50 Fun Facts About The Turn of the Screw

Which future Sex and the City star played the little girl in a 1976 Broadway version of The Turn of the Screw?

Sarah Jessica Parker played the haunted girl opposite Claire Bloom's governess in a revival directed by Harold Pinter, which closed after only 12 performances.

Which Hollywood legend played the sinister servant in The Nightcomers, a 1971 prequel to The Turn of the Screw?

Marlon Brando played him as a groundskeeper with an Irish accent, and the film ends as a new governess arrives, the point where Henry James's story begins.

Which bestselling author named The Turn of the Screw one of only two great supernatural horror tales in a century?

Stephen King made the claim in Danse Macabre, his survey of the genre, and gave the other place to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House.

Which Stranger Things actor played the troubled schoolboy in The Turning, a 2020 film of The Turn of the Screw?

Finn Wolfhard played the boy in a version that moves the story to 1994 and was filmed at Killruddery House in Ireland.

Which 1847 novel about a governess does The Turn of the Screw echo when its heroine imagines a mad relative locked away?

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë's novel, keeps Mr Rochester's wife hidden in the attic; James's governess wonders whether her own new home holds a secret of the same kind.

What happens to the young boy in the governess's arms in the final sentence of The Turn of the Screw?

His heart stops just as she believes she has freed him from the ghost, and Henry James ends there, never returning to the fireside listeners of the opening.

What is the name of the remote country house where the governess takes up her post in The Turn of the Screw?

Bly is an old family estate whose owner, the children's uncle, lives mainly in London; the name returned in 2020 in the title of a Netflix series based on the story.

What main condition does the children's uncle set before hiring the governess in The Turn of the Screw?

Never to trouble him was the rule: she must not appeal, complain or write, a demand that had already frightened off several other applicants.

What did critic Edmund Wilson argue in 1934 that the governess's ghosts in The Turn of the Screw were?

Her own hallucinations, Wilson argued, sprang from sexual repression, and his Freudian reading fuelled a long debate over whether the ghosts are real at all.

Which British singer based the 1980 song The Infant Kiss on a film version of The Turn of the Screw?

Kate Bush sings as a governess frightened by her feelings for a boy possessed by a grown man's spirit; the song appears on her chart-topping album Never for Ever.

Which boy in The Turn of the Screw comes home for the summer after his school refuses to have him back?

Miles is about ten, and his headmaster's letter gives no reason for the expulsion, which leaves the governess to imagine the worst about so charming a pupil.

What is the name of the younger orphan, a little girl, whom the governess teaches in The Turn of the Screw?

Flora seems angelic at first, but after a confrontation by the lake she turns on the governess and asks never to see her again.

Which housekeeper is the governess's only confidante in The Turn of the Screw, though she never sees a ghost herself?

Mrs. Grose once served as maid to the uncle's mother, and it is she who puts names to the figures the governess describes.

Which dead servant in The Turn of the Screw does the housekeeper name after the governess describes a hatless stranger?

Peter Quint is recognised from the governess's description before she knows he ever existed, the point that defenders of real ghosts lean on hardest.

Which former governess in The Turn of the Screw, now dead, seems to appear to the little girl beside the lake?

Miss Jessel had been close to another servant despite the gap in their rank, and she went away and died in circumstances the housekeeper never fully explains.

What job had the male ghost in The Turn of the Screw held in the uncle's household while he was alive?

Valet to the children's uncle, he was left in charge of the country house when his master went back to London, and was far too free with everyone there.

On which night do the house guests of The Turn of the Screw sit round a fire trading ghost stories?

Christmas Eve suits a gruesome tale, the narrator says, and one guest promises a story so dreadful that nobody but him has ever heard it.

Which film star, then forty, played the twenty-year-old governess in the 1961 film of The Turn of the Screw?

Deborah Kerr is on screen for about 95 of the film's 99 minutes; her director told her to play the part as she felt it but never to forget the ambiguity.

Which English composer turned The Turn of the Screw into a 1954 chamber opera built on a twelve-note theme?

Benjamin Britten wrote the opera in four months to a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, and each of its sixteen scenes opens with a variation on that theme.

Which American author reworked the screenplay of the 1961 film of The Turn of the Screw, adding its Freudian undertones?

Truman Capote broke off from writing In Cold Blood for three weeks to do it, and one critic credits him with about 90 per cent of the script as filmed.

In which American city was Henry James, author of The Turn of the Screw, born before he settled for good in England?

New York was his birthplace, at Washington Place in Manhattan, but he spent most of his adult life in Europe and took British citizenship a year before he died.

Which guest in the prologue of The Turn of the Screw reads the governess's manuscript aloud to the fireside party?

Douglas knew the governess when she taught his sister, and he has kept her manuscript in a locked drawer for years since her death.

In which English county does Henry James place the haunted country house of The Turn of the Screw?

Essex is where the uncle keeps his old family place, though he lives in London and leaves the estate to its servants.

In which country did the two children's parents die before The Turn of the Screw begins, leaving them to an uncle?

India is where their father, the uncle's younger military brother, and their mother died; later critics made the detail a starting point for postcolonial readings.

Where is the male ghost standing when the governess of The Turn of the Screw first sees him at dusk?

