Unreliable Narrative in \'The Turn of the Screw\' and \'The Secret Sharer\' PDF

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Essay on the unreliable narrative of the modernists writers, using The Turn of the Screw and The Secret Sharer as sources of representation. ...

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Unreliable Narrative in Henry James’ ‘The Turn of the Screw’ and Joseph Conrad’s ‘The Secret Sharer’

In classical literature, it is common to find a one-way communication between the reader and the story itself. The fictional sphere interferes with the reader’s belief, outweighing his own understanding ― the reader gives more credence to a character’s actions or sayings, rather than to his own analytical consciousness. The perspective is always that of a doer, invalidating one’s own uncovering of the text. However, this particularity was soon to be abolished once the age of modernism took over; new techniques were to be applied that would convey the nature of an unreliable narrator, the idea of engaging the reader to see over the curtain, to take part in the unseen. Through the many examples we can find, Henry James’ ‘The Turn of the Screw’ (1898) and Joseph Conrad’s ‘The Secret Sharer’ (1909) are two texts that stand out the most because of their innovative mysticism ― they embrace the concept of an unqualified narrator and thus establish the missing two-way communication. The reader isn’t supposed to be defenceless anymore, he starts questioning the norms and the values of the narrative. First of all, modern narratives are incompatible with the previous laws of coherence. The story is always searching for an “enigma”, something that is absent, that is escaping. The accent is placed on the perceiver and therefore it lacks an actual theme or a particular subject, the text is rather used as a “tool of thinking”: cogito ergo sum. The way in which a story is told is, frequently, equal to its substance, and modernist fiction places itself at a level in which the reader masters the art of seeking. Whether it is to stimuli the reader or to make him want to complete the puzzle of the narrative, there have been applied different strategies in order to allow the reader the sense of power and control to decipher a text. ‘The Turn of the Screw’ is a frame story and, to begin with, it is told in a setting that implies invalidity. The existence of two narrators throughout the course of the text allows the author to play with the reliability of the characters. At first sight, even though we are presented a first-person narrative, the narrator’s position (which could be that of the author) is objective, stern and without judgement: “I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to present his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands in his

pockets.”1. We are faced with different persons entertaining themselves by telling ghost tales, and no implication of accurate happenings is given. However, Douglas’ story is supposed to contain a certain amount of accuracy, for he’s telling it from a written statement of our second narrator, the governess. This, along with the observing nature of the narrator, introduces a dual representation ― the reader is made to consider the story to be believable, even though the narrator may be not. Secondly, once we are faced with the governess’ narrative, it is clear that the author’s intention is to introduce the reader into a journey of deep frustration and continuous longing for an answer. The writing becomes personal and all of governess’ actions seem obscure and melodramatic, driven by feelings. The narrative strategy used here is mostly based on motifs and symbolism: the author creates a parallel between the characters and the reader. The governess is left without a confirmation of the existence of the ghosts: “She herself had seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and nobody in the house but the governess was in the governess’s plight;”2, and the ghosts turn out to be the mere projections of her inner experiences, contrasting the reader’s struggle to elucidate the meaning. Peter Childs talks about the same aspect in his book, ‘Modernism (The New Critical Idiom)’, highlighting the procedure of the interpretation: “Both the narrative of the novella and the reader’s understanding of it are concerned with the question of the ‘right’ interpretation of what is happening. The reader has only the narrator’s word to rely upon, just as the governess in the story has only her fallible senses to guide her.”3 The uncertainty of the narrator could also be perceived as an “unintentional unreliability” that is implied by the unwariness of the governess’ own self. She’s not being intentionally unhelpful, she’s only telling the story based on her naïve view of the paranormal. The questioning of her own sanity is one of the most clear indicators of the uncertainty: “I go on, I know, as if I were crazy; and it’s a wonder I’m not.”4 In addition, T.J. Lustig claims that ‘The Turn of the Screw’ is “repeatedly concerned with the act of telling. More often than not, however, its predicament is that of not being able to tell.”5 The novella is, in fact, an ambiguous enigma without lucidity. The unreliability of the narrator has a strong correlation with the essence of the story itself ― it uses blanks to sabotage the pattern and the governess’ story presents itself as a fragmented piece of an 1 Henry James, The Turn of The Screw, Elegant E-Books Edition, page 4; 2 Henry James, The Turn of The Screw, Elegant E-Books Edition, page 42; 3 Peter Childs, Modernism (The New Critical Idiom), 2 nd edition, page 155-158; 4 Henry James, The Turn of The Screw, Elegant E-Books Edition, page 81; 5 T.J. Lustig, Henry James and the Ghostly, 2010 edition, page 116;

