ANALYZING THE GAPS AND SILENCES OF A TEXT: LITERATURE AS A HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL RESPONSE TO CLASSISM

Within this article I propose an analysis of specific utterances of The turn of the screw ’s (JAMES, 1898) governess; my purpose is to promote this bridge between the fictional environment concocted by James and the social, political, and economic one which go way beyond the literary scope. Learning about the death of the former governess, readers also learn about the social configuration and stratification of the house as a whole. It seems, thus, that at every major moment for the unpacking of the novella, the narrator asks readers to reflect upon the issue of classism (MARX, 1845; 1848), ubiquitous in the story; this might occur perchance, but it is also perchance that literature is constructed.