One of Brothers Grimm’s famous fairy tales was the gingerbread of the Hansel and Gretel. They were two children, brother and sister, wandering in the forest looking for food. They stumbled on a house made out of gingerbread and started eating it. The owner of the gingerbread house was a wicked witch. She lured the kids in and trapped them inside her house. The little boy and the little girl, Hansel and Gretel, became the victim of the wicked witch.
Buffy episodes used a lot of fairy tales, changing them, twisting them, or even turning them upside down as in the case of the “Gingerbread” episode. The story started with two children, a little boy and a little girl, found dead on the merry-go-around with occult symbol drawn on their hands. The only lead in this case was the occult symbol, which happened to be the symbol that Willow is using in her rituals. Unlike the Gingerbread story told by Brothers Grimm, this time Hansel and Gretel, the little boy and the little girl, were hunting the witch. Willow, the witch, only wanted to perform a protection spell for Buffy’s birthday, now became victimized.
While Hansel and Gretel were victims in Brothers Grimm and predators in Buffy, they could be either the victims or the predators in The Turn of The Screw. The fate of Hansel and Gretel depended on the sanity of the governess. If the governess were sane, then the children were toying with the governess under the influence of the ghosts, Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. If the governess were insane, then the governess was torturing the children based on her hallucinations. So, is the governess insane?
I think that it's interesting how you painted Flora and Miles as Hansel and Gretel. There was actually a movie made about Hansel and Gretel coming back as witch hunters, kind of a spin off on Giles' explanation of the fairytale demon in Gingerbread. Anyway, I like the idea that Flora and Miles are playing with the mind of the governess, and when I think about it now, the governess is very much like Mrs. Summers in that she goes mad trying to protect these children who really don't care much for her. However, we as readers don't really look to the children in Turn of the Screw as monsters because they are described by the (possibly brainwashed) governess as being sweet little angels. Or, they are victims of the ghosts and, like some readers are led to believe in the last scene, the children really sincerely need the governess to protect them from the ghosts, their own versions of "the bad girls".
ReplyDeleteI like your discussion of how "truth" is relative to perspective, it really brings new meaning to the idea that there are two sides to every story!
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