Character Quotes TTOTs

Character Quotes TTOTs

1. The Governess

   • 'the shock I had suffered must have sharpened all my senses
   • I had more pains than one'
   • my vision was instantaneous
   • I was beyond all doubt
   • my dreadful liability
   • I now saw that I had been asked for a service admirable and difficult
   • Teachings of my small, smothered life
   • I was a screen
   • I walked in a world of their invention
   • Psychoanalytic criticism- ‘when she doesn’t conform of doesn’t believe that she conforms, she becomes restless and anxious’ Zacharias
   • ‘I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little see-saw of the right throbs and the wrong.’
   • anxiety
     • ‘The Governess’ narrative expresses anxiety, even as he confession and ghost fantasy serve to relive her of it’ Zacharias
     • ‘drop’, ‘sink’, ‘fear’, ‘brood’ ‘restlessness’
     • language of immoderation ‘too much excited’
     • ‘I was full of distress’
     • descriptions of Bly

2. Mrs Grose

   • there always seems to be competition between the Governess and Mrs Grose
     • However, is Mrs Grose aware of it?
     • 'she turned white, and this made me ask myself if I had blanched as much'
     • 'on every side there were fears'
       • there is a divide between them
     • 'under pressure'
     • There is often tension between the two
       • 'retorted'
       • excessive use of exclamation marks to display their heightened emotions
     • Yet, the Governess often refers to her as her 'sister' or 'friend', seems odd.
   • the Governess almost talks of her as if she was a ghost, the lines are blurred
     • round the corner of the house, she loomed into view
   • 'she knew her place too well'
   • the Governess doesn't view her as human
     • 'as something I could get from her'
     • she often talks down to her
       • 'How do you communicate?'
       • 'you do know my dear thing'
       • 'She was a magnificent monument to the blessing of a want of imagination'
   • 'She offered her mind to my disclosure'

3. Children

   • Miles
     • 'he had never for a second suffered'
     • 'placid heavenly eyes'
   • Flora
   • 'gentleness'
   • The Governess believes that the children are hers
     • implied through possessive pronoun of 'my' in 'my children'
     • however she later calls them 'pupils' rather than children- starting to disassociate possibly?
   • 'I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in the world the most bereaved and most loveable, the appeal of whose helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit'
   • 'they were never importunate and yet never listless'
   • 'isn't it just the proof of blessed innocence'
   • 'positive fragrance of purity'
   • 'like one of Raphael's holy infants'
   • ''I don't save or shield them! It's far worse than I dreamed. They're lost!''
   • The Governess often calls the children 'specimens'
     • Links to his brother William
   • 'I used to wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I thought strange things about them' 'immensely more interesting'
   • 'Never quarrelled or complained'
   • 'one of their more manageable moods'
   • 'The children, who are either dead or damaged, are the victims of the conflicting forces within the narrative.' Pricilla L Walton

4. Peter Quint

   • 'extraordinary man'
   • 'standing there and looking down at me'
   • 'he's a horror'
   • 'God help me if I know what he is'
   • 'I'm afraid of him'
   • 'he has no hat'
     • would suggest to a Victorian audience that he was not a gentleman
   • 'base menial'
   • 'hound'
   • impudent, assured, spoiled, depraved
   • 'he did what he wished'
   • 'in charge'

5. Miss Jessel

   • 'in mourning- rather poor, almost shabby'
   • 'extraordinary beauty'
   • 'a lady'
   • ‘She had done for them quite beautifully- she was a most respectable person- till her death, the great awkwardness of which had, precisely, left no alternative but the school for little Miles.’
     • For Bruce Robbins the syntax of ‘the great awkwardness of which’ and the choice of the work ‘awkwardness’ merits further look. ‘Not only is there no expression of sympathy or other comment on the death, but the speaker does not even consider the death important enough to bring the sentence to a close, thereby leaving a decent interval before returning to his business. Instead, the sentence rushed immediately onto another subordinate clause’ ‘The death doesn’t merit its own clause’