The New York TimesMarch 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.
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.
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