PARTISAN REVIEW
and the governess becomes aware long before she could have any
reason to invent them.
III
I hope I have not overlabored my point here. I thought the
risk worth running, at any rate, since I am convinced that it is im–
possible to fully appreciate
The Turn of the Screw
unless one accepts
the reality of the apparitions.
Mr. Wilson remarks that
The Turn of the Screw,
on any other
hypothesis than the one he proposes, would be "the only thing James
ever wrote which did not have some more or less serious point." But
to view the novel as an implied case history, a mere clinical record,
is to deprive the reader of the peculiar sense of horror which
it
was
James's ambition to arouse in him. Take, for example, the scene
where little Miles, exerting all his charms, distracts the governess
with his precocity at the piano, while his sister steals off to consort
with Miss Jessel's evil shade. Suddenly the governess remembers:
"Where, all this time, was little Flora? When I put the question to
Miles he played on a minute without answering, and then could only
say, 'Why, my dear, how do
I
know?'-breaking moreover into a
happy laugh which, immediately after, ,as if it were a vocal accom–
paniment, he prolonged into incoherent, extravagant song." The
whole infernal effectiveness of this scene (and it is immensely effec–
tive) resides in the fact that the little concert has been nothing more
than a careful ruse on the children's part to lure the governess into
temporarily forgetting her responsibility and relaxing her vigilance.
Or take the eerie scene just before this, in which the governess
is pleading with Miles to confess his domination by the evil ghost of
Peter Quint: "'Dear little Miles, I just want you to help me to save
you!' But I knew in a moment after this that I had gone too far.
The answer to my appeal was instantaneous, but
it
came in the form
of an extraordinary blast and chill, a gust of frozen air and a shake
of the room as great as if, in the wild wind, the casement had crashed
in." The child shrieks ("a note either of jubilation or of terror") and
the candle goes out:
"Why, the candle's out!" I cried.
"It was I who blew
it,
dear!" said little Miles.
184
