The Inconsistencies of Henry James’s "The Turn of the Screw" are Explained by Multiple Narrators (Multiple Personality; Dissociative Identity) and Multiple Identity Literary Theory

This famous short story has the beautiful sentences and brilliant observations for which Henry James is justly famous. Its use of language is another lesson of the master. So readers tend to make excuses for the story’s blatant inconsistencies (not ambiguity, inconsistencies).

What inconsistencies? Take, for example, the first six pages of the story, which sets up the situation: The narrator is attending a social gathering in which people are telling ghost stories, and one gentleman decides to read a first-person account written down by a governess many years ago. The rest is the governess’s story. The thing is, the six-page set-up is never mentioned again. And there is simply no good reason to use the first six pages of a short story for a set-up that is totally abandoned. It’s like the beginning and end of the story were written by two different people.

Then there is the inconsistency in characterization of the two young children, Flora and Miles, who are under the governess’s care. For most of the story, these children are described—over and over again—as exceptionally beautiful innocents. Yet, toward the end of the story, young Miles is portrayed as a willful, wily, calculating schemer; perhaps, you might rationalize, because Miles is possessed by the evil spirit that the governess has been seeing. But then Miles dies of fright like he is the innocent again. Was Miles a beautiful innocent or an ugly schemer? Was the governess hallucinating? The narrative is not simply ambiguous; it actively takes both sides of these issues.

Of course, a bright reader can rationalize these inconsistencies, or can say that, after all, James is known for his “ambiguity.” But if the story had not been written so beautifully by the brilliant Henry James, its unresolved inconsistencies would be considered amateurish mistakes.

So why would a great writer like Henry James produce such an incoherent narrative? The answer is that the story was written by more than one narrative voice. One narrator wanted the six-page set-up. Another narrator didn’t. One narrator sees children as beautiful innocents. Another narrator sees children as devilish schemers. One narrator thinks that the governess saw real ghosts. Another narrator thinks that’s nonsense. I don’t know how many narrators wrote this story, but its unresolved inconsistencies are the footprints of these narrators, and they are walking in different directions.

Readers of this blog can guess that by multiple narrators, I mean the normal multiple personality (dissociative identity) common among writers. This interpretation of The Turn of the Screw illustrates the use of Multiple Identity Literary Theory.

Without this theory to understand James, he is vulnerable to a much harsher critique. In fact, Jamesian scholars, with a book load of facts and analysis (1), accuse James of pervasive and serial duplicity, both moral (deceit) and literary (doubling), in both fiction and nonfiction. And they can’t explain it. 

1. Tredy D, Duperray A, Harding A (eds.): Henry James and the Poetics of Duplicity. Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013