Gingerbread... a little late. Oops.

The question that we are faced with at the end of Turn of the Screw is whether it was real or not. Henry James set the reader up to question the events of the plot because it is told in such a one-sided way that the reader almost has to question the reality of it. The lack of support on the part of all of the other characters and the fact that none of them ever saw the ghosts doesn’t give the reader any supporting evidence or reason to suspend their disbelief. The governess, however, is incredibly persistent and does not question herself or what she has seen, but continues to gather evidence to support her cause. The same is true in Gingerbread. Joyce Summers becomes so attached to these two children that she is blinded by their true nature. She refuses to listen to the possibility that she may be wrong and continues to such an extreme that she comes very close to killing her own daughter. It is interesting that both Joss Whedon and Henry James picked up on this parental love that is so strong that it is blinding. The obsessive nature of the Governess and Joyce in relation to the children causes them to go to such extremes that they lose sight of reality. Even though it is unclear whether or not the Governess is hallucinating, it is safe to say that she took her attachment to the two children to an unhealthy extreme. Miles was suffocated by her presence because she prevented him from going to school and making friends, even if she didn’t physically suffocate him. Joyce was prepared to kill three innocent girls, one of whom was her own daughter, because she felt so strongly about protecting the two children, even though she knew nothing about them. The unwavering focus and persistence that both Joyce and the Governess demonstrate seem to the audience, in many ways, a bad quality, a kind of idiotic stubbornness. We know, at least in Gingerbread, that the children are demons, so it is even more frustrating to watch Joyce fight so hard for something that isn’t real. In many ways, it makes the viewer question the importance of persistence. It is a quality in Buffy that is admirable since she is fighting for the ‘right’ cause, but Joyce continues to fight because she believes that she is supporting the ‘right’ cause. So how can we truly say when one should be persistent and when one shouldn’t be? When is it the right cause and when is it a worthy cause? There are times when you may even be fighting for the right cause, but it isn’t worth the fight or perhaps there is no chance in winning, so what happens then?

I think that the summation of both these works is that love blinds, but we should also stand up for our beliefs and the ones that we love.