The Turn of the Screw

Upon seeing Peter Quint’s figure perched on the tower, the governess wonders, “Was there a secret at Bly—a mystery of Udolpho, or an insane, unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected confinement?” (21). These references to Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847) reveal that the governess enjoys gothic novels, as did many middle-class British women of the 19th century. Exemplified by Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Victorian gothic novels feature a set of standard elements: a young, innocent woman trapped in an isolated, castle-like mansion; an atmosphere of brooding, often supernatural terror; the discovery of a dark secret or mystery; and an enigmatic, handsome gentleman.

Conventional gothic motifs suffuse the governess’s own story of her harrowing adventures at Bly. She underscores her youth and inexperience when, pondering her new “circumstances” (12) at Bly, she admits, “they had, as it were, an extent and mass for which I had not been prepared and in the presence of which I found myself, freshly, a little scared not less than a little proud” (12). This perception of herself as an innocent girl surrounded by looming threats soon gives way to the impression that she is living in “a castle of romance […] such a place as would somehow […] take all colour out of story-books and fairy-tales” (13).