Disturbing tale of The Turn of the Screw

I read The Turn of the Screw a couple of days ago. Probably one of the most discussed, ambiguous and enigmatic American novellas of the 20th century. I am sorry about the superlatives. But it is. Critics are divided into two camps of interpretation of this book - the Hallucinationists, and the Apparitionists.

By and far, I believe that the Hallucinationist theories are a tad bit over the top, brought about by reading too much Freud. But certain sentences made me wonder and question the sanity of the narrator and whether she was a sexually repressed governess, overly suspicious about the corruption of the children. If it was so, I pity them. The terror they had to live in, one minute smothered by her volatile affections, in another braving her violent suspicions.

Even if it was meant to be a literal, old fashioned ghost story, it is still disturbing. Henry James, never comes right out to spell the evil that Miles was corrupted with. Loss of innocence is vaguely grasped by the reader. But what really was it that was being insinuated? The cloying ambiguity is as terrifying as the ghostly apparitions.

I was baffled by the book. I was frustrated, too. Henry James crafted an ambiguous tale where it is left up to the narrator to wonder and to draw conclusions. It is the reader who imagines the evil. This story remains as disturbing as it was in the 1890s because our capacity to imagine various Evils never sits well with our moral training.