
 Point of view

• The point of view in The Turn of the Screw is from the first person.
Throughout the novel the governess is the one telling the reader what’s
happening from her perspective. Even in the prologue there is an
unknown first person who listens to Douglas talk about how his story is
scarier than the ones told earlier.

• In the very beginning of chapter one, the governess explains how she
remembers her time at Bly and how it all started. The governess says “I
remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a
little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong.” (pg. 298). The governess
explains, from her point of view, that her experience at Bly had its ups
and downs. This is an example of how The Turn of the Screw is wrote
from the first persons point of view because the governess starts off by
saying “I” indicating that she will be telling the story from her point of
view.
 Gothic elements

• The Turn of the Screw can be placed in several categories such as murder
mystery, an allegory of good vs. evil, or even a romance but it is mainly a
Gothic horror. Here are some key examples of why The Turn of the Screw
is a gothic horror:
• The suspenseful atmosphere
• On the first night at Bly, the governess is in a restless mood and she hears
footsteps outside her door and a child crying. When she is walking along
the field she encounters Peter Quint for the first time and the atmosphere
changes from pleasant to dangerous. She then encounters Miss Jessel at the
bottom of the stairs with her head in her hands in the middle of the night.
The prologue and its contents also adds to the suspense where one of the
teenagers finished telling a story about one possessed child and a boy
named Douglas brings up his story and says “If the child gives the effect of
another turn of the screw, what would you say to two children?” (pg. 292).
Which foreshadows the events coming up and creates suspense.
• Gothic (gloomy) setting
• The Turn of the Screw takes place at an isolated country home in Bly
where all of the horrific events happen. It’s where Peter Quint and Miss
Jessel appear several times to terrorize the governess and attempt to
corrupt the children, its where Miss Jessel and Peter had their
inappropriate affair, leading in Miss Jessel’s pregnancy, where Peter
Quint could have molested Miles. Bly is the place where little Miles died.

• When the governess first arrives at Bly she

sees the mansion as beautiful but then realizes
that “it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient
house, embodying a few features of a
building still older, half replaced and half utilized”
(pg. The governess sees the house as it really is
after taking a closer look. The mansion is
actually old, ugly, eerie, and isolated where
horrors roam.
• Supernatural events
• Throughout the novel the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel appear, seeming to
want to corrupt Miles and Flora. They show up several times, in windows, at the
bottom of the staircase, sitting at the governesses desk, across the lake, in one of the
towers, and even possibly in the children.
• When the governess first encounters Peter Quint
she goes straight to Mrs. Grose and tells her what
happened. When the governess describes the man
she saw, Mrs. Grose realizes that it is Peter Quint
and tells the governess that he died. Terrified, the
governess asks Mrs. Grose if she is being serious
and she says “Yes. Mr. Quint is dead.” (pg. 321).
This is the first distinction that there are
supernatural beings at Bly and sets up the rest of
the novel with the ghosts presence.
• Insanity
• It’s unclear whether or not the governess actually saw Peter and Miss Jessel or
that she was just insane. She was the only one to ever see the ghosts and she was
basically loosing her mind over the fact that she can’t expose the horrors of Bly
to anyone else.
•
• It’s debatable if she was insane or not but when
the governess and Mrs. Grose go out to find
Flora when she went
missing, they find her by the lake
with Miss Jessel a few feet away from her. The
governess tries to expose her but when she does
Flora reacts by saying:

• “I don't know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never have. I think
you're cruel. I don't like you! … Take me away, take me away—oh, take me
away from her!” (pg. 382-383). Flora claims to see nothing and become
frightened of the governess because she thinks she’s insane, which could
possibly be the case.
 Other elements

• Romance
• Even though The Turn of the Screw is mainly a gothic novel, it
does have some elements of romance. When the governess first
meets the children’s uncle during the interview, she immediately
falls in love with him. As well in the prologue Douglas admits that
he had feelings for the governess. This has features of a gothic novel
because it is partly a murder, and it is heavily scripted with the
supernatural.

• Victorian
• The novel was published near the end of the Victorian era (1898)
and The Turn of the Screw is based in a Victorian society. The
novel includes an omniscient narrator (the governess) who shows
her bias opinion of what actually happened at Bly, along with an
unexplained death in the end.
 Legacy
• Henry James’s most widely
read—and most
controversial—piece of
fiction.
• According to Yale professor
William Lyon Phelps: James
is “the best example of the
psychological realist that we
have in American literature”
and The Turn of the Screw
“the most powerful, the most
nerve-shattering ghost story I
have ever read…”