On The Concept Of The "REAL" And Henry James's Escape In The Turn Of The Screw

Henry James (1843-1916) is generally acknowledged to be a master of the psychological novel. He devoted himself to literature and travel, gradually assuming the role of detached spectator and analyst of life. During and after an unsuccessful six-year at tempt(1889-95) to win recognition as a playwright, Henry James wrote a series of short, powerful novels, including The Turn of the Screw.The Turn of the Screw is one of James' most famous tales and was first published serially in Collier's Weekly. The short story is written mostly in the form of a journal, kept by a governess, who works on a lonely estate in England. She tries to save her two young charges, Flora and Miles, two both innocent and supposedly corrupted children, from the demonic influence of the apparitions of two former servants in the household, steward Peter Quint and the previous governess Miss Jessel. Her employer, the children's uncle, has given strict orders not to bother him with any of the details of their education. The children evade the questions about the ghosts but she is sure that the children see them. When she tries to drive their influence away, Miles dies in her arms. The story inspired later a debate over the question of the reality of the ghosts. Wereher visions only hallucinations? We know that this story was finished in 1898. But in the 1880s James became interested in the unconsciousness and the supernaturalism. In 1908 he wrote that "Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are not 'ghosts' at all, as we now know the ghost, but goblins, elves, imps, demons as loosely constructed as those of the old trials for witchcraft; if not, more pleasingly, fairies of the legendary order, wooing their victims forth to see them dance under the moon.In his earlier writing, James was not successful and didn't make his name, which plunged him into gloom. Besides, his back injury isolated himself from the social activities. He became an "observer" rather than an active participant. He never married, which probably gave him much time to ponder over the art of writing. In the Art of Fiction, he says "The subject matter of fiction is stored up likewise in documents and records, and if it will not give itself away, as they say in California, it must speak with assurance, with the tone of the historian. Certain accomplished novelists have a habit of giving themselves away which must often bring tears to the eyes of people who take their fiction seriously. " (The American Tradition in Literature, Mcgraw-Hill, Inc, 1994, p1161).As a "split subject" (Lacan), James, as well as his heroes and heroines, subject his "consciousness" to "unconsciousness" , which, according to Lacan, is universal.Compared with other writers, James goes farther. Or we can say that the greatness of Henry James lies in such a fact that he consciously, or rather, unconsciously realized human beings' frailty. In other words, James, by resorting to his tale The Turn of the Screw, reflects not only his but the human beings' inner helplessness: on one hand, human beings want to be clear about their behavior and have a good control of themselves; on the other hand, this attempt is doomed to fail, for human beings are split subjects. Human beings' helplessness and inner contradiction are clearly reflected through the ambiguity in this tale. In this sense, we may call Henry James as "superman" because the publication of this tale is one year earlier than that of Interpretation of Dreams which was written by Freud and published in the year 1899, and even earlier that the publication of Jacques Lacan's series of works.My thesis mainly falls into four chapters.Chapter one briefly introduces Lacan's Mirror Image theory in order to show Henry James's innermost homosexual feeling, or the secret of secrets in his mind, which is deeply hidden in his unconsciousness. Children' s ambiguous behavior can be interpreted in terms of Lacan' s Mirror Image theory which can be briefly illustrated like this: a child, even at the moment he was born, is doomed to tend to be split. In his later whole life, this...