The "Fort / Da" Game

(Above, Freud and his daughter Sophie, whose son Ernst is the fort / da spieler.)

In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Sigmund Freud relates the story of a game his grandson invented at the age of one and a half, before he could speak many words. He used to throw small objects away from him, then say "o-o-o-o" with pleasure. He also took a wooden spool attached to a piece of string, and threw it over the edge of his cot, so that it disappeared. After saying "o-o-o-o," he would pull it back to himself and say, "da." He repeated this game over and over. Freud and the boy’s mother understood him to be saying "fort" and "da" (German for "gone" and "there").

Freud theorized that this game of disappearance and return allowed the boy to manage his anxiety about the absences of his mother, to whom he was very attached. By controlling the actual presence and absence of an object, he was able to manage the virtual presence of his mother. The fort / da game was the child’s invention of symbolism: the use of one object (wooden reel) to represent another (mother).

If you recall our earlier discussion of language, you'll remember that Jacques Lacan discusses the important moment in the development of subjectivity when the child grasps the idea of language (the field of culturally symbolic sounds and representations) and so enters what he terms, "the symbolic order." In Lacan's reworking of Freud, language---symbolic representation---is the all important medium through which our access to "the real" is structured.

Freud's grandson was using his creative play as a way to deal with a basic childhood anxiety through representation. He was asserting control over his environment, learning a method to dispel anxiety and frustration and coming to terms with a concept: absence and presence, the idea that mother can be "gone" yet still there, in memory and play.

Here is the relevant section from Beyond the Pleasure Principle:

"…At this point I propose to leave the dark and dismal subject of the traumatic neurosis and pass on to examine the method of working employed by the mental apparatus in one of its earliest normal activities. I mean in children's play.

The different theories of children's play have only recently been summarized and discussed from the psychoanalytic point of view by Pfeifer (1919), to whose paper I would refer my readers. These theories attempt to discover the motives which lead children to play, but they fail to bring into the foreground the economic motive, the consideration of the yield of pleasure involved. Without wishing to include the whole field covered by these phenomena, I have been able, through a chance opportunity which presented itself, to throw some light upon the first game played by a little boy of one and a half and invented by himself. It was more than a mere fleeting observation, for I lived under the same roof as the child and his parents for some weeks, and it was some time before I discovered the meaning of the puzzling activity which he constantly repeated.

The child was not at all precocious in his intellectual development. At the age of one and a half he could say only a few comprehensible words; he could also make use of a number of sounds which expressed a meaning intelligible to those around him. He was, however, on good terms with his parents and their one servant-girl, and tributes were paid to his being a 'good boy'. He did not disturb his parents at night, he conscientiously obeyed orders not to touch certain things or go into certain rooms, and above all he never cried when his mother left him for a few hours. At the same time, he was greatly attached to his mother, who had not only fed him herself but had also looked after him without any outside help. This good little boy, however, had an occasional disturbing habit of taking any small objects he could get hold of and throwing them away from him into a corner, under the bed, and so on, so that hunting for his toys and picking them up was often quite a business. As he did this he gave vent to a loud, long-drawn-out 'o-o-o-o', accompanied by an expression of interest and satisfaction. His mother and the writer of the present account were agreed in thinking that this was not a mere interjection but represented the German word 'fort' ['gone']. I eventually realized that it was a game and that the only use he made of any of his toys was to play 'gone' with them. One day I made an observation which confirmed my view. The child had a wooden reel with a piece of string tied round it. It never occurred to him to pull it along the floor behind him, for instance, and play at its being a carriage. What he did was to hold the reel by the string and very skillfully throw it over the edge of his curtained cot, so that it disappeared into it, at the same time uttering his expressive 'o-o-o-o'. He then pulled the reel out of the cot again by the string and hailed its reappearance with a joyful 'da' ['there']. This, then, was the complete game of disappearance and return. As a rule one only witnessed its first act, which was repeated untiringly as a game in itself, though there is no doubt that the greater pleasure was attached to the second act. (1)

