: Desiring The Turn of the Screw 1 - Boston College

“What do you think about when you lie awake?”1: Desiring The Turn of the Screw Boston College 11/18/07 6:57 PM
Heavy and thick with sexy language and prepared argument, Ellis Hanson’s “Screwing with Comment: I might object slightly to the
Children in Henry James” is a charged article written through the lens of the queer theory perspective. vague tone of ‘prepared argument’, but in
Through Hanson’s concern with the notion of child-like innocence, she addresses the depth in which the general, it’s great to start with a sentence that
reader reacts to the “sexual child” (Hanson, 368). Namely, she sees the audience’s reaction to the “queer characterizes the ‘feel’ of the article before
erotics of children” as a two-faceted desire to both participate in the folly as well as to remove oneself starting in on it
from such socially dangerous grounds due to a “paranoid disavowal” (Hanson, 368). What allows for Boston College 11/6/07 2:53 PM
this duality in the reading is the ambiguity that penetrates and colors Henry James’s Turn of the Screw, Comment: It’s a he, actually!
thereby affecting the reader as he or she struggles to either sharpen or dull ambiguity’s imprecision,
though, as Hanson suggests, the reader will most benefit from succumbing to the text’s invitation of a Boston College 11/6/07 2:54 PM
queer reading. Comment: This could probably stand to be
As author Wayne Koestenbaum reveals, the audience’s process of reading, regardless of sexual its own sentence, and slightly fuller – I like the
orientation “…becomes a hunt for histories that deliberately foreknow or unwittingly trace a desire felt way you cast it as a succumbing to a queer
not by author but by reader, who is most acute when searching for signs of himself”” (qtd. in Murfin reading
296). Specifically, there’s an idea behind queer theory where sexuality “manifests itself across a broad Boston College 11/18/07 6:59 PM
1 The Innocents, a question poised by Miss Giddens to Miles upon being invited into his room at night Comment: very nice idea to start the
analysis with a key point about queer theory,
drawn from the literature survey by Ross
Murfin
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Comment: asserts

continuum of behaviors and practices not restricted to either [homo- or hetero- sexual] category” Boston College 11/6/07 2:57 PM
(Murfin, 295). Thus, as a reader, we exercise an unconscious drive to satisfy our ideas of our own Comment: readers
sexuality, while, at the same time, struggling to fit into our socially constructed roles, which are the
“products of cultural discourses” (Murfin, 295). It seems, therefore, that there is a battle of sorts Boston College 11/6/07 2:59 PM
between sexuality’s continuum and the socially acceptable roles that we have been born into, which Comment: what exactly do you mean by
therefore, when offered this freedom of ambiguity in a book, invites the reader to “trace a desire” in this? One’s innate sense of sexuality? An
order to find “signs of himself” (qtd. in Murfin 296). Thus, as Hanson suggests, when given the level of individual’s sexual desire?
ambiguity as there is in The Turn of the Screw, it is inviting a queer reading.
Boston College 11/18/07 6:59 PM
In both The Turn of the Screw as well as The Innocents, there is much attention given to the fact Comment: very elegant return to the subject
that the governess is drawn to the innocence of the children, an idea that Hanson proposes is due to a of the article (Hanson and TOTS)
reader’s “erotic investments in children” (Hanson, 372). In the novel, the governess observes a “great Boston College 11/18/07 7:01 PM
childish light” around Flora, and a “positive fragrance of purity” in Miles, so much so that the governess Comment: what I really liked here was how
admits that such an “attraction of my small charges was a constant joy” (James, 36, 42). Although the the writer of this paper regained control,
idea of these “erotic investments in children” may sound like a weighty conclusion, Hanson believes that making a statement about TOTS and the
the ambiguity in the text excuses the reader from his or her decision to “scrutinize the children with a movie, then modulating it in the second half of
mixture of lasciousness and impunity” because the gaps in the text invite this attraction to the children’s the sentence by shifting to Hanson’s proposal
(put forward in a pretty neutral way at this
early point in the paper)

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Comment: lasciviousness

innocence (Hanson, 372). In whichever way the reader looks at it, somehow, the child’s innocence is Boston College 11/6/07 3:00 PM
corrupted, either by ghosts, the governess, or the reader by way of how he or she “entertains lecherous Comment: delete comma
fantasies and suspicions” (371). Namely, one of the greatest corruptions is the fouling of innocence, yet,
it is this very corruption that serves as “the gothic thrill of an inherently evil sexuality” (371). Boston College 11/18/07 7:03 PM
Interestingly, both the reader and the governess are pulled to investigate this “evil sexuality” (371). For Comment: this just struck me as a sentence
instance, in her hunt to uncover “any history of scandal at the house,” the governess is “teased with that had a nice balance of quotes from the
sexual hints too elusive to succeed as evidence,” which is parallel to the reader’s situation as he or she article and the essay writer’s own controlling
allows the imagination to compel him or her to reach a conclusion about the level of sexuality within the intelligence
novel (Hanson, 368).