unfinished tale. The spaces between the separate events are complete gaps, but “the events themselves are equally shadowy, punctured by the voids.”6 Miles’ death has no consequence and the reader can only look for reliability ― to no avail ― in other characters’ vision. The text illustrates, as Roland Barthes stated, a “production without product, structuration without structure”. Similarly, the unnamed Captain of Joseph Conrad’s ‘The Secret Sharer’ embraces the same role of delivering a certain questionable perspective towards the reader. The first-person narrator opens up his own thoughts and fears, he’s eloquent, but hesitant and inferior, and we are faced with his constant alienation from the crew at the beginning: “I had been appointed to the command only a fortnight before. Neither did I know much of the hands forward. All these people had been together for eighteen months or so, and my position was that of the only stranger on board.”7, a key fact that anticipates the cause and the effect of his unreliability. The monologue of the captain does not only concentrate on his inner emotions, but, by doing so, he avoids details about his self to the audience. He’s a stranger to himself, a stranger to his own crew and a stranger to the reader, thus making him impossible to trust. One of the first signs that disqualify the Captain is his immediate trust in Leggatt and his dependence on him: “I was not wholly alone with my command; for there was that stranger in my cabin. Or rather, I was not completely and wholly with her. Part of me was absent. That mental feeling of being in two places at once affected me physically as if the mood of secrecy had penetrated my very soul.”8 Their connection is so intimate that the reader questions himself whether Leggatt’s identity is real or not, or if he’s only a projection of the Captain’s fears and inner desires, without knowing who the ‘real’ Leggatt might be. Leggatt can be depicted as the Captain’s doppelgänger, an evil reflection of the hero, a ghostly double, a counterpart, as the name suggests, or rather the metaphorical source of his evil side: the Captain shows no remorse in lying about his deafness, nor does he seem affected by his growing paranoia, to the point of being obsessed with Leggatt: “The Sunday quietness of the ship was against us; the stillness of air and water around her was against us; the elements, the men were against us--everything was against us in our secret partnership; time itself.”9. There are also many ways in which the Captain addresses Leggatt throughout the story: his other half, his sharer, his double: “It was, in the night, as though I had been

6 T.J. Lustig, Henry James and the Ghostly, 2010 edition, page 118; 7 Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer, Webster’s Thesaurus Edition, page 5; 8 Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer, Webster’s Thesaurus Edition, page 33; 9 Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer, Webster’s Thesaurus Edition, page 32;

