The Ghosts in the Stories of Henry James

The Jolly Corner, The Turn of the Screw and Other Works

Sep 22, 2009

This article discusses the people and ideas that influenced Henry James during his life, and the psychological significance of ghosts in his works.

Henry James’ writing was influenced by spiritualism as well as the emerging field of psychology. James was born into a wealthy family in Albany, New York in 1843. At the turn of the century, there was a strong preoccupation with ghosts. Many Victorians held séances and believed in spirit communication. Henry James’s father was a follower of the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish philosopher and mystic who believed in dreams, visions and spirits,

Henry James’ brother William attended Harvard, where he became a student of the emerging field of psychology. Sigmund Freud’s theories of the unconscious mind and its effects on conscious behavior were new and thought-provoking concepts that also had a strong influence on Henry James’s works.

The Jolly Corner

Spencer Brydon returns to New York after a long absence. His return sets him to brooding about what life might have been like had he stayed and not spent his life wandering abroad. Soon, he begins to sense that something is haunting the old house he grew up in on the Jolly Corner.

An encounter with his own ghost gives him a new perception about the choices he has made in his life. It is left up to the reader to decide whether what he saw was an actual ghost or a manifestation from his own subconscious.

The Turn of the Screw

In one of James’s most popular works, “The Turn of the Screw”, a governess takes charge of a household and two small children. Soon, she begins to see ghosts of the former governess Miss Jessel, and her lover Peter Quint and fears they are out to do harm by corrupting the children in her care. A classic Victorian Gothic ghost story from which many later works were patterned, “The Turn of the Screw” can be interpreted in two ways. Since the viewpoint of the governess is the only one presented, the ghosts could have been the hallucinations of an unraveling mind.

Another explanation is that the ghosts could have been real manifestations. One wonders how the governess managed to describe Peter Quint as red-haired without ever having set eyes on the former servant and illicit lover of Miss Jessel. However, even though the housekeeper does not contradict her, her description of Quint is a fairly stereotypical one of the devil. His wearing of the master's clothes may signify that evil has taken over in the master's abscence.

Whether real or figments of her imagination, there is much more at play in “The Turn of the Screw” than a simple ghost story. It is also a psychological study of mental corruption. In any event, the governesses's attempts to shelter the children did them more harm than good.

In the ghost stories of Henry James, he explores the power of the subconscious mind, while not completely discounting the supernatural.

James, Henry. Ghost Stories of Henry James (Wordsworth Classics). Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Edtitions LTD, 2008.

The copyright of the article The Ghosts in the Stories of Henry James in Classic American Fiction is owned by Vickie Britton. Permission to republish The Ghosts in the Stories of Henry James in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.