Although the reader experiences a struggle similar to the governess in regards to identifying what
is going on with the children, Hanson offers the reader an invitation to read the text from Quint’s or
Miss Jessel’s perspective, or at least in their favor. In this sense, we would not approach the text or film
with a mindset that makes certain behaviors evil and impure, but rather we would be able to “inhabit
without hypocrisy or panic the abundant sexual pleasures of the text” and to waft within “a range of
inadmissible desires” (Hanson, 373). This way the reader, unlike the governess, can avoid the trap of
“moral panic” because he or she would be approaching the text as a queer audience member (Hanson,

373). Furthermore, Hanson questions why the governess would reach the point of “moral panic” at all Boston College 11/18/07 7:04 PM
because, until the governess’s own doing, the children “find nothing terrifying” about their lives Comment: Here we are in the second-to-last
(Hanson, 373, 377). Perhaps, then, this would encourage the reader to doubt the governess because we paragraph in the paper, and the writer does a
should not be “complicit with the governess’s propriety” if indeed “we find her paranoid” (Hanson, great job of shifting to general topics with a
377). topic sentence that really captures Hanson’s
tone and approach – very nicely chosen quote.
As Hanson points out, “the slightest turn of the interpretive screw reveals torture and exploitation Boston College 11/6/07 3:01 PM
where we might just as easily have seen pleasure and love” (Hanson, 381). Overall, I appreciate this Comment: a phrase or two as to why
queer theory perspective approach, yet, one of the shortcomings of Hanson’s article is that she Boston College 11/6/07 3:01 PM
sometimes digresses from actual analysis of the story in favor of propagating queer theory in which she Comment: delete comma
asks the reader to look at the text in a different light, grounding interpretations not so much in the actual Boston College 11/18/07 7:05 PM
text, but in theory. Specifically, wherever there is an image of innocence in the movie, or a moment of Comment: points out a very real limitation
purity in the text involving the children, Hanson interprets this to mean that “we are invited to gaze at in the article
them lasciviously and suspiciously” (Hanson, 376). In my opinion, however, I tend to suspect that queer
theory’s disdain for the disregard of our innate sexual desires in favor of following society’s constructs Boston College 11/6/07 3:02 PM
of acceptability means that there is an excessive tendency to see these sexual desires in abundance. Comment: wordy – cut it down

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Comment: a nice paradox to point out – but
the writer doesn’t go on about it

Moreover, if in fact it takes only a turn of the screw to see the text in a different way, then who is to say Boston College 11/18/07 7:06 PM
Comment: a wonderful limitation to point
that taking a queer theory perspective is the correct turn? out, based (as it is) on the premises of the
article itself
Still, much like the reader, I think that, in a way, the governess is playing into the queer theory Boston College 11/18/07 7:06 PM
Comment: the writer does take a stand here,
idea, too. She’s taking her sexual knowledge and desires into the situation, seeing corruption where there and in doing so, brings it back to the basic
question (‘what is the governess up to?’)
may lie innocence. At the start of the book, she’s told us that her role would mean that “… I was giving
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pleasure…to the person to whose pressure I had yielded” (James, 39). Thus, coming into the Comment: normally, you have to be very
wary of ending a paragraph (let alone the
environment, the governess made it very clear that she was going to be “carried away,” and I agree with whole paper) with a quote from your source,
but here it works, because it’s very well set up
Hanson’s notion that, whilst reading, we’ve all been carried away (James, 32). Although Hanson offers by the previous sentence, and because the
quote is so nicely chosen to end on an apt
no actual solutions to the novel, she entices the reader to embrace the ambiguity and with it, to drift phrase

through the book on our “free-floating desire, visible only if we are looking for it, only if we can read

the signs, only if we ourselves have failed to be innocents” (Hanson, 383).

This is an extraordinarily thoughtful and sensitive paper, and goes well beyond what I expected
from this ‘review article’ format. You have read a complex and difficult article with both
sympathy and a critical eye, and you have impressively teased out the main thread of Hanson’s
article amidst his playful, experimental use of both academic language and theoretical ideas. I do
take your point about the theory coming to dominate over the text, although in some ways, the
smartest articles always do this to some extent. What I like the most about your paper is the way
in which you take his basic ideas about parallels between the reader and the governess (in terms of
desire, panic, and ambiguity) and play with them yourself, seeing where they’ll go and, in the end,
constructing a pretty strong reading in response to Hanson’s. Awesome job.

Grade: A