Modernist Themes and Tropes in 'The Turn of the Screw" 
Taboo Sexuality
Literary Allusion and Intertextuality
Urban Alienation
Loss and Despair
The Turn of the Screw
Narrative Ambiguity and Levels of Narration
1898
published before the turn of the 20th Century
Henry James
Peak of Modernism
Jessel and Quint
explore sexuality
modernist
previously unacceptable in society
Quint too "free" with everyone, especially the children
upheaval
turn of the 20th century
socio political change
Sigmund Freud semninal psychology theories
kids lost parents
loss of guidance and contact in employees
loss of innocence
troubled relationships
modernist
narrator is revealed as untrustworthy and highly subjective
multiple level of narration
Hypertext
Hypotext
origin of a thought
every traceable reference subsequent use of idea across
Interior Psychological world of the governess
figment of imagination
ambiguos
sinister events, ghosts
Prologue
incomplete
multiple viewpoints
constructedness of governess's story
common in modernist text
The Turn of the Screw
miles and flora entrusted to their uncles keeping
care entirely to governess
not to be bothered in city
underlying disconnect between people
changing social relations
industrialization
mass movement
rural and urban
modernist
Intetextuality
ways in which texts draw on
feature of modenrism
mentions Jane Eyre
Udolpho
mysteries
supernatural
gloomy castle
familiar supernatural events
rational explanation to ghosts