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- Title
Screwed in 2020: the Psychology of Horror and Class Immobility in Adaptations of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw.
- Authors
Arellano, José Antonio
- Abstract
This essay offers an approach to teaching two adaptations of Henry James's novella The Turn of the Screw that appeared in 2020. Instead of prompting students to consider whether James's story is either a supernatural or a psychological tale, I ask students to analyze the "psychology of horror." Developed from Robin Wood's writing on horror films, the psychology of horror offers a historicized account of Freudian repression. Using the psychology of horror as an interpretive lens, students could examine how historically situated social norms become sources of oppression that lead to repression. In horror, ghosts--of either the supernatural or psychological variety--could be understood as representing the return of the socially repressed. An analysis of the 2020 adaptations of James's novella reveals how gendered, heteronormative expectations and class immobility produce the ghosts that haunt us today.
- Subjects
HORROR; PSYCHOLOGY; SCREWS; HORROR films; SOCIAL norms
- Publication
Teaching American Literature, 2020, Vol 11, Issue 2, p1
- ISSN
2150-3974
- Publication type
Article