Chapter 11
�
The governess shares with
Mrs. Grose what happened after she went outside to get Miles.� She took him
back to his room and asked him why he had sneaked out in the night.� He was
pleased with himself.� He claimed he did it just to show the governess that he
could be bad.� He had set things� up so that Flora would disturb the governess
by looking out of the window, and the governess would then also look out and
see Miles.
Chapter 12
The governess explains to
Mrs. Grose her conclusions about the children. She thinks the children meet
regularly with Quint and Miss Jessel, even though they have never mentioned
them. The governess has reached the conclusion that the children belong to the
ghosts who in life put evil into the children. The ghosts are now trying to
destroy them.
Mrs. Grose suggests that she
write to her employer and get him to take the children away. But the governess
realizes she cannot do this without seeming like a typical hysterical
governess, when her job is really to keep superstition and instability away
from the children.� Nor can she call for the master without seeming to be
plotting to get him to come to Bly by making up stories.� She tells Mrs. Grose
that she is not to try to get the master to come to Bly to help.
Chapters 11-12, Analysis
The scene between Miles and
the governess in his bedroom continues the hint of sexuality contained in the
last chapters.� He tells her that he wants her to think him bad, and then they
give each other a kiss.� In fact, there are several mentions of an embrace.� He
has set a trap to catch her and make her think he is bad, and she is so
obsessed with him and the possibility of his evil that she is ensnared.�
Her dismay is that she
realizes the children do not belong to her.� "They're his and they're hers!"
(64) she concludes, and this is a problem because she wants to possess them
completely.� All her early descriptions of their beauty have turned into
descriptions of the evil that the beauty hides.� Her possessiveness, her desire
to detect some badness, and her fascination with their beauty all sound more
like the relationship with a spurned lover than with two children.
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