Sexual Hysteria, Physiognomical Bogeymen, and the "Ghosts" in The Turn of the Screw Author(s): Stanley Renner Reviewed work(s): Source: Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Sep., 1988), pp. 175-194 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3045173 . Accessed: 27/10/2011 11:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Nineteenth-Century Literature. http://www.jstor.org Sexual Hysteria, Physiognomical Bogeymen, and the "Ghosts"in The Turnof theScrew STANLEY RENNER R readers and critics for whom the true-and clearly the richer-story of James's The Turn of theScrew is its dramatizationof a woman's psychosexualproblem and the damage it does to the childrenin her charge, the immovablestumbling block has alwaysbeen the governess'sdetailed descriptionof Peter Quint, a man dead and buried whom she has never seen. If James does not mean for readers to take Quint (and subsequentlyMiss Jessel) as a bona fide ghost,so the argumentruns, whydoes he arrange thingsso thatthe only wayto account for her descriptionof him is thatshe has seen a supernaturalmanifestation? Asks A.J.A.