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Reading into Henry James
Criticism, Wntr, 2004 by Jonathan Flatley
He quickly disappears, but not before "fixing" her. He reappears soon, however, and another ghost appears, a woman. Are these ghosts "real," we wonder? Or are they projections of her imagination?
With the appearance of the ghosts, the story shifts focus and begins to center around the governess's desire to uncover the secret of the ghosts. The governess deduces, with the help of the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, that she has seen the ghosts of her predecessors at Bly, the previous governess--Miss Jessel--and a servant--Peter Quint. Moreover, she learns that their relationships with the children were tainted by possible sexual corruption. Quint and Jessel "took liberties." They "carried on" with each other and with the children. Quint seems to have been the more offensive figure here: the governess learns that "there had been matters in his life, strange passages and perils, secret disorders, vices more than suspected, that would have accounted for a good deal more" (28). Moreover, "for a period of several months," Quint and the boy had been perpetually together. Indeed, Miles and Quint "had been together quite as if Quint had been his tutor--and a very grand one--and Miss Jessel only for the little lady. When he had gone off with the fellow, I mean, and spent hours with him" (36). When Mrs. Grose spoke with Jessel in an effort to put a stop to it, she was told that as a servant it was none of her business. (32)
But, for the governess, this past that seems to be returning in the appearance of the ghosts is not exclusively fearful. In fact, it proves to be a catalyst in her relationship with the children that makes her feel more intimately connected with them, precisely because it provides the scene for her to read into them, and in turn to feel read into. Inasmuch as "there are depths, depths!" (31) to the knowledge and complicity of the children with the ghosts, the governess must engage in a sustained effort to read into the children's behavior, moods, and speech their knowledge about the ghosts and the past that the ghosts represent. This leads to a quite pleasurable feeling that she has gotten lost in the emotional world created by the children: "we lived in a cloud of music and affection and success and private theatricals" (39). Nonetheless, at each step she suspects that she has uncovered the crucial clue to justify her fear that "They know--it's too monstrous: they know, they know!" (30). But, however much she guesses, whatever she herself manages to see of the ghosts, the fact remains that "what it was least possible to get rid of was the cruel idea that, whatever I had seen, they saw more--things terrible and unguessable and that sprang from dreadful passages of intercourse in the past" (53). Of course this means that her efforts to read into and guess and pursue must become ever more intense and intimate, that they never reach quite the depth that they must. The secret intercourse that the governess imagines the children to have with the ghosts creates a kind of affective intensity that would otherwise be absent; one might even say that the ghosts are a prop or alibi for the creation of that intensity.
