The Economic Terms in the Society - Literature review Example

The Turn of the Screw: Literary Analysis The base and super structure theory propounded by Marx goes on to describe economics as the base of any society which could be also termed as the infrastructure of the society and he argued that the infrastructure heavily influences the superstructure of the economy which is formed in law , politics, art and literature and the like. The influence of the infrastructure and the superstructure is indirect and fluid. Therefore sometimes the changes in the economic terms in the society is either highly reflected in the culture, arts and literature of that society or sometimes it takes time to be reflected in the superstructure of the society. Marxian analysis to any literature would be to analyze it based on the economic terms and the reflection of the economic condition of the society on the other spheres. The Victorian Age in which author Henry James wrote his novel, The Turn of The screw was predominantly a society based on social demarcations. Rigid class distinctions were prevalent where there was a presence of proper upper class, middle class, and a lower class. They labeled the society as a “normal” one in which there were class distinctions, heterosexuality, even choice of skin color, which was white, and anything beyond the purview of their normality seemed heinous, amoral, and abnormal (Robbins). To them these were monstrous and a display of perverse psyche. It was an era of masquerade where objectification was encouraged through the labeling and classifying. Anything unclassified received the predicament of destruction. The society even condemned intermingling of the classes the intermingling and labeled it as an attempt to digression and perversion. Henry James however chooses to break through the cover of the prim and prudent behaviors and write about the mental disintegration, sexuality to the level of pedophilia. He chose to show the true picture of the society through his writings. He tried to portray the reality existing behind the set norms of the society. He tried to show that in the age of class distinctions where it was blasphemous to feel for a person above own social standards, there were individuals who were breaking the norms and even committing heinous crimes such as involving the children into sexual acts. The novel begins with a framing device in which the reader gets the information of a holiday party in which the topic of discussion is ghost stories. One of the person attending the party, Douglas recounts about a ghost story he had heard which is also a real life tale. The first chapter of the story begins with the introduction of a nameless governess who is also the narrator of the story. It begins on the note that she is hired by a wealthy man to be the governess for his niece and nephew who live in a country house called Bly. The governess sets out to go to the estate with the instructions that she is never to contact the uncle. After reaching the estate, the governess introduces herself to the kindly housekeeper Mrs. Grose, the kindly housekeeper and finds Flora, the girl child to be exceptionally captivating. The plot begins to complicate with the announcement of the arrival of Miles, the nephew, who is older in age than Flora. The announcement of Miles’s arrival is not of joy but rather distressing news that he is expelled from the school. The reason for his expulsion was just that the headmaster of the school wrote that it was due to what Miles had said to some of his friends. The note also contained that he would never be taken back. However, when the governess meets the boy she is unsure that he could be bad because he was very amiable to her. The plot also thickens when there is the entry of two new characters in the form of ghosts. The first one is the ghost of the former valet, Peter Quint and the other is the former governess of the children Miss Jessel. The appearance of these two figures not only gives the plot a twist but also shows that the maximum people in this novel are of the servant culture. The master of the house is absent throughout the novel and therefore the superstructure in this novel are the children who are of higher class than the other characters. Therefore, the servants such as, Mrs. Grose, the narrator, and the two ghosts of Miss Jessel and Peter Quint form the base or the infrastructure of the story. In the middle of the novel we get to know of the homosexual feelings that the narrator has towards Miss Grose . Even the narrator expresses her feelings for the master of the house, which forms an instance of heterosexuality. The confused sexuality of the narrator, the relations between Peter Quint and Miss Jessel forms the basis of the novel. It shows the shatter psyche not only of the narrator but also of the other servants. The novel takes a pure monstrous turn when the readers are made aware of the fact that Peter Quint and Miss Jessel included the children too in their blasphemous acts. Here in the effect of the Marxist theory of Base and Super culture is truly felt. This is because we realize the cause of Miles’ expulsion is due to his perverted mentality, which he might have expressed in school. The perversion present in the mind of the base or infrastructure had found its way to affect the superstructure directly. The perversion was not only of mind but also of the body because the children had been victims of sexual abuse. The ghosts in this novel is very symbolic because they are talked of as not as ghosts but of as real characters. The ghosts attribute to the disintegrated psyche of the individual who perceive them. The narrator is able to see the ghosts because of her perverted mentality; the children view them, as they have been victims of sexual violations. The children especially Flora denies watching them or even is seen suppressing her fear because she is aware that the stigma it would cause her if she revealed to the society the violence she had faced in her earlier life. It is almost a form of escapism. The death of Miles is also significant because he is unable to face the reality of his life and when face with it in the form of Peter Quint’s ghost he dies. The base has immensely influenced the superstructure in this novel. The reactions of the children, the presence of the ghosts and even the mental condition of the narrator herself