Victorian society dictated harsh restraints on sexuality, especially female sexuality. Women had to repress their instincts in order to be "lady like,"" which meant they could not have sex. Men also were urged to control their sexual desires. However, it was understood that sexual desire was "in man's nature-, therefore men found it very hard to control. By looking at Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw- and Edith Wharton's "The Eyes,"" we see through metaphor of ghosts and ghostly hallucinations that the struggle in the human mind between synthetic, rigid social taboos that firmly repress natural urges can result in a profound anguish with sometimes dire consequences. It can become nothing less than a fight between good and evil.
The hero-villain in "The Turn of the Screw- is clearly Miles, the orphaned ten-year-old nephew of the governess's employer. Because the master, Flora and Miles's uncle, is not in Bly with the children, Miles, being the heir, is considered to be the "master- of the house now. We find out in the beginning that he is expelled from school, but we do not know why. The governess receives a letter from her master and inside the letter is the letter from the head master of the school that only vaguely says why he is expelled. The governess describes Miles as "incredibly beautiful everything by a sort of passion of tenderness for him was swept away by his presence- (James 307). The letter must have contained some negative information about Miles because "It would have been impossible to carry a bad name with a greater sweetness of innocence so far, that is, as I was not outraged by the sense of the horrible letter locked up in my room- (307). The governess tries to ignore the information found in the letter about Miles, but at the same .
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time is intrigued by it. As the story unfolds, she wants to find out more about Miles and what exactly his "secrets- are and why he is "an injury to the others.