Dreadful dreadfulness.
I always wondered what the title of Henry James' famous ghost story means. Now I know and it is no spoiler to tell you, as the explanation is given on page 1. A ghost story is made more ghostly when a child is involved. (This takes us right into a great horror tradition, from Goethe's Erlkoenig to the superb ghost film 'The Others' with Nicole Kidman.)
The frame is a familiar one: people in a gothic mansion, 19th century England, telling each other ghost stories after dinner.
One man offers two turns of the screw. He makes things complicated by not telling the story in his own words, rather he must read it from a manuscript, that the late writer gave to him some time ago...
Magnificent set up, isn't it.
The writer of the manuscript is a young woman who joins a bachelor's household as a governess. The man has to take care of 2 children, his nephew and niece, who lost their parents in India.
The kids are kept at the country seat, where the governess will be mistress over a household of servants. There had been a predecessor, who had unfortunately died. The uncle does not want to be troubled with any problems or questions, ever, and he never visits.
The woman is delighted with the pretty place and with the pretty little girl. The little boy will arrive 2 days later from a boarding school ... From which he has been mysteriously expelled. Anxieties begin to build.
They are masterfully strengthened by the sight of an inexplicable stranger who appears briefly at the mansion, a few times. She nearly freaks out...from her descriptions, the householder identifies the man as the master's valet. The man had died last year... The women fear that the valet is looking for the children...a second ghost shows up, and the certainty that the children are aware of both, and that they are somehow involved in a conspiracy... How to protect the kids?
Enough.
This is not HJ's first ghost story, but it is the longest and the most unrestrained, creepy one. Suspense sets in early on. The apparition doesn't let us wait for the last pages, as in some other stories. Classy job. Elegant entertainment. Among the top of the genre.
We will never know whether we are meant to believe the narrator. Is she a nut case? She is certainly out of her depth as an educator. She has lost her authority with the kids and is on the defensive.
Generations of lit scientists have puzzled over the meaning of this story. Good job, Henry!
And quite a few horror stories and films have picked up the theme of the angelic children with suspect attitudes, motives, and powers.
