Christine Brooke-Rose is a structuralist critic who attempted to understand the “The Turn of the Screw” through a detailed study of the ambiguity embedded in the linguistic structures, which for her is the essence of this text.
Christine
distinguishes between “STORY” – the events as they occurred- and “DISCOURSE” – how
the events are presented. This concepts are equivalents to the Russian
Formalists’ distinction between fabula (histoire) and Sjuzvet (discours) (Lodge, Modern Literary
Theory, Ch 9). Brooke-Rose states that there is ambiguity since within
the story or sjuzvet , there are two “fabulas”, one taking the apparitionist and
the other taking the non-apparirionist interpretation.
Christine
distinguishes between BARE (basic structure)and MIRROR (reflections of the
basic structure) STRUCTURES. The two fabulas belong to the bare structure,
which is the basic structure of the text. The mirror structure refers to “a set
of reflecting dichotomies suggestive of reflections in a mirror”. What we see
in a mirror depends on our emotional and physical state. This leads us to think
that ghosts are portrayed depending on the governess’ emotional states. Brooke-Rose
also calls it mirror because mirrors have a four- sided frame and the story can
be particularly analysed taking into account six groups of four elements:
·
4 main living characters at Bly: the
governess, Mrs. Grose, Miles, Flora.
·
4 ex-guardians: the uncle, Mrs Grose, Peter
Quint, Miss Jessel
·
4 presently concerned with the children:
the governess, Mrs Grose, Peter Quint, Miss Jessel.
·
4 in a supposed evil relationship: Peter
Quint, Miss Jessel, Miles, Flora
·
4 narrators: Griffin, Douglas, the I-narrator,
the governess
·
4 readers or receptors: Douglas,
the I-narrator, the listeners at Douglas’s country home, the readers of the
novella
Brooke-Rose based her studies, mainly, on the
language used by the Governess.
She claims
that the governess’ language is “contagious”. This means that she is constantly
trying to convince the reader to perceive what she herself perceives, which is
also achieved by the governess’ exteriorization of her feelings. The story
confronts the reader with a whole special world, which at first he/she is an
external spectator but to which he/she later becomes internal through
perception.
The use of verbs
like “give, offer, take, have” together with the frequent use of the possessive
pronoun “my” and the occasional use of “we” or “our” suggests that the
governess speaks as if she was the owner and possessor of information. Examples
of the use of pronouns and verbs are:
“my children”; “my document”; “my boy”.
This critic’s
weakness is to assume that there are only two fabulas in the sjuzvet.
To sum up, I must
admit that although it was not easy for me to easily understand Brooke-Rose’s
point of view at first, after giving her interpretation various readings, I agree
with her because if we pay attention to the governess’ language we can easily
be persuaded or, at least, influenced by her way of seeing things, especially
the ghosts. She is very successful at making us – readers- perceive what she
herself perceives.
