An Interpretation Of The Turn Of The Screw Through Cultural Criticism

Henry James is one of the most important novelists and critics in British and American literature. He owes his fame mostly to his significant international novels, his deep and thorough perspectives of critical essays as well as his thrilling short stories.James spent much of his youth in plenty of European countries where he studied with tutors and governesses. This constant oscillation between various cultures had a profound effect on him and on his works. In the long past, critics, especially Chinese critics, have lingered on the analysis of James' international themes, moral motifs and his writing styles. Since the 1980s, more and more Western critics have started to use various critical theories such as political sociology, gender identity, and racial discrimination to make further studies of his novels.The author attempts to interpret James' novella The Turn of the Screw from the perspective of cultural criticism. The first chapter focuses on James' achievements and literary reviews on this novella. The second chapter is a brief review of the definition, development and ideas of cultural criticism. Cultural criticism is not an independent theory and it is often interwoven with social, political, psychological, and historical contexts of a novel. The author chooses three perspectives in particular to analyze this novella. In chapter three the author selects the perspective of political sociology to analyze class division and the power structure of the Victorian time embodied in this story. In chapter four the author tries to use the theory of social psychology to interpret the psyche of the heroine, the governess, and to prove that it is the governess' sexual hysteria that leads to the fall of the two children. In chapter five the author utilizes archetypal criticism to reveal the cultural prototypes of several characters in the novella. In conclusion the author stresses the influence of the particular culture of the Victorian period on James and argues that cultural criticism seems to be a more suitable and effective way to interpret this story.