The interpretation of the game then became obvious. It was related to the child's great cultural achievement: the instinctual renunciation (that is, the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction) which he had made in allowing his mother to go away without protesting He compensated himself for this, as it were, by himself staging the disappearance and return of the objects within his reach. It is of course a matter of indifference from the point of view of judging the effective nature of the game whether the child invented it himself or took it over on some outside suggestion. Our interest is directed to another point. The child cannot possibly have felt his mother's departure as something agreeable or even indifferent. How then does his repetition of this distressing experience as a game fit in with the pleasure principle? It may perhaps be said in reply that her departure had to be enacted as a necessary preliminary to her joyful return, and that it was in the latter that lay the true purpose of the game. But against this must be counted the observed fact that the first act, that of departure, was staged as a game in itself and far more frequently than the episode in its entirety, with its pleasurable ending.

No certain decision can be reached from the analysis of a single case like this. On an unprejudiced view one gets an impression that the child turned his experience into a game from another motive. At the outset he was in a passive situation, he was overpowered by the experience; but, by repeating it, unpleasurable though it was, as a game, he took on an active part. These efforts might be put down to an instinct for mastery that was acting independently of whether the memory was in itself pleasurable or not. But still another interpretation may be attempted. Throwing away the object so that it was 'gone' might satisfy an impulse of the child's, which was suppressed in his actual life, to revenge himself on his mother for going away from him. In that case it would have a defiant meaning: 'All right, then, go away! I don't need you. I'm sending you away myself.' A year later, the same boy whom I had observed at his first game used to take a toy, if he was angry with it, and throw it on the floor, exclaiming: 'Go to the fwont!' He had heard at that time that his absent father was 'at the front', and was far from regretting his absence; on the contrary he made it quite clear that he had no desire to be disturbed in his sole possession of his mother. We know of other children who liked to express similar hostile impulses by throwing away objects instead of persons. We are therefore left in doubt as to whether the impulse to work over in the mind some overpowering experience so as to make oneself master of it can find expression as a primary event, and independently of the pleasure principle. For, in the case we have been discussing, the child may, after all, only have been able to repeat his unpleasant experience in play because the repetition carried along with it a yield of pleasure of another sort but none the less a direct one.

Nor shall we be helped in our hesitation between these two views by further considering children's play. It is clear that in their play children repeat everything that has made a great impression on them in real life, and that in doing so they abreact the strength of the impression and, as one might put it, make themselves master of the situation. But on the other hand it is obvious that all their play is influenced by a wish that dominates them the whole time, the wish to be grown-up and to be able to do what grown-up people do. It can also be observed that the unpleasurable nature of an experience does not always unsuit it for play. If the doctor looks down a child's throat or carries out some small operation on him, we may be quite sure that these frightening experiences will be the subject of the next game; but we must not in that connection overlook the fact that there is a yield of pleasure from another source. As the child passes over from the passivity of the experience to the activity of the game, he hands on the disagreeable experience to one of his playmates and in this way revenges himself on a substitute.

Nevertheless, it emerges from this discussion that there is no need to assume the existence of a special imitative instinct in order to provide a motive for play. Finally, a reminder may be added that the artistic play and artistic imitation carried out by adults, which, unlike children's, are aimed at an audience, do not spare the spectators (for instance, in tragedy) the most painful experiences and can yet be felt by them as highly enjoyable. This is convincing proof that, even under the dominance of the pleasure principle, there are ways and means enough of making what is in itself unpleasurable into a subject to be recollected and worked over in the mind. The consideration of these cases and situations, which have a yield of pleasure as their final outcome, should be undertaken by some system of aesthetics with an economic approach to its subject-matter. They are of no use for our purposes, since they presuppose the existence and dominance of the pleasure principle; they give no evidence of the operation of tendencies beyond the pleasure principle, that is, of tendencies more primitive than it and independent of it.

