Thesis Statement #2: Examples

In the very instance where the governess hopes to prove that she is neither "cruel nor mad," the opposite is shown to the readers by neither Flora nor Mrs. Grose seeing Jessel across the pond, despite the governess's protestations that she is there -- her madness, now apparent, so upsets Flora
and Mrs. Grose that both must leave Bly in order to survive (98).--Jerry

The final chapter of James' narrative is a climax in (and of) ambiguity, with each verbal exchange between Miles and the Governess
increasingly equivocal, and the reader--like the Governess (with Quint looking on) trying to wring a simple confession from Miles--increasingly
anxious to impose or maintain his or her (the reader's) identity on the spectral theme within the narrative structure, the end result being an
unsatisfactory product of self-fulfillment--a product (a dead one at that?) that is the reader's own creation.--Mike

James' wording in the final sections of The Turn of the Screw creates an intentional amibguity in the text, resulting in a difficulty in
discerning whether the "possession" of Miles and Flora is caused by Quint/Jessel or by a projection of the nameless guardian herself.--Clayn

Three particular elements of Peter G. Beidler's "A Critical History of The Turn of the Screw" seem to beg deeper consideration in light of readers'
frustration over the meaning of the text: 1) the mention of Cook and Corrigan's interpretation that the novella is a "very subtle fiction about
the process of fiction itself," a meta-narrative if you will, and 2) the insistence of some feminist critics that the unreliability of the narrator
and the assumed ambiguity of the text are somehow an anti-feminist element and that the tendency to see the narrator as "sexually repressed" or
"neurotic" stem from assumptions about gender rather than any "reality", and 3) that the ambiguity of the tale is the point of the tale--that we
should allow ourselves and the text to have it both ways because the inability of the reader to truly pinpoint the actual "reality" of the
situation is what lends it such brilliance; in fact, the frustration that the reader may feel functions to place the reader in the same position as
the frustrated and confused ("sexually" or otherwise) characters.--Melissa

James consciously employs ambiguity as a stylistic device that helps him keep tension of secrecy around
the actual accidents at Bly, each time the text approaches the possible narrative truth, another act
of the miscommunication takes place.--Iana

The varied criticism of The Turn of the Screw has gone to such overwhelming extremes that the truth of the piece has become muddled and incoherent; Dorothea Krook presents the most plausible view of the plot when she discusses James? conscious and unconscious styles and his intentions of writing and finally, Shoshan Felman concludes this point best when she writes that the stories' mysteries should not be "solved," but the "path of its flight" is the most important certainty of the piece.--Molly

THE question of Turn of the Screw centers not on the ambiguities who possesses whom, but rather in a broader discussion of possession and who possesses the text.--Sean

If the Turn of the Screw has an ethical message, it is that the idea of forcing one's personal
interpretation of events, or perceptions of reality, on others can become dangerous for both the one fervently trying to convince (in this case the governess), and the potentially convinced (the children and Mrs.Grose), especially since it may at times seem
seductive and even beneficial for the convincer to do so.--JiM

The Turn of the Screw moves farthest from a ghost story and closest to a psychological tale in the moments when Flora accuses the governess of cruelty, introducing to the story an alternate but perhaps more useful vision of evil, a vision which has less to do with ghosts and much more to do with a confused child's reaction to an irrational adult.--Alli