Summary: Chapter IX
Days pass without incident. The governess keeps the children
under her constant supervision. She finds herself embracing her
pupils more frequently and with sharper passion, and she wonders
if they are aware of her suspicions. Likewise, the two children
become increasingly fond of their governess and seek to please her
as much and as often as possible. The governess questions whether
an ulterior motive exists in their newly amplified affection.
The lull is broken one night when the governess is startled
from her nighttime reading. After quietly rising from her bed, she
leaves the room and moves to the top of the staircase. Suddenly
her candle goes out, and she witnesses an apparition of Quint halfway
up the stairway. They stare each other down intensely, the governess
refusing to back down. She is convinced by the dead silence that
the vision is “unnatural.” She watches as the figure disappears.
Summary: Chapter X
A moment later, the governess returns to her room to find
that Flora is not in her bed, but the bed’s curtains have been pulled
forward. The governess is distraught but soon notices a movement
behind the window blind. From under it Flora emerges with a grave
expression. Flora reproaches the governess, asking where she has
been. The governess explains her absence, then questions Flora,
who says she could sense the governess had left and thought someone
was walking out in the grounds. According to Flora, no one was outside. The
governess is certain Flora is lying and questions her further about
the drawn bed curtains. Flora claims she hadn’t wanted to frighten
the governess, who could have returned at any moment.
Henceforth, the governess stays up most nights. One evening
she finds the apparition of Miss Jessel with her head in her hands
at the bottom of the stairs. The vision vanishes immediately. A
number of evenings pass without event. The night that she finally
decides it is safe to sleep at her normal hour, she awakens after
midnight to find her light out. Certain Flora has extinguished it,
she gets out of bed and finds her student at the window. The governess
decides Flora must be communicating with the ghost of Miss Jessel
and, careful not to disturb her, ventures out to find a room with
a window that looks on the same scene. There, from her window, the
governess sees Miles out on the lawn.
Summary: Chapter XI
The next day, as the children stroll together on the lawn
under supervision, the governess informs Mrs. Grose of Miles’s misconduct.
The governess tells Mrs. Grose what passed between her and Miles
after she had found him outside in the moonlight. When she had appeared
on the lawn, he had promptly come to her, and she had led him inside
without a word. The governess had then questioned Miles as to what
he had been doing. Smiling, Miles had explained that he had wanted
her to think him capable of being “bad.” Then he had kissed her and
gone into further detail about his plan. According to Miles, he
had arranged things with Flora to disturb the governess, so she
would then get up to find out what was going on. He had been delighted
that she had fallen for it and expressed pride in being “bad enough.”
The two had ended their conversation with an embrace.
Summary: Chapter XII
Mrs. Grose is nonplussed by the governess’s account, and
so the governess explains her conclusion that the children have
been meeting consistently with Quint and Miss Jessel. She goes so
far as to claim that as the children stroll, they are “talking horrors”
and plotting their next meeting with their two ghostly friends.
The governess, piecing things together, says that the children have
not been good but empty, and their lives belong to Quint and Miss
Jessel. Furthermore, the governess surmises, Quint and Miss Jessel
“want to get” the children to destroy them and keep up their diabolical
work. Mrs. Grose suggests that the governess write to her employer,
asking him to take the children away. The governess rejects that
idea, saying he will think her mad. Mrs. Grose throws out an alternative
plan for the governess to make her employer come to her. At this,
the governess foresees his amusement and derision at what he will
perceive to be her loneliness. She threatens to leave if Mrs. Grose
appeals to the children’s uncle on her behalf.