(1) A further observation subsequently confirmed this interpretation fully. One day the child's mother had been away for several hours and on her return was met with the words 'Baby o-o~o!' which was at first incomprehensible. It soon turned out, however, that during this long period of solitude the child had found a method of making himself disappear. He had discovered his reflection in a full-length mirror which did not quite reach to the ground, so that by crouching down he could make his mirror-image 'gone'."

(Sigmund Freud, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," The Freud Reader, W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1989, pages 599-601)

Thanatos: Beyond the Pleasure Principle

In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud modified his earlier model of psychic economy in which “the pleasure principle” (and its repression/sublimation) is the central force propelling human action, behavior and development. In this essay Freud sketches out a new theory of drives by adding “the death drive” (called “Thanatos,” in complement to “Eros” by Freud’s students). Beyond the Pleasure Principle produces a striking portrait of the human psyche as struggling between two opposing forces: Eros, the progressive drive toward sexual and pan-sexual pleasure, creativity and harmony; Thanatos, the regressive pull of repetition, compulsion, aggression and self-destruction.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle was born out of Freud’s work with victims of trauma--specifically the traumatized soldiers returning from World War I. In fact, one of the cultural effects of the Great War was a growing popular recognition of the existence of psychological damage itself: that one could be as debilitated by mental trauma as physical injury. Freud observed that his patients often tended to repeat or re-enact these traumatic experiences, in symbolic or displaced forms, a seemingly paradoxical phenomenon that he termed repetition compulsion. Such compulsive repetition of the unpleasurable appeared to contradict the pleasure principle. In his further reflection on the phenomena, Freud noticed this repetition of unpleasant events could be found even in other circumstances like the play of children, as elaborated in his famous description of the fort / da game of his grandson. It is clear from this example that, at least on one level, such repetition compulsion is born from and can produce a positive and healthy attempt to deal with trauma by regaining control over a situation where previously one had none.

While Freud believed that in many cases we repeat traumatic events in order to master them after the fact, this is not the only motive or result of a drive away from pleasure. Freud began to distinguish a deeper masochism, a process that involves the drives turning against the self. Freud postulated the existence of a fundamental death drive that would counterbalance the tendency of beings to do only what they find pleasurable. According to this idea, organisms are driven to return to a pre-organic, inanimate state: to seek to withdraw from the anxiety of life (movement) in stillness and death.

Thoughts on Student Logs

I've been wanting to address the topic of students logs for some time now. The logs are an important part of this class and why that is and what purpose they can serve may need unpacking. I hope these comments will help you break through whatever block you may be having with writing weekly logs. So far, the resistance to using that space has been so  unprecedented (at least in my experience of using class blogs over the last five years or so) that I am tempted to analyze this resistance psychoanalytically. At the very least, though, I would like to get a handle on the source of this resistance.

So far, there have been some interesting individual posts, but not much commenting or discussion on the posts beyond my own remarks. Also, not everyone has been keeping up (some--many?-- have yet to post at all), so I want to not just reiterate the importance and function of the student logs but also point out that they are a significant part of the work your final grade based on. I don't know how one can learn in a class without ever having participated in it. That said, no one can pass this class without ever having posted a single log or made a single in-class comment. I hope it is clear that this class, like many literature classes, is not about memorizing facts to reproduce perfectly on a test or paper. It is about interacting with texts, reflecting on one's reading practices and in the process learning something not just about the novels or theories under discussion but about how one views the world, why one has come to view it that way, and what the consequences of such 'views' may be. That is why I'm interested in seeing what you can do with the ideas we engage with in reading and discussion. I am not looking for a "perfect" paper or "perfect" reproduction of what I've said in class; I am instead looking for a thoughtful response to the ideas under discussion and an attempt to use them to talk about narrative in different ways than you may have yet talked and thought about "narrative" and its role in human life---including yours.

