Heilman develops his
essay from an apparitionist standpoint. He claims that the reader is to trust
the story as it is narrated, that is, the governess's assumptions about the
ghosts and their alliance with the children are to be considered real facts. He thinks that
the story revolves about the conflict between good and evil, more precisely about
"the struggle of evil to possess the human soul".
He thus concludes that
the novella can be interpreted in terms of symbolic representations of
religious matters. To support this view, he mainly focuses on the patterns of
language used throughout (motif, symbol, image and archetype) and draws
some comparisons between the story and religious elements. These are some of
the examples he provides: he compares Bly to the Garden of Eden, Miles and Flora
to Adam and Eve, Peter Quint to the serpent in the Garden of Eden (he is
described with characteristics of a snake), the last scene is taken as
representing the Catholic sacrament of confession, the governess is shown as a
savior, etc. Though I personally find this interpretation amazing in that Heilman's examples and justifications may perfectly work, I do not quite agree with him because I think that even though the governess seems a reliable character at the beginning of the story she loses all credibility by the end, so I'm more inclined to believe that she suffers from psychological problems and that the ghosts are only part of her own imagination.
Remarkable account and insightful personal comment!
ReplyDeleteQuite a different interpretation! Though Heilman‘s view of “The Turn of the Screw” seems to be really interesting, I don’t believe that the ghosts and their alliance with the children are real. I agree with you with the fact that the governess suffers from some mental disease.
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