bears witness to it. The ghosts in the novel could be the result of the mental condition of the governess. This is thought so because she unconsciously sits in the same place where Miss Jessel’s ghost sits. In addition, the relation that Peter Quint had with Miss Jessel was thought of, as a perversion from the society’s point of view becomes a reflection of the feelings of the narrator for the master. Thus, the two ghosts as if are the two manifestations of the narrator’s minds and her disintegrated psyche. It often so happens that mind effects the thoughts in various ways. Further, when the narrator goes in Miles’s room she shares an intimate moment with him even unwillingly. This is the repetition of what sexual encounters Miles had with the previous governess or even with Peter Quint. The entire structure and the society, portrayed in the novel are unstable. The super structure here not only learns from the base but also even embodies the mentality in which it received nourishment. However, from the perspective of psychologists the ghosts are figures that symbolize the evil nature and because of the kindly nature of the governess, the ghosts are considered as separate entity from the governess. As suggested by Howard, the ghosts can be seen only by the governess while the children, Miles and Flora remain unaware of their presence. Howard has given example of his point by stating that in the society it is not unusual for a single individual in a crowd to witness a ghost. As an alternative, he has suggested that the governess might be feeling the presence of something eerie or evil either within the children or in the country house. It is then possible that such sense of evil is manifesting in the form of ghosts in the eyes of the governess; this condition is also possible in the real world (Howard, 5). At the point when analysing The Turn of the Screw from a Marxist feedback outlook, it is paramount to consider the social and financial elements of the novel. It is a story dominatingly populated by individuals of the lower class, living servants like Mrs. Grose and a tutor, which is our storyteller, and ghost servants like Miss Jessel and Quint. It is intriguing to perceive how all through the novel the Governess is pleased to place herself marginally over the other servants, in the same way that Mrs. Grose spots Miss Jessel above Quint. Nonetheless, the truth was that to whatever remains of society, these individuals were all thought to be on the same bottom level of the financial positioning at the time. Robbins raises a fascinating thought in his feedback that Henry James is attempting to clarify the point of view of society all through the novel, which is that society felt that servants were not intended to be some piece of genuine society yet were intended to simply mix out of spotlight and do their employment without truly being recognized or recognized. He fundamentally utilizes the ghosts as images, even indications of the way that the tutor is much the same as them, in the way that she is underneath a large portion of society since she is a "high society" servant, and is therefore undetectable and “something less than [a] human being” (336). The housemaids, the dairywoman, the nursery worker, and an old horse were all said to be equivalents to one another, therefore making these servants practically identical to a horse, which is certainly not making them on the same level as other individuals, in addition to those of a higher class. James is unmistakably attempting to smudge the line of refinement in the middle of servants and ghosts. This makes Mrs. Grose a likeness the ghosts, which is the reason she is more inclined to accept the Governess. After the Governess depicted her ghost experience to Mrs. Grose, she reflects that she "acknowledged without specifically reprimanding my rational soundness reality as I offered it to her" (James and James 50). The ghosts are impressions of her lower-class status, and therefore could be the motivation behind why she is so fast to accept the Governess. With the presence of ghosts and the hazy indication of who can see the ghosts, the readers remain busy wondering whether the ghosts exist for real. Therefore, as the title suggests, James turns the screw to divert the focus of the readers from the extraordinary skills of the governess, her craft. Indeed, the governess is extremely erudite and infatuated with withcraft (Kauffman, 204). This is another way of projecting the fact that since the governess is from lower class therefore her skills are not worthy of attention. Also, since the ghosts as such are speculative beings therefore it depends on the readers’ perspective whether the governess can be considered as evil or not. Since it is not clear whether the ghost can be seen by anyone else or not so it can be said that she is mad as she is hallucinating. However, if the ghosts are not regarded as evil then the entire perspective changes (Lustig, 115). This is another way of James’ attempt to create a mystery of the governess’s character. As per another psychoanalytical interpretation, the governess gradually convinces the children and Mrs Grose about the ghosts which finally leads to Miles’ death. Her insanity is thus less apparent in her character than on the psyche of the others (Thompson, 245). It can be that it is her hysteria that is getting conveyed to the children and the ghosts are hallucinations created out of her suppressed sexual urges (Orr, 74). It can also be noted that both the ghosts that have been mentioned in the story are that of servants, i.e. they are apparitions of the lower class. Added to this, the readers can interpret (since it has never been stated clearly whether the children can see the ghost) that the ghosts are visible only to the governess who is also from the lower class. Moreover, the author has created some common characteristics in the ghosts and the governess like all three of them are uncanny, unfamiliar and foreboding (Cousineau, 47). Thus, the author has created class differentiation between the real and the unreal. Finally, even though the governess is the central character, at the end of reading the novel, the readers are left to wonder what the theme was. Whether it is about ghost wanting revenge or whether the ghosts are hallucinations of a sexually deprived woman, it is never clear (Al-Qurani, 86). This is another strategy