We live in bub­bles. Any attempt to seek an objec­tive truth will seem ambigu­ous and will be inter­pret­ed dif­fer­ent­ly depend­ing on your mind­set and your bub­ble val­ues. We don’t lis­ten to each oth­er, and even if we do, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of under­stand­ing one anoth­er seems to be more and more remote. Hav­ing no real­i­ty is the scary real­i­ty of our gen­er­a­tion.

No opera is more ambigu­ous than The Turn of the Screw. Hen­ry James could have pro­vid­ed us with a reli­able, objec­tive nar­ra­tor, but he chose to tell his sto­ry through the sub­jec­tive view of the Gov­erness. Do the ghosts exist, do the chil­dren see them, or are they mere­ly the night­mares of this hys­ter­i­cal woman?

Ben­jamin Brit­ten added new lay­ers to the above ambi­gu­i­ty. It is arguable who rep­re­sents threats to the inno­cence of these chil­dren, and who defends them from those threats. It is cer­tain­ly log­i­cal to see the abu­sive, cor­rupt­ing influ­ence of Peter Quint on young Miles, and to see the Gov­erness as a brave hero­ine deter­mined to free the boy from this evil. But oth­ers will see Quint as the free spir­it, the friend and the father fig­ure Miles so bad­ly needs, and the Gov­erness as the evil one forc­ing her rigid, Vic­to­ri­an moral­i­ty on the child, killing all his inner desires. Which view is right? It’s up to you.

The sto­ry may be ambigu­ous but the indi­vid­ual char­ac­ters are reli­able and believ­able. Quint seeks a friend, “slick as a juggler’s mate to catch my thoughts.” Miles wants to be with “his own kind.” The Gov­erness pro­tects him and holds him “it may be imag­ined with what a pas­sion.” This is a fan­tas­tic dra­ma of gen­uine peo­ple, of their life and death.

Whichev­er bub­ble we belong to, we project the dev­il on to the oppo­site par­ty — be it the wrong­do­er or the mur­der­ous exor­cist.