What does the phrase "turn of the screw" mean?
I have to do this study guide about the book and one of the questions asks what the phrase means and i have no idea.
Thanks for you help!
2006-08-28 13:01:10 · 3 answers · asked by Anonymous in Arts & Humanities ➔ Books & Authors
I would say that in this story the turn of the screw=twist of the plot.
Generally speaking the idiom is a metaphor:
a turn of the screw
an action which makes a bad situation worse, especially in order to force someone to do something.
2006-08-28 13:12:16 · answer #1 · answered by maî 6 · 2⤊ 1⤋
What the phrase means in connection to the book is a very tricky question. As a general matter, "turn of the screw" refers to an action that makes things worse -- the image is like the use of a vise, in which a srew is turned to tighten the grip on whatever the vise holds. In some sense it seems to describe the worsening condition of the governess -- but it certainly does not answer the question of what is tightening the screw: ghosts? the children? her own imagination, steeped in repressed eroticism? In another sense the person tightening the screw is James, and th screw is tightened on the reader, who cannot quite ever tell what "actually" happened in the story.
2006-08-28 20:22:33 · answer #2 · answered by C_Bar 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
No, but I did read the 'Taming of the Shrew'.
2006-08-29 10:49:31 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