The Turn of the Screw

A story told by the fire

At a country house at Christmas, guests are telling ghost stories around the fire. One of them, Douglas, says he knows a story worse than any, written down by a woman who was once his sister’s governess and is now long dead. Her manuscript tells how, as a young woman, she took a post at Bly, a lonely country house, caring for two orphaned children, Miles and Flora, on a single condition from their handsome guardian: she must never trouble him about anything. The children are charming. Then she sees a man on one of the towers who should not be there. Henry James, an American who made his home in England, published it in 1898.

Why it works for learners

It’s short, and the situation is simple: a house, two children, a housekeeper, a governess and two figures who may or may not be there. Its fame rests on a question that has been argued over for more than a century: are the ghosts real, or is the governess imagining them? That ambiguity lives in James’s sentences, which hint, hedge and circle what they mean.

That makes this an unusual case for learners. The plot survives retelling, but the uncertainty is woven into the language itself, and simplifying it tends to make things clearer than James intended.

Which level to start at

B2 is the minimum for the real experience, and C1 is better. A B1 edition is a fine way to learn the story first. James’s late style is famously demanding even for native readers; when a sentence seems to say two things at once, the sentence translation can help, though often it really does say both.

Read next

• Jane Eyre, another governess in a house with a secret
• The Canterville Ghost, a ghost story played for laughs
• Carmilla, a young woman, a remote house and an uncertain threat