faced by my own reflection in the depths of a somber and immense mirror.”10 The second central point of the unreliability of the narrator is the discrepancy in telling. The reader is left to believe that the events are presented in a chronological and undisturbed order, only to put emphasis on the uncertainty created by the distance at the start of the second chapter: “(…) gave his name (it was something like Archbold-- but at this distance of years I hardly am sure)” 11. Taking into account the fact that one might question Leggatt’s existence based on the actions presented, we can question more than the Captain’s sanity now: his memory. The theme of double-ness, the leading idea of unreliability, is embodied in Conrad’s text by different methods of repetition and contrast. More than the secret shared between the two, there is another secret hidden from the narrator himself that the reader has to look for around what’s evident. The story is mostly constructed as a fractional cube around a mind that’s divided and in search for its completion, as Childs claims: “The modernist subject is generally seen to be alienated and fragmented, but lamenting the loss of a self that was once coherent and self-sufficient. This is the view of the modernist self as dualistic or divided, but lamenting the loss of an older, integrated ego.” 12. In terms of ethical dimension, the resemblance of the emphasised “telling” with ‘The Turn of the Screw’ marks a new aspect: we got a “secret sharer”, someone who tells a secret and someone who listens (in contrast with Henry James’ ‘someone who writes and someone who reads’), but there is never a reason, a space or a time for the narrator or the narratee to follow. The reader’s efforts of understanding implicate him in the “sharing of secrets” and we become for the author what the Captain is trying to be for Leggatt: “the wonderful someone who understands.” 13 These modernist strategies of constant recurring to irony, ambiguities, a double, interruption in the chronology or symbols that lead to interpretations, can be regarded as a momentum for the reader to adjust to more than black and white, positive-negative narratives. The simple fact of always questioning and redefining one’s own identity gives off an opportunity of becoming self-conscious of the greatest picture: the experience of eventfulness. The higher-ground belongs now to the reader, he’s the receptive side of the narration and the only one capable of giving it a meaning. The reader's identification with the character's mentality, rather than with his identity, is enhanced. 10 Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer, Webster’s Thesaurus Edition, page 11; 11 Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer, Webster’s Thesaurus Edition, page 25; 12 Peter Childs, Modernist Literature: A Guide for the Perplexed, page 126; 13 James Phelan, Narrative as Rhetoric, 1996 edition, page 122;

With all of this in mind, we can establish a set of dominant key factors that have determined the unqualified narratives in the mentioned texts: contradictions between the personal vision of the narrator and the questionable happenings (e.g.: the ghosts), and a persistent clash between the narrator’s view and that of other characters’ (e.g.: the Captain’s paranoia). ‘The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms’ defines an unreliable author as “a narrator whose account of events appears to be faulty, misleadingly biased, or otherwise distorted.” The cause of these being presented in a text may differ, but the attention is certainly put on their mind, their sanity and their thinking process: they are presented as madmen, as people who can’t be trusted for the sole reason that their vision is not a lie, but rather a result of their own imagination. “An unreliable narrator however, is not simply a narrator who 'does not tell the truth' – what fictional narrator ever tells the literal truth? […] all fictional narrators are false in that they are imitations. But some are imitations who tell the truth, some of people who lie”14. Neither James’ nor Conrad’s narrators are unreliable by choice or because of an incomplete access to further information, they’re depicted as untrustworthy because of their own uncertain reality, they’re the “imitations who tell the truth”. By this method, the texts preserve the ambiguity and the obscureness of their intent, readers being much more sceptical towards addled personalities. To conclude, unreliable narration in fiction can simply be resumed in two manifestations: misreporting and underreporting. Even though it strongly depends on the subjectivity of the interpreter, by presenting the various strategies used in the two modernist texts, we can provide a series of repetitive methods used by these authors: a first-person narrative which usually implies subjectivity, a typical compelled mind that suggests doubt over its own judgement, the continuous use of symbols and motifs as part of the hidden enigma and mysticism of the text, and a fragmented plot that avoids the interference of references in order to establish a pattern. The status of the unreliable narrator, which provides the reader’s inability to confirm the reality of the character-narrator’s perceptions and conceptions, was and is still used as a mark of a more dim, cryptic and inconspicuous deeper understanding of the text.

14 Peter J. Rabinowitz, Truth in Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences. Page 121;

Bibliography: 

Henry James, The Turn of The Screw, Elegant E-Books Edition;

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Peter Childs, Modernism (The New Critical Idiom), 2 nd Edition;



T.J. Lustig, Henry James and the Ghostly, 2010 Edition;



Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer, Webster’s Thesaurus Edition;



Peter Childs, Modernist Literature: A Guide for the Perplexed;



James Phelan, Narrative as Rhetoric, 1996 Edition;



Peter J. Rabinowitz, Truth in Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences;



Chris Baldick, The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, 3 rd Edition....