Essay Finding Meaning in The Turn of The Screw, by Henry...

At first glance, Bly appears to be a rather lonely place. The vividly bleak backdrop for The Turn of the Screw houses a handful of servants, two orphaned children, and ghosts who fade in and out of view. But there are others present who are less obtrusive yet just as influential as Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. Peering into and out of Blys windows and mirrors, engaging with the text and the lingering trace of author Henry James, a crowd of real and virtual readers hope to catch a glimpse of a specter or to unravel a clever Freudian slipknot that will tell them something: They may be looking for that which they think James intended as the texts truth - a transcendental center - or maybe they subconsciously wish to see a†¦show more content†¦Lustig asserts that Jamess story uses its blanks to undermine all attempts to establish relations and to join references into a coherent pattern (255). This coherent pattern is what the New Critics believe a texts essential org anizing principle to be, and that it is present in the text whether a reader notices it or not. For formalists, a texts essential effect lies in the text alone and is completely independent of a readers response to elements that create effect in him. Likewise, Lustigs precise analysis of form and subsequent deconstructionist reading of The Turn of the Screw does not mention what a possible readers process might be when faced with the twists of Bly. But for whom is the effect valuable, if not the reader? As Iser explains in The Reading Process, readers situate themselves within their responses, in effect awakening [the] responses within himself (51). He further argues that if a reader were given the whole story...his imagination would never enter the field, and yield nothing but boredom (51). To Iser, the life of the text depends on a readers participation in formulating his own response. More importantly, Iser touts the unwritten parts, (gaps and ambiguities) of a text to stimulate the imagination, a process that animates these outlines, and in turn...influence the effect of the written part... (50-51). Iser and other phenomenological reader-response critics depend utterly upon the readerShow MoreRelatedThe Lord Of The Screw And Northanger Abbey1635 Words   |  7 Pagesof the Innocent Heroine in Turn of the Screw and Northanger Abbey The function of the innocent heroine in gothic literature is, primarily, to follow her curiosity into the deepest, darkest corners of an appropriate gothic setting, uncover some awful secret contained therein, and do a lot of running around in her nightgown to be saved at the appropriate moment by a strong, capable suitor. 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