1 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Horror Story that falls a little short of a Classic, December 5, 2001
I didn't like the first person style in which most of this book is written. The times when someone else besides the governess is speaking it becomes hard to follow who is talking. However after completing this novella, I realize this style may have been needed to raise some questions in the reader's minds whether or not the governess is just imagining all that she sees, or whether there really are ghosts about the manor trying to corrupt these cherub like children to do unspeakable evil. At times I felt the suspense was forced. Too many pages were used to explain why she just didn't come out and confront the children in the first place, speak to their uncle, or speak to someone at the school. The introductory pages of people telling ghost stories seemed unnecessary as well since it is never tied back in to the story at the end. At times the story shows so much potential to build you up to a great surprise climax at the end, but then in my opinion, it falls short.
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1 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Turn of the Screw: And Other Stories, November 14, 2002
By A Customer
You guys missed the most dramatic plot twist in history!
Think about it there was no gost it was all in Governess's head, and she is the true villain.
This is trully the best horror book I have ever read.
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0 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Base menials, December 5, 2006
Henry James is a prime aristocrat, a not always very subtle defender of the leisure class. Two short stories in this bundle show it profusely.
In `The Turn of the Screw', two aristocratic children are haunted by two `base menials' (`You reminded him that Quint was only a base menial?'). Henry James fears really that the higher classes will be contaminated and corrupted by the lower classes: `I should continue to defer to the old tradition of the criminality of those caretakers of the young who minister to superstition and fears.'
The evil comes out of the lower classes, `For the love of all the evil that the pair (of servants) put into them.'
At the end, one of the children succumbs to the same fate as the child in `Erlkoenig' by Goethe, Erlkoenig being the quintessence of the evil force, the killer of innocence.
In `Owen Wingrave' (masterly transformed into an opera by Benjamin Britten), the main character refuses to step into the tradition of his ancestors and to become a soldier (and die on the battlefield). On the contrary, he calls war an overwhelming stupidity, the `crash barbarism'. He doesn't understand `why nations don't tear to pieces the governments, the rulers that go for them.'
For Henry James, the ideas and the behavior of Owen Wingrave are like `falling in love with a low girl.'
At the end, Owen is slain by the ghost of one of his ancestors, dying on his own battlefield (for his ideas). The last words of the story (`gained field') would mean that the aristocracy has adopted the `anti-war' policy.
These perfectly constructed and brilliantly written stories reveal Henry James's real obsession: preserve the `purity' of his kind.
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