of diverting readers’ mind from the governess and her desires. The route in which James unpretentiously implies towards the thought that the servants are equivalents to the ghosts is by over and again putting the Governess in spots where the ghosts have a while ago been and the other way around. The Governess would be rebuffed by that certainty that she could be in any capacity on the same level as Quint or Jessel. When it comes to the reflecting back in the time when she had sunk deep down under the stairs, she says “with a revulsion, recalling that it was exactly where…I had seen the spectre of the most horrible of women” (James and James 87). Her irritation with being contrasted with Miss Jessel was clear, as it was not long after when she discovered the ghost of Miss Jessel situated at her table. Again this emphasizes the way that servants of the house are equivalents of the ghosts. It is similar to the servants are there, yet in the meantime they are definitely not. They mix in and are not to be recognized as genuine individuals in the family unit, yet rather simply individuals that get things going without the notice of others, much the same as ghosts. Therefore there emerges a theory that the Governess sees the ghosts on the grounds that they are really impressions of her own self and her status in the family unit and society by and large, which is that of some individual that goes unnoticed out of sight of the lives of "true" individuals. To stretch out on that thought, Stuart Burrows states that the Governess sees the ghosts as "not basically the "terrible Catch 22" of her place in the Bly family, however the learning that she is replaceable," which implies that she is nothing extremely unique and can therefore be effortlessly supplanted ("The Place of a Servant in the Scale") (Burrows). This could imply that on the grounds that Mrs. Grose is of the same status, she is helpless against accept her kindred worker the Governess, furthermore subliminally sees these ghosts as impressions of her own status, in the same way that the Governess does. It is therefore worth investigating deeper into Mrs. Groses character regarding financial status and how her position in society influences her conduct and attitude. Since there was no governess for quite a while after Miss Jessel vanished and the new Governess went along, Mrs. Grose could essentially be considered at the most elevated position in the family, or at any rate as indicated by herself in all likelihood, for she was the one in closest contact with the kids. At the point when the Governess tagged along, she was pushed down to second, making her a little lower positioned in her low status. This could have made her more inclined to connecting to the Governess and accepting her words for she had ended up more helpless than she as of now was because of her status. The bringing of her status because of the Governess could additionally be deciphered as means for Mrs. Grose to be fierce of the Governess, therefore making up untruths and obliging what she was stating keeping in mind the end goal to trick the Governess into truly accepting what she was seeing. By making her accept these things she would unmistakably be disrupting our storytellers position as governess which would therefore stifle her from the family unit, putting Mrs. Grose over at the highest point of the chain of command of servants. This prompts an entire other translation that Mrs. Grose is totally misleading the Governess, which is the reason she promptly "accepts" every last bit of her words. The case is that the main reason the peruser may decipher the Governess stories about the ghosts as truths is that she appropriately portrays the ghosts of Quint and Miss Jessel as precisely how they looked in genuine living, despite the fact that she had never seen them previously. This gets to be suspicious when we understand that Mrs. Grose is the one and only that affirms this to be for sure genuine, and the relationship between Miss Jessel and Quint. For all we the perusers know, she could be totally lying about every last bit of it, for the children never specify either of the expired servants, however there are other begging to be proven wrong purposes behind that as well. The purpose of the matter is that there is no affirmation to the way that what Mrs. Grose tells the Governess is genuine and not an invention of her own insane creative energy. This would without a doubt clarify why Mrs. Grose doesnt generally address the Governess strange sightings and takes them for truths rather rapidly. The understandings of this charming content are interminable and cannot therefore be marked as right or offbase. Grose concocted the presence of the ghosts, will perpetually be a riddle, and also the thought that James needed to make a subliminal parody, ridiculing the way that society saw all servants as one major lump of lower class, similar to creatures and even ghosts for this situation. Yet the servants themselves made a chain of importance amongst themselves, positioning a few servants higher than positioning others. Everything is relative and is the thing that each one different individual sees it to be, in the same way that the explanations for the limitless inquiries postured by The Turn of the Screw. Works Cited Al-Qurani, Shonayfa Mohammed. “Hallucinations or Realities: The Ghosts in Henry Jamess The Turn of the Screw.” Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2013), pp. 81-87. Web. Burrows, Stuart. “The Place of a Servant in the Scale.” Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 63, No. 1 (June 2008), pp. 73-103. Web. Cousineau, Thomas. Ritual Unbound: Reading Sacrifice in Modernist Fiction, Univ. of Delaware Press, 2004. Print Howard, Patricia. Benjamin Britten: The Turn of the Screw, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985. Print Kauffman, Linda S. Discourses of Desire, Cornell: Cornell Univ. Press, 1988. Print Lustig, T.J. Henry James and the ghostly, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011. Print Orr, Leonard. James’ The Turn of the Screw, A&C Black, 2009. Print Robbins, Bruce. "They Dont Much Count, Do They?". 1st ed. Print. Thompson, G.R. Reading the American Novel: 1865-1914, John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Print James, Henry, and Henry James. The Turn Of The Screw. 1st ed. London: J.M. Dent, 1935. Print. Read More