Muriel West

  Muriel West

  Muriel West could be lined up in the ranks of the Structuralists since in her analysis he considers literature as a self referential word. She focuses his attention on the elements present in the text without taking into account things outside it (Author’s life or comments on the novel.)
  In her work West doesn’t seek to tip the scale either in favor of apparitionists or nonapparitionists. She takes a step back in order to see a bigger picture; she tries to find out why critics throughout years have interpreted “the turn of the screw” differently. She analyses the way in which the book is written. There he discovers that the book is inherently ambiguous; therefore, different readers – or critics— with different backgrounds will interpret something different. There are many vague passages which, depending on one’s inclination (apparitionists/nonapparitionsts), could be slanted to justify either view. This explanation somehow conciliates all the dissimilar interpretations that the story had.

  In West’s book, “a stormy night with the turn of the screw” she emulates the structure of “the turn of the screw”. Her work is presented as a manuscript written by an anonymous critic and edited by someone (we don’t know anything about her or him) who sign as H.K.Y. She present a narrator who describes a series of events that, at first sight, as supernatural: a storm broke out, ashes spread out of the fire place, his papers scattered down the table and the lamp went out. The narrator comments that he is surprised that all this happened, since the window was closed. No air could have got in, which make us to think about concealed forces; probably dark and mysterious ones due to the atmosphere created. However, then, in a further inspection, the narrator tell us that all those events were caused by a gust of air that came from the rear of the house. What seemed to be supernatural at first, turned out to be something caused by natural reasons. There West shows us – quite didactically— that or view in the story is narrowed by the narrator This shows us that our reading on the text heavily depends on the comments of the narrator (and in the case of the turn of the screw, also the comments made by both, Douglas and Douglas’ friend). Since the descriptions given by the narrator (the governess) are obscure and ambiguous, there is no wonder that several interpretations can be made.

I think that the approach taken by this author is effective, because it focus the attention on the ambiguity of the story. She does not try to force any interpretation, just describes why there are so many. I agree with what he says since I consider that it has no point trying to make sense of something that the author intentionally wanted to be ambiguous or polysemic.