I think that the most important writing, and maybe the most important part of the class itself, are the logs. I know this will seem strange to students who are used to attaching importance only to those items they are graded on. And the logs are ungraded. Furthermore, they are an "informal" space---a space of notes, quick thoughts, first ideas, fragments, comments, trial runs. I don't expect fully fleshed out, developed and polished arguments to appear there; those things are the proper matter of formal essays. So why do I put so much value on them? Because I value them pedagogically: they are a necessary prior step before any completely realized ideas can be set down in essay form. In other words, they are one of the spaces were actual learning happens. Graded papers are the final product of learning: examples of what you know. Before you can express ideas, you have to produce them, you have to work things through by reading, by talking and also by writing. Writing can be an important creative medium, the actual tool you use to learn with and not just a fancy display case for the finished results.

The logs are also an autodidactic space, a space for self learning. The end goal of education in general should be to teach people how to teach themselves. In a successful class the teacher would be no longer necessary, or the relation between "teacher" and "student" would entirely re-conceptualized. It is therefore the student's responsibility to make the logs useful to them. It is really up to you whether the learning logs will be a significant moment in your education---an opportunity to learn new things in new ways---or just some assigned task to be done as quickly and negligently as possible.

Of course that doesn't mean I won't help you or make suggestions about what you can write about (I'm already doing that, by the way, in my individual comments). For example, I suggested  that you could begin by using the log as a space to discuss that week's reading and class discussion. But that's just a starting point. You can also ask questions about the class, pose questions or describe examples of other narratives you've read and seen, bring in points from posts you've read on the main class blog or pertinent topics you've read about elsewhere.

Most importantly, I've asked you to use the logs as a "self-reflective" space: somewhere not only to state opinions, but to also begin asking questions about them and becoming more thoughtful about why you have the responses to texts that you do. That's an important part of education. To end a class without ever having questioned any of your prior ideas, opinions and assumptions is an intellectual failure.

So what you do in the learning logs is in large part up to you. But the effect of what you do or don't do is not just restricted to you alone. Don't forget that the logs are situated in a public space. By posting them online, students have an opportunity to break out of the individuated and one-way discussions that usually characterize learning. Although every class consists of a group of people, rarely does any truly collective production of knowledge take place. Students, and many teachers, usually respond to classes as simply a group of unconnected individuals. Learning to think about class as something non-individual can be difficult.

The online student logs though, can be an opportunity for truly collective learning. Which is how, of course, knowledge is actually produced---no one creates ideas in a vacuum. Knowledge is built out of, is built on, the work of others. When Isaac Newton remarked, "If I have seen farther it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants," he wasn't being humble but giving voice to how knowledge is created: no one's insights are ever truly individual. (And Newton's remark is itself an illustration of this since he borrowed the phrase about past writers, philosophers and scientists as "giant's shoulders" from earlier writers, notably the 12th Century monk John of Salisbury, who in turn probably borrowed it from an earlier source, Bernard of Chartres.)

So not producing logs is not just detrimental to your own learning, it is detrimental to the class as a whole. The course can not progress unless people are actively making it progress. And the teacher is only one person in the room.

Here are some links to a past version of this course, one taught in 2010/2011. Though you can access the entire archive of student logs from this class, I'm going to point out a few logs where students talk about the material we've covered so far in this course.  Some work on Freud's essay 'On Dreams' can be found here.   Some discussion of the Freudian Uncanny can be found here, here (with The Sandman and Coraline in the discussion thread),  here (with the sexual dimension brought out), and here (again in relation to The Sandman). The Turn of the Screw is discussed  here (don't miss discussion in the thread) here and here (with "Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly").  Some other interesting posts may be these: Boardwalk Empire and the Uncanny, an Uncanny picture, a discussion of a Chuck Palahniuk short story that came out of earlier log discussion, a discussion of another story/film (the Prestige) and its relation to the Uncanny as well as H. As you look through these you'll notice that the length and quality of individual posts vary. But when you read such entries as a series, and read them as they are being produced, you can see both individuals in the class and the class as a whole deepening and developing ideas in the process. That is why there is always a clear correlation between solid papers and ongoing log work: students have developed ideas on their own, and of their own, to write about.

Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly

The New York Times
March 6, 1994 
 

To the Editor: 

In his review of "Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque" (Feb. 13), Michael Upchurch remarks that one of the tales merely "makes explicit everything that is ambiguous" in Henry James's great novella "The Turn of the Screw." 

In fact, my story is a not unrespectful reimagining of the children, Peter Quint, Miss Jessel and the messianic governess, in which a "family" bound together by homoerotic affection is destroyed by a fanatic Christian; the struggle in this case does not kill the child Miles, but frees him from both the governess and Peter Quint. Our reimagining of homoerotic ties as not "by nature" repellent is a cultural development Henry James, for all the magnitude of his genius, could not perhaps have envisioned. But my story, "Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly," is also an exorcism of all ties -- well intentioned or fanatic -- and in it little Miles does not die of a "stopped heart" but escapes his oppressors, and lives.

Joyce Carol Oates
Princeton, N.J.

Works cited

Here is the protocol to follow with papers for this class. A good practice is to always ask the professor to provide an example of how they would like citations referenced---although citing practices are becoming more streamlined and more consistent across the disciplines, there are still some differences in style guides and citation procedures (if you are publishing an article, the journal or editor will always provide you with a style sheet to follow).

Embedded citations (used in MLA style) are nice and simple. For an embedded citation, you simply put a parenthetical reference to the work from where you got your information. This information may have been paraphrased or directly quoted; either way, the information is not your original work and must be attributed to its author.

The idea of parenthetical references is to keep the flow of the paper as smooth as possible and make it easy for the reader to find the reference in your Works Cited page at the end of your essay. Your Works Cited page will list all your references in alphabetical order by author's last name (or title in the case of work with no author given).

Thus, if you have mentioned the author in your writing, you simply cite the page number, if you have not, then you cite both author's last name and page number. For example:

In the opening of The Turn of the Screw, Douglas remarks, "The story won't tell...not in any literal or vulgar way." (James, 5)

At the beginning of James's novel, Douglas remarks, "The story won't tell...not in any literal or vulgar way." (5)

If you don't have an author to cite, use a shortened form of the work's title.

In organizing your Works Cited page, follow these examples (MLA style):

Book:

Lastname, Firstname. Title. City: Publisher, Date.

Essay in a Book of Essays:

Lastname, Firstname. "Title of Essay." Title of Book. Editor's Firstname Lastname. City: Publisher, Date.

Periodical:

Lastname, Firstname. "Title." Periodical day month year.

Journal:

Lastname, Firstname. "Title." Journal volume (year).

Web page format and content vary widely. Use the following guidelines (blogger software will not allow me to type the term "URL" enclosed in <> marks. But that is the format you should follow):

General:

Lastname, Firstname. "Article Title." Site Name. Organization name if pertinent. Article date. Date of access. End with URL enclosed in <> marks

With no author and no page date:
 "Article Title." Site Name. Organization name if pertinent. Date of access. End with URL enclosed in <> marks

Site with no site name:
 

Lastname, Firstname. "Article Title." Home Page. Article date. Date of Access. End with URL enclosed in <> marks 
 

Note: If there are no page numbers, as is usual with Web documents, do not make up one or use the number one (as in "Jones 1") to cover the whole document. Use a number only when there is a number.

Class materials with no publication information/page numbers/other data:

Craft a citation using the information you have; you will at least have author's name and the title of the story or essay.

I think this covers all the situations you will encounter in writing this paper.

For any other questions you may have, feel free to ask.

First Essay: The Turn of the Screw and the Uncanny

Discuss Henry James' novella, "The Turn of the Screw" as an instance of the Freudian Uncanny. Can you see similar or parallel elements in this narrative to those Freud finds in "The Sandman" and his further definitions of the category, "das Unheimlich," in his essay?

