James and Oates

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how Oates' story is a compressed version of "Turn of the Screw". It explains how the setting and the names (or lack thereof) of the characters in question are the same. However, despite this initial sense of familiarity, the reader emerges with a very different ghost story when reading Oates' vision of James' world. It shows that Oates' story is comic in tone, rather than intent upon creating a sense of horror. Yet Oates' story also has far more subtlety than her predecessor James' story in its understanding of supposed female sexual repression.

From the Paper:

"Re-envisioning James' story was an ambitious project upon Oates' part. James' story initially seems to completely depend upon its gothic environment and setting to generate its sense of suspense. The governess is anonymous. This is true both from the reader's point of view but also in terms of the way the other characters, except the children, envision her. She is alone. She is unable to articulate her most basic physical desires in her environment. The passions of the dead servants become articulated in the children in her charge. It is as if her own desires have now, against her will, become voiced in the innocent faces of Miles and Flora, whose characters gradually become twisted with an adult sexual awareness. The remoteness of the local and the woman's isolation cause the reader to question her sanity until the very end of the tale. How could someone not go mad in such an environment, in such circumstances? The sexual repression inherent in the narrative's setting seems to be necessary to believe in the ignorant character of the unnamed narrating governess. How could a modern reader believe in a woman who was so innocent to her own sense of sexual knowing and her charges' developing sexualized, alien personas?"

More papers on James and Oates:

• Analytical Essay # 138892 : "Themes in Faulkner's and Oates' Works"
• Essay # 143751 : "An Analysis Of The Supernatural In The Gothic Genre In The Writings Of Henry James And Washington Irving"
• Term Paper # 136091 : "William James and Religion"

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