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Sexual Hysteria, Physiognomical Bogeymen, and the "Ghosts"

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Sexual Hysteria, Physiognomical Bogeymen, and the 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. Waldock, in the classic formulationof the question, How did thegoverness succeed in projectingon vacancy,out of her ownsubconscious mind, a perfectlyprecise, point-by-point image of a man,then dead, whomshe had neverseen in herlife and never heardof? Whatpsychology, normal or abnormal,will explain that? And whatis theright word for such a visionbut "ghost"?' ( 1988 by The Regentsof the Universityof California "'Mr. Edmund Wilson and The Turn of theScrew," Modern Language Notes, 62 (1947), 333-34. 175 176 NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE Effortsthus far to circumventthis obstacle-Harold C. Goddard's argument that Mrs. Grose makes her identificationbefore and with negligible help from the governess's detailed description, John Silver'sthat the governesshas learned of Quint in the village before she describeshim, and Oscar Cargill's that she has gotten wind of Quint fromlittle Flora, who showsher around Bly "room by room,secret by secret"-have not settledthe issue.2In thispaper I want to show that the storyprovides its own eminentlylogical, quite unsupernatural,indeed, deeply naturalistic,accounting for the manifestationsthe governessdescribes. The logic of this line of developmenthas escaped observation,I believe,because it de- rives from idea structuresthat have since faded from general awareness:the symptomatologyof female sexual hysteriaand the supposed behavioral significanceof human physiognomy.What the governesssees on her firstencounter with the famous"ghosts" of Bly, the experience that sets in motion the story'scentral line of development,is thusnot the ghostof a dead man she has never seen but the projectionof her own sexual hysteriain the formof stereotypesdeeply embedded in the mind of the culture. The story'sspectral figures, colored by the governess'ssexual fear and disgust,symbolize the adult sexualityjust beginningto "possess" Miles and Flora as theyhover on the brinkof puberty.Frantically tryingto block the emergence of their sexuality,the governess does damage to theirnatural development that, in the case of the male child, proves fatal. The firstappearance of an apparition in the storyand the governess'sstate of mind on that occasion are, of course, crucial to understandingthe ghostsand theirplace in James'sdesign. As 2See Goddard, "A Pre-FreudianReading of The Turnof theScrew," Nineteenth- CenturyFiction, 12 (1957), 11-13; Silver,"A Note on the Freudian Reading of 'The Turn of the Screw,' AmericanLiterature, 29 (1957), 210-11; and Cargill,"The Turn of theScrew and Alice James,"PMLA, 78 (1963), 242. A recent exercise of the standard rebuttalto any psychologicalreading of the ghosts is David S. Miall's observationthat "the key passage in The Turnof the Screw in whichthe governess's descriptionof Quint is recognized by Mrs. Grose" is "one of the main pieces of evidence againstthe hallucinationtheory." He elaboratelyattempts to explain the evil in the storyin termsof "what the ghoststhemselves may mean, if theywere intended to be seen as a realityand not just a hallucinationof the governess" ("Designed Horror: James's Vision of Evil in The Turn of theScrew," Nineteenth- CenturyFiction, 39 [1984], 306). THE TURN OF THE SCREW 177 the storyitself asserts, "the factto be in possessionof" is thatthe governessis a parson's daughterleaving the shelterof home for the firsttime, coming up to London in "trepidation,"and en- counteringa young gentlemanpresented in the storyas a girl's romanticdream, from whom she accepts employment.3As the Jamesian narratorof the prologue deduces, and Douglas, who knew the governessand tells her story,does not deny, she "suc- cumbed" to "the seductionexercised by the splendid youngman" (p. 6). Thus James pointedlycalls attentionto a group of char- acterizing details about the governess-her sheltered religious background, inexperience, vulnerability,anxiety and fear, and susceptibilityto romanticemotions-that establishher as a virtual Victorian cliche of sexual ambivalence. With her almost classic conflictbetween idealistic innocence and naive romanticimpulses she is the virginal ingenue encounteringsexual danger in the form of a "handsome," "bold," young gentlemanbachelor with "charmingways with women," enjoying a life of pleasurable self- indulgence (p. 4). This emphasis on the governess'ssusceptibility to romanticemotions is an importantfeature of the buildup to the firstapparition. Withthis preparation the reader comes to the governess'sfirst encounter with the apparitionsthat harrow her throughoutthe story:she sees a frighteningmale ghost that she later describes so particularlythat Mrs. Grose, in astonishmentand consterna- tion,identifies it as PeterQuint, deceased formervalet of the chil- dren's uncle and guardian, who, withthe last governess,also de- ceased, had previouslyshared the charge of the children.When, however,the episode is read closely in the light of the turn-of- the-centuryunderstanding of sexual hysteria,it unfolds as a re- markablyastute dramatizationof an actual hystericalattack. Although she suppresses the erotic component of her im- pulses, it is clear that the governessis indulgingin romanticfan- tasiesof her dashing young gentlemanemployer as she enjoysan eveningstroll, the children"tucked away" in bed: how "charming" it would be, she fancies,if "someone would appear there at the 3HenryJames, The Turnof theScrew, Norton CriticalEdition, ed. Robert Kim- brough (New York: Norton, 1966), p. 4. All furtherreferences are to thisedition and appear in the text. 178 NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE turnof a path and would stand beforeme and smileand approve" (p. 15).4And then she does see him. Whateverthe psychicvalidity of the phenomenonJames presentsin this scene, it is clear that the governessis able to conjure up in her fantasysuch a powerful impressionthat she feels she is actuallyseeing someone not pres- ent. And what she sees, at least at first,is her gentleman em- ployer's"handsome face" reflectingthe "kind light"of approval withwhich she has hoped he will notice her. With "the sense that [her] imaginationhad... turned real," she declares unequivo- cally,"he did stand there!" (p. 16). But then as she views this figurefrom her own imagination she experiences an indescribable"bewilderment of vision": the figurenow before her, she explains, "was not the person I had precipitatelysupposed." Readers have customarilyaccepted the governess'sown explanationfor what happens to her vision: that her firstimpression was mistakenand that the figurethat ulti- matelystands before her has been there all along. But the factis thatshe was not mistaken;her identificationof the handsome gen- tlemanis too positive,too emphaticto have been a mistake.What has actuallyhappened is that the attractivemale figureshe first imagines is transformedin her own mind into the frightening male figureshe subsequentlyprojects. That the transformationis broughtabout by fear-specificallyfear of male sexuality-is the clear implicationof the termsin whichthe governessexplains the "shock"to her sensibilitycaused by the figurethat ultimately met her eyes: "an unknownman in a lonelyplace is a permittedobject of fear to a young woman privatelybred" (p. 16). More than twentyyears ago Cargill establishedJames's actual technical knowledge of sexual hysteria,both his almost certain familiaritywith Breuer and Freud's Studienuiber Hysterie and his "personal acquaintance" with an actual case of hysteriain "the illnessof his sister[Alice] and withthe delusions and fantasiesof thatillness."5 Thus it should not be surprisingthat in The Turnof theScrew he could portrayan accurate,virtually textbook case of sexual hysteria.Briefly summarized, sexual hysteria,as it was 4Cargill agrees that"to the end of her tale [the governess's]sudden infatuation is the mainspringof her action" ("Turnof theScrew and Alice James,"p. 243). 5"Turn of theScrew and Alice James,"p.
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