Think about how Freud investigates the Uncanny. He describes many features of this estranging effect; his discussion of the concept centers on examples of doubling, repetition, ambiguity, above all the unfamiliar face of the familiar. His first move in his essay is to demonstrate the unheimlich hidden in the heimlich: the uncanny in the "home-ly." In this way he connects the Uncanny with the return of the repressed:

"It may be that the Uncanny (the 'unhomely') is something familiar ('homely', 'homey') that has been repressed and then reappears, and that everything uncanny satisfies this condition...I believe that it...can be traced back every time to something that was once familar and then repressed..."

Freud also associates the Uncanny with Oedipal anxiety; he pays particular attention to "The Sandman" as a story about Fathers and Children.

What is the return of the familiar, the homely in "The Turn of the Screw?" The unfamiliar familiar? The hidden familiar? Family and familiar share the same root and indeed a family, a displaced and disrupted family is at the heart of "The Turn of the Screw." We have two children and three sets of parents----the children's biological parents, the surrogate parental couple of Jessel and Quint, and the Master and the Governess. Four of the six are dead; of the two living, one has abdicated his (legal, biological) position entirely and given the other an absolute authority. The Governess is The Father in this case.

Also consider the way this "coupling" of characters sets up patterns of repetition and doubling: Quint/the Master, Jessel/the Governess, the Governess/Quint. Although the Governess's story is premised on a clear distinction between Good and Evil, the various similarities in situation and activity between the Governess and the Ghosts blur those lines and render motive and meaning ambiguous.

Finally, this is a story established at the beginning as one which "won't tell, not in any literal or vulgar way." In other words, this is a story of suggestion rather than revelation, of "evidence" that can be construed in multiple directions, of questions that can be entertained but never assigned a final answer. Literary critic J. Hillis Miller commented on "The Turn of the Screw," "The words on the page work infallibly as speech acts forcing the reader...against his or her will, to "read into" the words meanings that are not there. The reader will fill the blanks out of his or her imagination and so be responsible for whatever evil thoughts he or she may have."

This assignment should be very simple on one level and very challenging on another. Think of this first paper as a trial run: a place to “try out” some of the ideas we’ve been talking about in class, a place to try out new ideas and observational skills. Think about how Freud's essay illuminates James's novella. Do not perform a literal and vulgar "Freudian" reading: i.e., do not attempt to "psychoanalyze" the Governess and "solve" her "case."

And don’t forget to title your essay. A title is one of the elements which distinguishes a piece of formal writing from an informal series of notes. Your title should reflect something pertinent to your discussion. "Paper One," "Essay," "Freud Paper," and the like are not adequate essay titles. Neither is the title of the novel you are writing about.

Length: 4 1/2 to 5 typewritten double-spaced pages.
All papers must be stapled or they will not be accepted.
Due: Monday, October 27

The Victorian Cult of the Child: Innocence and Experience, Ignorance and Knowledge

Above are two images that illustrate aspects of Victorian beliefs about children and childhood. The first, "The Child Enthroned," pretty much says it all in its title. This 1894 painting by Thomas Cooper Gotch was wildly popular as an expression of "the child" as a quasi-divine icon. The second is a photograph of Alice Liddell by the Rev. Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll. To our modern eyes, this image looks seductive and likely a bit sexualized. Yet both are rather mainstream images which would have been read as exemplars of childhood innocence by Victorian eyes.

According to the Victorian ideal, the child was viewed not as a miniature adult, as children had been perceived in an earlier era, but as innocents who were to enjoy a life of carefree happiness until old enough to assume the responsibilities of (a gendered) adult life. But for Victorians, the moral category of "innocence" was defined by ignorance. Well-bred young ladies and adult women were also expected to be "innocent" and childlike (in fact, both women and children occupied the same legal status in Victorian England as non-competent dependents) and this meant being in large part ignorant of the "brutal" sphere of public life (work, commerce, people from outside one's own genteel class). For children, innocence and moral purity was defined by their ignorance of adult life and adult knowledge. Above all childhood innocence was premised on a lack of sexuality: the child was seen not so much as a pre-sexual creature, but by definition, an asexual one. This is why Lewis Carroll's child photography---including nude studies that seem "obviously pedophiliac" to contemporary eyes---did not ring any alarm bells among Victorian parents who not only permitted, but were often present, during sittings.

