“Through the Cracked and Fragmented Self”:
William James and The Turn of the Screw
By Karen Halttunen
Summarized by Savannah Layfield
By viewing The Turn of the Screw through the eyes of Henry James’s older brother, William James, Karen Halttunen is able to explore the governess and her visions of Quint and Miss Jessel in an original and thought-provoking manner. She explains that opposed to the Freudian approach to the novella, the tale requires a “systematic psychological understanding.” (473) Halttunen “propose(s) to offer that understanding… from the perspective of a nineteenth- century psychology which, in confronting certain mental disorders fundamentally equivocated between materialist and spiritist explanations of them.”(473) She explains that this view of the novella proves to be more “historically useful” than a twentieth century approach.
William James is considered a pioneer of psychical research, and some critics believe that in writing The Turn of the Screw Henry borrowed some of that knowledge from his brother; Particularly that of the “hypnagogic state” were a person is neither awake nor asleep but in between. According to this theory the average person is in this state twice a day around dusk and dawn and is highly suggestible. Halttunen explains that the mistress is in this state during all of the sightings of the “ghosts” by carefully examining the moments in which the mistress “sees” Miss Jessel and Quint. She found that in each instance the mistress undergoes a sense of tunnel vision, and is suggestible after the events: two classic symptoms of the hypnagogic state according to William James. After further analysis of the mistress, her behavior, and the use of words used to describe the surroundings of the mistress when she sees the ghosts, Halttunen deduces that if William James were to have met the mistress, he would have, without a doubt, diagnosed her visions as hallucinations.
Work cited
Halttunen, Karen. ""Through the Cracked and Fragmented Self": William James and The Turn of the Screw." American Quarterly. 4th ed. Vol. 40. N.p.: : The Johns Hopkins UP, 1988. 472-90. Credo. Web. 28 Apr. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.lamar.edu/stable/pdfplus/2712998.pdf?acceptTC=true>.
William James is considered a pioneer of psychical research, and some critics believe that in writing The Turn of the Screw Henry borrowed some of that knowledge from his brother; Particularly that of the “hypnagogic state” were a person is neither awake nor asleep but in between. According to this theory the average person is in this state twice a day around dusk and dawn and is highly suggestible. Halttunen explains that the mistress is in this state during all of the sightings of the “ghosts” by carefully examining the moments in which the mistress “sees” Miss Jessel and Quint. She found that in each instance the mistress undergoes a sense of tunnel vision, and is suggestible after the events: two classic symptoms of the hypnagogic state according to William James. After further analysis of the mistress, her behavior, and the use of words used to describe the surroundings of the mistress when she sees the ghosts, Halttunen deduces that if William James were to have met the mistress, he would have, without a doubt, diagnosed her visions as hallucinations.
Work cited
Halttunen, Karen. ""Through the Cracked and Fragmented Self": William James and The Turn of the Screw." American Quarterly. 4th ed. Vol. 40. N.p.: : The Johns Hopkins UP, 1988. 472-90. Credo. Web. 28 Apr. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.lamar.edu/stable/pdfplus/2712998.pdf?acceptTC=true>.
