Davis Cox ENGL 350 Reader Response 7 December 2014
Passing the Baton: A Reader-Response Analysis on The Turn of the Screw
We all like a good story; the sort that gives us--the reader--a sense of fulfillment, joy, growth, maturity, etc., and I doubt it that anyone likes it in separate fashion. But to the demise of my literary desires, I find it rather polar in Henry James’ Turn of the Screw. In this novella, James decided to take his character, the Governess, and her charges, Flora and Miles, and in turn had her do her job: to diligently protect them. Only late in the story does she abruptly turn and defile them: ostracizing one and murdering the other, thusly ending the story. Such a catastrophe left my soul unfulfilled and my mind desolate, for no growth could come from such an ending--only haunting and disturbing thoughts, and the questioning of what could have happened afterward, leaving a blank. As this blank exists, I must sequently fill it in. In works of fiction, there are typically blanks within a story, leaving the reader puzzled and questioning what might have happened during the vacant segment. These “blanks” are what Wolfgang Iser calls gaps, and are demonstrated in The Turn of the Screw through my expectations of the Governess, then played upon through her actions, depicting what happened between the end of the novella and the prologue.
The author of any particular book employs gaps, perhaps by a means of laziness, but also as a way to subconsciously allow the audience into the story, a way for them to communicate with the text. In texts, there are frequently missing parts of the plot, dialogue, and characters, all in which the reader is left to guess what happens. For example, when a character in a fishing novel gets thrown overboard at the end of one chapter, but then awakes on a beach at the beginning of the next, the reader is left with what their imagination tells them what happened between the character's overthrow and awakening. Only when the reader brings into light their subconscious thoughts can gaps begin to fill, and it is
“whenever the reader bridges the gaps, communication begins” (Iser 111). It is the use of blanks which signify that something is missing from the story, something that the author never states, but the reader knows it to be existing; “blanks indicate that the different segments and patterns of the text are to be connected even though the text itself does not say so” (Iser 112). When the reader fills in the blank and connects to the text in this way, a series of outcomes are created based off of what the reader knows of the character, and dialogue, and are then projected into the text. These projections make up the realm of the “wandering viewpoint.”
As the reader’s wandering viewpoint travels between all these segments, its constant switching during the time flow of reading intertwines them, thus bringing forth a network of perspectives, within which each perspective opens a view not only of others, but also of the intended
imaginary object. (Iser 113)
When a story throws a plethora of blanks at the reader, the reader then creates a projection for each individual one, building the wandering viewpoint. For this to stand true, there must be two juxtaposing fields that are “related to and influencing one another--it is the minimal organizational unit in all processes of comprehension” (Iser 114). When this happens, the author then creates what is called the “implied reader,” a reader imagined by the author to have precisely what is needed to fully understand the the messages the writer is trying to convey, so that the wandering viewpoints will be guided toward what the writers wants.
For every writer that composes a story, he1 writes for an audience. He may physically know his audience, or he may know of them, but often does the author create what W. Daniel Wilson calls the “implied reader.” There is an immediate need for this implied reader, for “he or she exists in every work, since almost every ‘message’ presupposes a certain kind of recipient and implicitly defines him or her to some extent” (Wilson 848). There must be an audience for whom the writer writes, and the 1I use the male pronoun here in reference to James as the single writer, not to discriminate against female authors.
writer will then visualize the ideal reader, one who can best understand the “message” of the text. This reader is defined “as the behaviour, attitudes, and background...necessary for a proper understanding of the text itself” (Wilson 848). It is seen here that “this idealized reader may be consciously or
unconsciously conceived by the author,” therefore assuming the reader is equipped with what he or she needs to fully comprehend and complete the plot. In other words, the author imagines that the reader has the correct background, context, theology, philosophy, and imagination to fully receive the message that the author is giving. This is vital because as Iser states, “a text cannot adapt itself to each reader it comes into contact with” (Iser 109). Therefore, the author must create an “ideal reader” for the text to perfectly conform with—or—a fictitious reader that has the ideal theology, philosophy, and background to properly fill in any gaps. With this implied reader, the author is then capable to leave blanks, fixed betwixt two sections of a story.
Subconsciously, the reader can only fill in blanks in the plot with the information given to us pertaining to the character’s viewpoints, background, history and philosophy, there must be a
background of the character of whom the reader follows so that he or she may properly fill in the blanks, in accordance to how the character acted earlier in the story. Since the author writes for his implied reader, therefore he assumes that they have knowledge of facts such as what a governess’ position was like and treated as. For James, his reader was one that lived in 19th century England. For example, in The Turn of the Screw there are two ways that the reader perceives the Governess, the historical and the authorial portrayal of her. In summary of Jeanne Peterson’s “The Victorian
Governess: Status Incongruence in Family and Society,” the Governess historically had the position of the caretaker of a family’s children, and in James’ case: “a woman who lived in her employer’s home and who taught the children and served as a companion to them” (Peterson 8). This demonstrates that the Governess would then have the responsibility of essentially raising the children as well as educating them. Since the mother in the novella is missing, the Governess is then considered as such to the children, historically proving that the governess was to be bound to the house; for Mary Poovey states
that “private teaching was the only occupation considered sufficiently ‘genteel’ for middle-class women, because this form of work most closely approximated that of the wife and mother” (Poovey 43). Attached to this idea of pseudo-motherhood is then the traits of such: unconditional love, patience, and knowledge, and with the knowledge of this historical context, the reader can then use it to even more accurately fill in blanks.