Of course it goes without saying that all this angelic innocence and purity applies only to well-bred children, the offspring of ladies and gentleman. The spawn of the working classes were quite another thing indeed. (Here you can read about their pre-child-labor law innocence--don't miss the affidavits from child miners who started working at around age five). These images

 

contrast sharply with these

this portrait

with this one

Looking at Miles and Flora again, then, may reveal why they would be such disconcerting figures to their original audience: while they are no more intelligent than the average children of their class, they are knowing. Tainted by access to (adult) knowledge, they are no longer ignorant and therefore no longer innocent.

Here is a review from The American Monthly Review of Reviews, December 1898, which expresses unease with having children as fictive figures of "evil:"

"The malignant spirit is worsted, but the price of victory is death. There is something really great in the story and assuredly the skill is superb. But surely we are not merely sentimentalists in our protest again children being made pawns in this horrible contest."

The Outlook (October 29, 1898) finds: "The story itself is distinctly repulsive."

And a reviewer in the New York weekly, The Independent, January 5, 1899, is more adamant in his disgust:

"The Turn of the Screw is the most hopelessly evil story that we have ever read in any literature, ancient or modern. How Mr. James could, or how any man or woman could, choose to make such a study of infernal human debauchery, for it is nothing else, is unaccountable...The study, while it exhibits Mr. James's genius in a powerful light, affects the reader with a disgust that is not to be expressed. The feeling after perusal of this horrible story is that one has been assisting in an outrage upon the holiest and sweetest fountain of human innocence, and helping to debauch---at least by helplessly standing by---the pure and trusting nature of children. Human imagination can go no further into infamy, literary art could not be used with more refined subtlety of spiritual defilement."

While this probably reads to us as a distinctly over-the-top reaction to The Turn of the Screw, we should also remember that a similarly scandalized reaction first greeted Freud's initial theories of children's development because they were premised on both the existence of childhood desire and sexuality and its naturalness.

The Victorian Governess

The heart of The Turn of the Screw is a manuscript written by a governess about a singular experience in her employment. In order to appreciate the position from which she is writing, indeed, the position from which she is making sense of the experiences themselves, a quick look at the historical position of the Victorian governess is absolutely essential.

Because she was neither family member nor working class servant, the governess held a peculiar and ill-defined role in Victorian society, a society which found middle-class female employment problematic. The only time a woman of genteel birth was justified in seeking employment was if she found herself in financial distress and had no male relatives to give her support. The governess was usually a lady forced to support herself because of her father’s death or financial ruin. While it was paid work, it was “respectable” labour. In the gender-appropriate domestic sphere and among the respectable classes, she was kept from contact with the vulgar and “common” world of working class employment. But because she was nevertheless employed, her social status was lessened. Definitely not a servant nor a menial, she was nevertheless not quite a class equal of her employers. In fact, aristocratic and middle-class Victorians were often not sure how to treat the governess: while she was roughly from the same social class, her lack of financial stability made her their obvious inferior.

The governess occupied a grey area in the class hierarchy of the Victorian household: she was “above” the servants, but “below” the family. And in no area was her class dilemma more clear than in the attenuated marriage prospects of the governess. She would likely remain a spinster since she must not consort with men from inferior or superior classes.

The story won't tell: beginning "The Turn of the Screw"

In the framing prologue there are several statements which seem to prefigure what kind of story we will read. The tale is categorized as a "ghost story," and yet distanced from that facile label: "It's beyond everything." In describing the governess's feelings for her employer, Douglas remarks that, "I saw it, and she saw I saw it; but neither of us spoke of it." This statement could sum up a great deal of the "action" of the story: a series of "knowing" looks where everything is, and isn't, said. The narrator suggests that any mystery will be cleared up once Douglas reads the manuscript aloud and that "The story will tell." But Douglas is quick to reply, "The story won't tell...not in any literal vulgar way.

