Florence and Giles
Florence and Giles
Basic Info
- Author: John Harding
- Year: 2010
- Type: #primary1
Summary (brief)
Adaptation of Henry James' the turn of the screw; Set in 1891, takes place inside Blithe House, a crumbling and remote mansion in New England; follows 2 wealthy orphaned siblings: 12 year old Florence and her younger brother Giles; they are neglected by their guardian uncle who lives far away and forbids Florence from learning or reading books; Florence teachers herself to read and her worldview comes from #gothic literature she constructs an eccentric, poetic language; Their first governess dies under bizarre, violent circumstances; when a new governess, Miss Taylor, arrives, weird events plague the mansion. Florence becomes convinced Miss Taylor is a malevolent, vengeful spirit intent on murdering/kidnapping Giles; Florence wages a psychological war against Taylor; Florence is unreliable, leaving the reader questioning whether the ghost is real or if Florence's own distorted mind has led her to commit terrible acts; Miss Taylor was actually Giles' biological mother and Florence's stepmother; previously she fled the abusive uncle who was actually the children's father; she was forced to leave the kid behind; she took the job under a fake name to rescue her son and take him away to a better life; Florence's paranoia and obsession with keeping her white snowy landscape intact results in a horrific body count; Florence killed Miss Whittaker (the first governess) or let her drown because she discovered the secret library and threatened to take the books; Theo (the neighbor boy) tried to support Florence but discovers her dark secrets; Florence murders him; she also murders Miss Taylor and like pushes her down a well. Could also connect this to that book about Victorian adaptations
Major Themes
#adaptation
#victorianmorality
#neo-victorian
#death
#attic
#emotionaltruth
#domesticabuse
#monstrous-femine
#monstrous-landscape
Key Passages / Quotes
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Genre Notes
Reimagining of The Turn of the Screw
Groundbreaking shift in perspective; in traditional Gothic lit and previous adaptations in Turn of the Screw, the story is told through the eyes of the adult governess; Florence and Giles is highly regarded as progressive #neo-victorian fiction because it flips the script by giving a voice and narrative agency to the child character;
Inventive language: forcing nouns and adjectives into verbs: under-a-bushelled it or bidewelled within my brain to show how a child might verbally structure the world; Extremely #unreliablenarrator
Characters / Concepts (if relevant)
Theory Connections
Related Texts
My Argument / Interpretation
Dissertation Relevance
How could this matter to my project?