Themes in TTOTS

Themes in TTOTS

1. Corruption of the innocent

   • Governess rarely indicates that she thinks the ghosts will harm children
     • Death of Miles is a shock
     • Doesn't attempt to remove children from the house at first
   • Fear focus entirely on the potential corruption
     • Knowledge of sex
     • "Too free"
     • Quint and the boy had been perpetually together
       • "He denied certain occasions
       • "When he went off with the fellow [...] spent hours with him
       • "Miss Jessel didn't mind
       • "He covered and concealed their relation"
         • "He couldn't prevent"
     • "She couldn't have stayed. Fancy it her - for a governess!"
       • "She paid for it"
     • "You could see that he knew what was between the two wretches"
   • Attempts to find out what the children know
     • Approaches them indirectly to avoid corrupting them herself
   • The governess is horrified by Jessel's sexual infraction and apparently fascinated by it as well
     • Fear of the children's corruption represent her own projection of fears and desires regarding sex

2. Destructiveness of heroism

   • The governess's youth and inexperience suggest that the responsibility of caring for two children as well as an entire estate is too much to bear
   • The governess responds to her experiences at Bly by taking on even more responsibilities: to bury the letter, keep Miles at home, to be the one to see the ghosts and to save the children from the ghosts' corrupting influence
     • These decisions are self-conscious. She deliberately chooses to view these challenges as "magnificent" ways of impressing her employer and deludes herself into thinking that the master recognizes her sacrifices
     • She was wrong in thinking she could save the children: Flora leaves in hysterics and Miles dies
     • "I was a screen"
     • "I was like a gaoler"
     • "He was only too fine and fair for the little horrid, unclean school-world"
   • The governess's heroic stance suggests several things. One is that the forces of corruption are too powerful for one person to oppose. Perhaps the governess could have saved the children with help off the teachers and the uncle. Perhaps the children could never have been saved
     • Maybe the children's innocence was too fragile to have been protected in such an aggressive fashion
       • "I was there to protect and defend"

3. Forbidden subjects

   • One challenging aspect of TTOTS is how often indirect/ambiguous language is used rather than direct addresses
     • Miles gets kicked out of school and the headmaster does not specify why
       • "Dismissed his school"
       • "Impossible to keep him"
     • "I know, I know, I know"
     • "They know - it's too monstrous"
     • "Why all that we know"
     • "Flora doesn't want me to know"
     • "I don't change - I simply make it out"
     • "Whatever I had seen, Miles and Flora saw more"
     • "He has an odd way"
   • The governess assumes that Miles has been corrupting others. The governess fears Miles and Flora understand the nature of Quint and Jessel's relationship, but the nature is never explicitly stated.
     • The governess suspects the ghosts are influencing the children in ways having to do with their past, but there is nothing explicitly said about how they are being influenced.
       • This reticence could reflect James's own reticence, or it could reflect Victorian reticence about sex.