Historical Context
The
Turn of the Screw was written in 1897, in a period when James’ other
novels and plays had been selling poorly and were derided as too talky or too
intellectual. After the mixed reaction by audience and critics to his most
recent work, the play Guy Domville,
James chose to "take up my own pen" rather than please others'
expectations, and wrote this short story—now probably the most widely read of
all his works.
The Turn of the Screw was
transcribed by James’ secretary William McAlpine on the (newly invented)
typewriter, instead of being written out in long-hand by James himself, because
James had recently suffered what would now be diagnosed as Repeated Stress
Syndrome in his hands. It was
published serially in Collier’s weekly magazine between January and April
1898. A major reason for its
continuing fame is the ambiguity in the text concerning whether the governess is
actually seeing manifestations of ghosts, or whether she is an unreliable
narrator describing her own hysteric delusions.
At the time it was written, public attitudes considered ghosts as real,
dangerous scientifically-observed phenomenon. In fact, James’ own father,
Henry James Sr., had been praised for his observations of spiritual phenomena by
Boston’s Society for Psychical Research and his brother William was a
president of this society from 1894 to 1896.
Of course, this doesn’t mean we can conclude that James himself
believed in ghosts or was portraying them—it’s just an indicator of what was
considered plausible at the time.
