Theme 3: Domestic Violence and Rape
The most potent, as well as delicate, theme in the original novella and its subsequent adaptations is that of domestic violence and rape. If Miss Jessel’s specter speaks to fear over deviation from acceptable gender expectation, the apparition of Peter Quint is symbolic of the inescapable cycle of abuse in the domestic sphere, and the danger of violent male power over women.
Upon interrogating Mrs. Grose, the governess learns that her predecessor Miss Jessel was in a dangerous sexual relationship with the lecherous former groundskeeper Peter Quint. She was regularly subjected to verbal, physical, and sexual abuse which was witness by the household, including by the children. The toll of abuse on Miss Jessel’s mental state culminates in obsessive behavior (possibly Stockholm or Battered Woman Syndrome) and upon Quint’s sudden accidental death, Miss Jessel drowns herself. The household staff did nothing to intervene in the violence, treating it as an open secret, nor do they ever address it after their deaths. The governess realizes the spirits have returned to possess the children, wherein Quint can continue his cycle of violence and exert dominance over the domestic space, endangering Miles, Flora, and the governess herself.
The original novel makes suggestions and implications towards the violence that occurred against Miss Jessel, and that those sins created the predatory spirits after their deaths. However, as it was published in 1898, explicit reference or description of such graphic, intimate content was unthinkable and not socially acceptable. The references and implication of this violence had to be clearly communicated, but obliquely, and equal tact had to be applied to the illustrations.
Eric Pape once again utilized environment and figure relationships to invoke anxiety about domestic violence, without sensationalizing the grotesque reality of the subject matter. In his illustration where the governess first sees Peter Quint standing in the tower (Image 1), the threat of the male figure is immediately clear. Quint's figure looms threateningly over the entire composition, reinforced by the hulking black shape of the manor. The woman's body language shies away, almost flinching under the gaze of the groundskeeper, far beneath the colossal black walls and tower (in and of itself an inherently phallic symbol, compared to the yonic, blooming garden of flowers she is in). The manor itself is under the control of Peter Quint, the abuser. The building environment becomes its own threatening entity, an extension of Quint, embodying and personifying the unsafe domestic spaces that women are forced to navigate. The image is made all the more unsettling to the viewer, in knowing that the governess has no choice but to enter this space facing her.
In the film version of the tower scene (Image 2), the freedom that the extended sequence and alternating shots and compositions allow heighten the terror of Eric Pape's imagery even further. Viewers are pulled claustrophobically towards the governess' face, accentuating the fear and slow building dread evident in her expression and body language. Her position beneath the hostile male gaze and oppressive manor is made all the more evident by the camera angle viewing up towards the tower, as if the audience too is caught in the shadow of Peter Quint's sight. The angle of the tower is deeper, more imposing, with the sharp, inorganic spires and stonework mirroring and emphasizing Quint's looming form.
Eric Pape's visual solution of using the physical manor environment to invoke and represent the sexual abuse that occurred within its walls was absolutely critical for creating the vocabulary by which later adaptations could freely expand upon the topic of rape in a nuanced and non-exploitative way. While the film was made 60 years after the original novel, literally showing acts of sex and sexual trauma was still far off the table. However, this is where the framework of the original serialized illustration shines; director Jack Clayton had the environmental metaphor from Eric Pape's work to expand on, with the additional tools of dialogue, audio, and extended visual sequence
The film includes a direct verbal confrontation of rape which was not possible in the original work. When pressed by the governess on the truth of Peter's Quint's behavior towards Miss Jessel, Mrs. Grose finally, painfully, admits to her the phrase, "Rooms... used by daylight... as through they were dark woods". Mrs. Grose is unable to even make eye contact when saying it. The metaphor is grotesque, but communicates brilliantly the depravity of sexual violence, and the trauma which Miss Jessel endured, without being exploitative of women's suffering. This line of prose, pared with the environmental storytelling, frames the strategy by which the film explores domestic violence.
In the scene where the governess walks the manor at night and encounters spirts (Image 3), imprints of the sexual violence which took place in the house manifest in the hallways, doors, objects that she is surrounded with. She is surrounded by a consuming darkness with the barest suggestion of her surroundings illuminated. The audience is pulled along, with the swerving angles and cropped movement of the camera heightening the feeling of being stalked by an unnatural force in a hostile, unfamiliar setting. The disorientation and loss of reality is reinforced by disembodied voices of spirits, intimate and disturbing conservations between Miss Jessel and Peter Quint trapped between the walls they were spoken. We hear Miss Jessel's voice say outload "Kiss me. Kiss me... You're hurting me" in an almost entirely blackened space. The physical and sexual implications are clear, and the lurking dark space allows the imagination of the viewer to fill in what is socially unacceptable to speak about directly or show.
The paranoia and disassociation is continued as the voices of the spirts begin overlapping and repeating rapidly (Image 4), swallowing the space and causing the governess to lose her sense of direction, twisting to look for a means of escape. The instability is emphasized through the unnatural camera angles that shift rapidly around the governess and distort her form, as though she is being preyed upon by all angles. The scene is overwhelming not only from the horror of what happened, but that the strengthening presence of the spirits could remanifest the acts upon the protagonist where she is trapped.
Fleeing to the end of the hallway, the governess comes closed window (Image 5) where the curtain is moving back and forth of its own accord. The bead on the drawstring rhythmically beats on the glass, with each hit accompanied by a frantic woman's voice repeating "Love me! Love me!". The repetition and rhythm of the object hitting against another, paired with the suggestive words, surrounded by bedroom, is a clear and extremely explicit reference to sexual acts and intercourse. This sequence is not only jarring and shockingly graphic in spite of not actually showing anything physically, it is made all the more perverse in context to the abuse which the audience and the governess know is dictating this act.
The horror of the darkness and what happened there confronts the audience in the face, putting them in a place of the woman and forcing them to consider the fear of existing in an unsafe domestic environment. Pape and Clayton subvert the standard gothic symbol of the castle or manor by imbuing the topic of rape onto it—it is no longer a general symbol for decay of vitality, rather, it represents the corrupted domestic space. It doesn't just contain the threat of the supernatural—rather, it embodies extremely real danger. It is the manifestation, and remanifestation, of specific acts of real sexual violence and abuse that occurred within the space.
Looking at illustrated narrative examples from the 20th century, the framework of the domestic setting personifying unsafe gendered spaces continued in stories that addressed women's terror and the threat of assault. Similar to the serialized format of the original publication of The Turn of the Screw, early 20th century periodicals often engaged with similar anxieties of abuse or feminine fear. Many examples were made specifically for a female audience in publications such as The Ladies' Home Journal.
In an example from Henry Raleigh from this magazine (Image 6), a young woman gestures wildly from a bed as she recalls a terrifying encounter with a suitor. A nurse and a baby in a cradle sit beside the bed in the looming darkness of the bedroom. While she is safe in the presence of a companion, the memory and trauma of what occurred to her hangs in the darkness over the bed. The terror caused by a gentleman suitor is inherently sexually threatening, made more clear and imminent by the way the bedroom, an intimate space sinks into abstraction.
Similarly, a black and white print illustration from Pruett Alexander Carter (Image 7) depicts a young woman in a dark dress cowering against a wall, her hands on her face. Her expression is full of fear as she gazes outward; the threat is outside of the composition, as if standing behind the viewer themselves. The details of the private room are articulated, but the shadow hunched behind her is thick and exaggerated, symbolizing the fear creeping into what is supposed to be a safe, intimate environment.