On a tower of the old house, just as she had been daydreaming of meeting someone on her evening stroll; he stares hard at her as he crosses the battlements, then turns away.

What does the boy finally admit got him thrown out of school near the end of The Turn of the Screw?

Things he said, he tells the governess, to a few boys he liked, who repeated them to others until word reached the masters.

What does the boy confess he did with the governess's stolen letter to his uncle in The Turn of the Screw?

Burned it, he says, after opening it to see what she had written about him and finding nothing inside.

Which instrument does the boy play to distract the governess while his sister slips away in The Turn of the Screw?

Piano playing fills the afternoon so completely that the governess loses track of time, and when she starts up his sister has vanished towards the lake.

With whom is the governess of The Turn of the Screw said to have fallen in love after only two meetings?

Her employer, the children's handsome bachelor uncle, saw her only twice; the prologue suggests his charm is why she accepted so daunting a post.

Who told Henry James the ghostly anecdote, over tea in 1895, that grew into The Turn of the Screw?

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson, told him a tale of dead servants corrupting children, which James wrote in his notebook two days later.

In the prologue of The Turn of the Screw, what gives a fireside tale its extra 'turn'?

A ghost visiting a child is the twist the guests admire, so the storyteller offers a case with two children and, as one listener says, two turns.

What does the boy do in The Turn of the Screw to show the governess he can be bad?

He goes out at midnight: after sitting up to read he slips onto the lawn, with his sister posted at a window so that the governess will look out and see him.

What was the occupation of the governess's father, a detail Freudian critics of The Turn of the Screw seized on?

A poor parson in Hampshire raised her, the youngest of several daughters, and she had never taken a post before answering the advertisement at twenty.

What does the governess learn about the housekeeper on handing her the headmaster's letter in The Turn of the Screw?

She is illiterate: offered the letter, the housekeeper puts her hands behind her back and says that such things are not for her.

Where does the governess find her predecessor's ghost seated at her own table in The Turn of the Screw?

The schoolroom is where the dead woman sits in clear noonday light, head in her hands, just after the governess has hurried home meaning to leave for good.

How did the dead servant who haunts The Turn of the Screw die one winter night?

A fall on an icy slope, on his way from the public house, was the inquest's finding; a labourer found him dead on the road at dawn with a wound to his head.

What colour are the hair and whiskers of the hatless stranger the governess describes in The Turn of the Screw?

Red hair, close-curling, with a pale face and small fixed eyes: she adds that he looks like an actor and is certainly no gentleman.

At which fashionable London address does the children's uncle interview the governess in The Turn of the Screw?

Harley Street is where she finds his big house, full of the spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase, which strikes the nervous young applicant as vast and imposing.

In The Turn of the Screw, which sea do the governess and her pupil pretend the lake is during a geography game?

The Sea of Azof is their name for it when a woman in black appears on the far bank; in the opera version the girl calls it the Dead Sea instead.

Which Ann Radcliffe novel does the governess of The Turn of the Screw name when she suspects a household secret?

The Mysteries of Udolpho, the 1794 Gothic bestseller, comes to her mind after her first sighting of a stranger, as she asks whether the old house hides a mystery of its own.

Under which title was The Turn of the Screw filmed in 1961, a name first used for a Broadway play?

The Innocents came from William Archibald's 1950 stage adaptation, and Martin Scorsese later put the film on his list of the scariest horror films ever made.

In which East Sussex town had Henry James just leased Lamb House when he wrote The Turn of the Screw?

Rye became his home, and he welcomed the magazine's fee for a ghost story because he had just signed a twenty-one-year lease there.

Which American illustrated magazine first published The Turn of the Screw as a twelve-part serial in 1898?

Collier's Weekly paid James 900 dollars for the serial rights, six times what another magazine had paid him a year earlier for What Maisie Knew.

How did Henry James, who found writing by hand difficult, compose The Turn of the Screw in 1897?

By dictating it to his secretary, William MacAlpine, who took shorthand; impatient for the typed pages, James bought a Remington so the words could be typed as he spoke.

Which 1878 Henry James novella made his name two decades before The Turn of the Screw?

Daisy Miller, the story of an American girl abroad, established his fame on both sides of the Atlantic, but by the 1890s his readership had dwindled and he had run into financial difficulties.

Which British honour did Henry James, author of The Turn of the Screw, receive in 1916, the year he died?

The Order of Merit came the year after he took British citizenship, having spent the first months of the First World War doing war work.

In which Italian city did the opera of The Turn of the Screw have its world premiere in 1954?

Venice heard it first at the Teatro La Fenice, with the composer conducting, three weeks before the opera reached London; the city's Biennale had commissioned it.

Which horror director remade The Turn of the Screw as a 2020 Netflix series about an American au pair?

Mike Flanagan made it the second entry in his Haunting anthology and mixed in material drawn from other Henry James tales.

In which 1898 volume did The Turn of the Screw first appear in book form?

The Two Magics paired it with the tale Covering End and came out in October 1898 from Macmillan in America and Heinemann in London, six months after the magazine serial had ended.

Which Henry Fielding novel is the governess of The Turn of the Screw reading before she meets a ghost on the stairs?

Amelia is in her hand, taken from a roomful of old books in the house, when she senses something astir, takes her candle and meets the dead servant on the staircase.