The Turn of the Screw (opera) not to betray him. Hysterical, Miles confesses that he took the letter. The Governess demands to know who put Miles up to it. Miles blurts out Quint's name. At the mention of his name, Quint's ghost vanishes and Miles falls dead on the floor. A weeping Governess cradles the dead child in her arms, singing aloud of her grief and wondering if she did the right thing after all. For the children's music, Britten drew words and melody from a number of traditional British nursery rhymes, including "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" and "Lavender's Blue". Of particular note is Miles'
The Turn of the Screw everyday reality, "the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy", as he put it in the "New York Edition" preface to his final ghost story, "The Jolly Corner". With "The Turn of the Screw", many critics have wondered if the "strange and sinister" were only in the governess's mind and not part of reality. The result has been a longstanding critical dispute about the reality of the ghosts and the sanity of the governess. Beyond the dispute, critics have closely examined James's narrative technique for the story. The framing introduction and subsequent first-person narrative