We begin, then, with a story which "won't tell," won't reveal. A story about a young woman hired under condition that she "but never, never...appeal or complain, nor write about anything."

This is a narrative of gaps and silences. Of letters whose contents are momentous, but of which we never exactly learn. A story of monstrous, shameful actions which are constantly hinted at, but never revealed.

It is also a story about a story---the prologue establishes that we are "hearing" a story through three sets of narrators: the governess (who has written her story down), Douglas (who reads the governess's manuscript aloud to the house guests) and the narrator who is transmitting to us "an exact transcript of my own made later." And this haunting story about the dead is "haunted" by death before it's even begun---not only has the governess died years before Douglas tells her story, but Douglas himself has died prior to the narrator's re-telling of the story read out to the "hushed little circle" of expectant listeners.

It is a story of returning presences--ghosts--and characters who replace/displace each other. The governess is initially hired as replacement, as a kind of double replacement for both the governess and the absent Master. Moreover, she is constantly stepping into the position of---replacing---both Miss Jessel and Quint (at the window, at her desk, sitting at the bottom of the stairs, standing on the shore of the pond, etc.)

It is also a story of people slipping out of their "proper places." Part of Quint's "evil" is that he overstepped or didn't know his place (he wore his master's clothes, he presumed relations with his betters). And part of Miss Jessel's "evil" is that she, too, "fell" from of her place through her alliance with a social inferior. And yet the governess, clearly marked as "not evil" in the (her) story, is also out of place, invested by the Master with a proxy authority well beyond a governess's traditional duties.

And finally, it is a story about...well, what is it a story about?

Turns of the screw...

As I spoke about in class, Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, one of the most famous ghost stories is also a very ambiguous ghost story.  And his novella is premised on many kinds of ambiguity: not only on the level of  content (are the ghosts "really" there? what exactly is so terrifying about them?) but also form. James' story is presented as a manuscript written by a woman long dead, read years later. James' use of this narrative frame creates a distance between the events and our understanding of them. It’s so ambiguous that there are questions about the questions.

As you might expect it has become a very popular text for literary scholars and critics to analyze. It's also been a very popular inspiration for other artists: there are countless film and theater treatments of the story.

After we discuss The Turn of the Screw, we'll be reading one of the more ambitious and fascinating responses to it, Joyce Carol Oates's short story, "Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly," a work which attempts to turn TOTS on its head, so to speak.

But the work has inspired many treatments, versions and responses. Here's a far from complete list of other works which derive from The Turn on the Screw, many of which are more or less "faithful" adaptations for stage or sceen:

Benjamin Britten wrote an opera based on "The Turn of the Screw" in 1954.

A 1959 live television version starring Ingrid Bergman.

The Innocents (1961) with Deborah Kerr as the Governess and Michael Redgrave as The Uncle. Truman Capote worked on the script.

There's a television version with Lynn Redgrave as the Governess in 1974.

Shelley Duvall directed a version in 1989 for her television series, "Nightmare Classics" with Amy Irving as the Governess and Balthazar Getty as Miles.

A 1994 British version with Patsy Kensit and Julian Sands updates the story to the 1960s.

A 1995 television version called The Haunting of Helen Walker casts Valerie Bertinelli as the Governess.

Another television adaptation, in 1999, with Colin Firth as The Master.

A 1999 film adaptation Presence of Mind with Sadie Frost as the Governess, Harvey Keitel as the Master (!), Jude Law as The Secretary (!!?) and Lauren Bacall as Mrs. Grose (!!!!!!!)

The 2006 horror/thriller In a Dark Place is another TOTS adaptation, giving the story a contemporary setting.

Allegedly, the 2001 Nicole Kidman film, The Others is a TOTS version...but not very TOTS-y.

And probably the strangest film treatment I've come across is a 1971 prequel (!) to TOTS, The Nightcomers with Marlon Brando as a small-animal-torturing, BDSM Peter Quint. I'll have to try to track this one down soon.