Literary Theory: Reader Response Theory & "The Turning of the Screw"

Literary Theory
Name:
Institution:
The Reader-Response theory is a literary theory that focuses on the reader’s experience with a literary work. Unlike other schools and theories that emphasize primarily on the author and the content of the literary work, Reader-response regards the reader as an active agent that has the ability to impact the work and complete the meaning of the literary work through interpretation. Based on this theory, the literature should be examined as a performing art where the readers create their unique meaning. Most importantly, Reader Response is critical in examining and evaluating the personal reaction of the reader to a text. The tenets of Reader-response theory that will be considered in interpreting the text “The Turn of the Screw” include that it allows readers to make inferences and insights and that accepts reader’s values and attitudes in response to the work.
The novel “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James is based on governess, saintly children and a couple of ghosts that may or may not be in existence. Certainly, James motive was to provide a terrifying tale that would scare the readers and more than a century later; the book is still doing that. Based on the tenet Reader-response theory that supports emotional response, I believe that the novel would be interpreted by the reader as a ghost story because its enduring appeal is ambiguous to support different interpretations (Brooks & Browne, 2012). The readers’ interpretations of this story are that ghosts are real. The readers’ understood from the governess that the ghosts associated with the deceased employers Miss Jess...