From the first sentence of her narrative, in Chapter I,
the governess calls attention to her own sharp swings in mood and
attitude, a focus that makes her seem sensitive, emotional, nervous,
and introspective but not necessarily reliable. Her perceptions
of things at Bly are clearly shaped by her emotions and her imagination, and
often her judgments seem excessively hasty or intense. Her reaction
to Flora, in particular, seems excessive, as she describes Flora
in such idealized terms (“radiant,” “beatific”) that we get little
sense of Flora as a real child. The governess feels affection for
Mrs. Grose, but her feelings often change quickly, though briefly, to
suspeicion. The governess reports hearing footsteps and crying
outside her room, and she gets the sense that Mrs. Grose is too glad
to see her, both of which provide foreshadowing and create the sense
that something is going on that we have yet to learn about. However,
the governess’s sensitivity and volatility also create a feeling
of uncertainty about whether we can trust her point of view. This
question is one of the central problems of The Turn of the
Screw, and it develops and deepens rather than resolves.
[. . . ] I had the fancy of our being
almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship.
Well, I was, strangely, at the helm!
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