Özet:

Abstract This article sheds light upon a nineteenth-century reader-response approach to The Turn of the Screw and ‘‘Daisy Miller’’grounded on an ethical basis that is shaped by dominant Victorian values, beliefs, and ideas concerning the catalytic role of family towards the proper raising of children, the importance of duty, the traits of the ideal woman and mother, and the good or evil nature of people who are members of different socioeconomic classes, all of which are controlling factors of (un)restrained sexuality and its impact on social order. Within this context, the writer of this article claims that in both stories Henry James is interested in pointing out the threat of a general moral corruption that characterizes the Western world of his time, particularly the socio-economically powerful nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxon middle-class, with the latter vacillating between excessive freedom/ naivity and excessive rigidness/ hypocricy. Furthermore, the writer claims the complementary character of the two stories. Although ‘‘Daisy Miller’’ chronologically preceeds The Turn of the Screw, the latter’s examination prior to a discussion of ‘‘Daisy Miller’’ may be helpful because The Turn of the Screw is a more complete work in the sense that elaborates more on the moral and psychological condition of characters who strikingly resemble those in the story of ‘‘Daisy Miller.’’

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