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Modernist Themes and Tropes in The Turn of the Screw 1898 - Coggle Diagram
Modernist Themes and Tropes in
The Turn of the Screw
1898
Narrative ambiguity and Levels of narration
Ambiguity
No objective truth
Narrators viewpoint = untrustworthy and subjective
Distillation of narrative info. across multiple levels of narration
Levels of narration
Hypotext
origin of a thought
furthest tracing of a thought
Trace a root cause, development + intention of an idea
Hypertext
Every traceable reference and after use of that idea across various forms of text
Account for valid but unintended intertextuality
The Turn of the Screw
First-person narration of the governess = framed as a letter
Her friend Douglas reads
Multiple view points
Constructedness of governess story
Fictive/ made-up quality
Is governesses first-person narration a true account of events?
Are the events filtered through her letter?
Douglas retelling
Prologue
Subjective and inescapable mediated account
Narrative levels
Creates distance from her account of the ghost story
Prologue
governess psyche
Ambiguous if events are real or if she imagined them
Narrative framing incomplete = doesn't return to Douglas
Real and presumed = conflated
Literary allusion and Intertextuality
Intertextuality = Feature of modernism
Governess mentions Jane Eyre
The mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
Young woman who experiences supernatural events in a gloomy castle after she is orphaned
Seemingly supernatural events = possible for events to have rational explanations
Urban alienation
Disconnect between people living in cities (1800s - 1900s)
Industrialisation = mass movements to urban areas
Changing social relations
Disconnect between rural and city
Dissolution of family unit
Lead-in to WWI
Myles and Flora orphaned and entrusted to uncle
Entrusts their care to governess and doesn't want her to bother him
Loss and Despair
Troubled relationships to the past
Intense period of socio-political chance and upheaval
Anxiety = loss of certainties
Freud's psychological theories undercut ideas of grand, stable truths
Miles and Flora lost parents
Lost contact and guidance with uncle
Spectres of previous employees Miss Jessel and Quint = eerie power over the chidren
Loss of innocence caused by traumatic and persuasive return of history
Taboo Sexuality
Hints = relationships with deceased employees was sexual
Quint = too free with everyone
Sexuality against social and cultural morals
Forbidden sexual desires = push against boundaries