SOURCE: “‘The Full Image of a Repetition’ in The Turn of the Screw,” in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 6, No. 4, Summer, 1969, pp. 377–82.

In the following essay, McMaster discusses the significance of James's ironic use of image and perception in his novella.

When the governess in The Turn of the Screw has just been terrified by seeing the apparition of Peter Quint looking in at her through the dining-room window at Bly, she tells us,

It was confusedly present to me that I ought to place myself where he had stood. I did so; I applied my face to the pane and looked, as he had looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, to show me exactly what his range had been, Mrs. Grose, as I had done for himself just before, came in from the hall. With this I had the full image of a repetition...