The Turn of the Screw

Synopsis

The Governess, just twenty years old and fresh from a sheltered upbringing as a country parson’s daughter, is hired by a wealthy bachelor in London to take sole charge of his orphaned niece and nephew at his remote Essex estate, Bly.

When she arrives, she finds an idyllic scene — Bly is grand and peaceful, eight-year-old Flora is charming and beautiful, and the housekeeper Mrs. Grose is warm and cooperative. The only cloud on the horizon is a letter from Miles’s school announcing his expulsion, for reasons the headmaster declines to specify.

Miles himself proves to be as charming and apparently blameless as his sister, and the Governess’s early happiness at Bly gives way to dread when she begins seeing figures she cannot account for…