Nanny, Dearest

The genius of Henry James’s masterpiece, The Turn of the Screw, lies in the ambiguity and indeterminacy of the text. The question of whether the ghosts are real or imagined by the governess, for instance, has been the subject of much speculation over the years, and a good case can be made to support either position on this matter. However, given the unreliable narrators of this story, and the character of the governess’s confidant, Mrs. Grose, there is a great deal of evidence that the ghosts are imagined. Yet the strongest evidence that the ghosts are not real stems from the fertile imagination of the mentally unstable governess.


First of all, the story is told from the perspective of several unreliable narrators, including the governess. The setting is established by an unnamed narrator, who relates to the reader that a group of friends at Christmas time are exchanging ghost stories and competing with each other to tell the most chilling tale. As Douglas tells his...