Post #3: Silence Is Golden

I have noticed while reading “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James that there are a lot of references to sound, or lack of it. From characters not wanting to speak of or explain unpleasant topics to actual silences, which usually occur during the governess’ ghost sighting, it is clear that silence plays a major role in this story. 

The first major silence in the story is that of the Headmaster of Miles’ school. He refuses to give a reason for the boy’s expulsion, only saying that they could no longer have him at the school. Mrs. Grose says that “that can only have one meaning” but never explains what that meaning is. So, for the rest of the book the reader, and the governess, are left wondering and trying to guess what Miles could have done. The governess strongly believes that Quint and now his ghost have somehow corrupted Miles. She decides this after Mrs. Grose explain that “Quint was much too free” (James 34). The word “free” doesn’t explain much, but we can guess what it might mean. Quint was apparently romantically involved with Ms. Jessel, who Mrs. Grose says was far above his social standing. Also, the governess comments that “an unknown man in a lonely place is a permitted object of fear to a young woman privately bred,” (James 20), suggesting that if she were alone with Quint, he could possibly harm her in some way, a which she doesn’t explain any further. 

Whatever Miles did to get kicked out of school must have been really awful, at least by the standards of someone in the 1890s, when this book was written. While the governess would disagree with this statement, Miles does say “when I am bad I am BAD,” (James 61). Whatever Quint did, and what he did probably had something to do with Ms. Jessel, was also so awful that no one will address it directly. The reader can guess that whatever Miles did at school was probably something sexual in nature. This is because Quint’s of relationship with Ms. Jessel, which Ms. Grose disapproved of; the fact that the governess thinks Quint has corrupted Miles; and because the character’s would avoid the subject of sex, and they do avoid talking about the reason for Miles’ expulsion. 

In “The Turn of the Screw” it turns out that James is actually saying more with the character’s silence than if he had explained the situation clearly. Maybe what Miles did wasn’t sexual, but it had to be something that the governess would be so horrified to guess that she invented another reality where the boy was a victim of the school and of a ghost set out to corrupt him.