After the historical approach is established, then the authorial portrayal position is uncovered, being that the reader views how the Governess acts in the past of the novella, and when a blank occurs, they may take her mannerisms, theology, philosophy, etc., and apply them to the blank to make a hypothesis of what happens in said blank. Textually in The Turn of the Screw the Governess acts militant. For example, the Governess is so consumed with unveiling the cause of Miles' expulsion, she blatantly attempts to beg him: “[on the matter] It overwhelmed me now that I should never be able to near that, and it made me let myself go. I threw myself upon him and in the tenderness of my pity I embraced him” (James 94). Here not only is it evident that she is militant, but also that she cares for her charges in a kind and homely way, as she cares for Flora’s education, teaching her oceanic geography, utilizing nature as examples to make it more appealing, relatable and fun to the four year old (James 54). As nice and harmless as these actions may seem, James then twists any expectations that the reader may have of the Governess with the grueling action of her murdering of Miles (James 120). With these examples, James creates a governess that is both different from the expectations of the historical assumptions, as well as in agreement with them.
With the implied reader understanding the characteristics of the Governess, the reader then can properly fill in gaps pertaining to her in The Turn of the Screw. In the novella, James leaves a creative gap in between Miles’ death--the end of the book--and the narrative told by the Governess’ last pupil’s brother: Douglas.
Then, for the demonstration of my work, “There, there!” I said to Miles. But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss
I was so proud of he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp with which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his fall… it may be imagined with what a passion... We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped (James 120).
And with that, James reaches the end of his novella, leaving the reader in a horrific state disbelief. I can only remember thinking “what, why?” when perusing this part of the book. I had to reread a few times to make sure that she actually killed the lad. It would be logical to think that she would never receive another job as a governess again, if she would just conclude in murdering her charges. But with the prologue to the story, it is quite clear that she does get another job, but, how?
It is here in which I utilized the theory of the blank to answer such a question. Since it is clear that the Governess switched so frequently and awkwardly between being what society expects from her and what society does not expect from her, it is easy to assume that she switched back to being
“innocent” to acquire another job. I believe that after the murdering of the boy, she gathered nothing--for they would remind her of the ghosts--and continued to flee Bly (James 88). Since there is no
mention of any family that she has (or knows of), she would go back to Harley Street: the watering hole for governesses, where she would then seek again another job as a governess, for she needs an intimate job to dedicate herself to. She would somehow find another position as a governess for a young girl, as it was “particularly the young women of the family” whom the governess typically educates (Peterson 15). Upon arriving at the new job, the Governess repeats the Bly predicament, however instead of murdering anyone, she just ostracizes them to the point of emotional destruction, obsessing over her only pupil: Douglas’ sister. But, she must also have a boy to obsess over, a phallic figure if you will to submit herself to as she did with Miles, so she seeks out her pupil’s brother, Douglas, with whom she fanatically obsesses over, leading to a mirrored response from Douglas: it truly was an awkward love. But, Douglas being ten years younger than the Governess, and her in her “spinster” stage of life (forty years old), she flees the site, to where she then pens the story as a narrative--a confession--and sends it
to Douglas: the only man she truly loved.
There are gaps in every piece of narratorical literature, as defined by Wolfgang Iser as
“indications that the different segments and patterns of the text are to be connected even though the text itself does not say so” (Iser 112). In The Turn of the Screw, the gap between the end of the novella and the prologue call upon an analysis of the Governess, particularly the historical side (her historical occupation for example) and how the James then portrays her, either in contradiction or agreement with the historical viewpoint. Once these are established, the reader can accurately fill in the gaps with a hypothesis of what they believe happened to the Governess in the gap.
Works Cited
James, Henry, and Peter G. Beidler. The Turn of the Screw. Boston: Bedford of St. Martin's, 1995. Print.
Iser, Wolfgang. “The Reader in the Text.” essays on Audience and Interpretation ed. Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. 1980. Print. 106-119. Wilson, W. Daniel. “Readers in Texts.” JSTOR. Modern Language Association. Oct. 1981. Web. 4 Dec.
2014.
Poovey, Mary. “Jane Eyre and the Governess in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” Approaches to Teaching
Bronte’s Jane Eyre ed. Diane Long Hoeveler and Beth Lau. New York: Modern Language
Association of America, 1993. Print. 43-48.
Peterson, M. Jeanne. “The Victorian Governess: Status Incongruence in family and Society.” JSTOR. Indiana University Press. Sep. 1970. Web. 11 Oct. 2014.
