The Turn of the Screw (opera) used in the lesson scene have been examined in more detail for their paedophilic innuendos. The line "The ceremony of innocence is drowned" sung by Quint and Miss Jessel is taken from the poem "The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats. Notes Cited sources Other sources The Turn of the Screw (opera) The Turn of the Screw is a 20th-century English chamber opera composed by Benjamin Britten with a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, "wife of the artist John Piper, who had been a friend of the composer since 1935 and had provided designs for several of the operas". The libretto
The Turn of the Screw meant to entertain both the proposition that the governess is mad and the proposition that the ghosts really do exist, and consider the dreadful implications of each. Poet and literary critic Craig Raine, in his essay "Sex in nineteenth-century literature", states quite categorically his belief that Victorian readers would have identified the two ghosts as child molesters. "The Turn of the Screw" was first published in the magazine "Collier's Weekly", serialised in 12 instalments (27 January – 16 April 1898). The title illustration by John La Farge depicts the governess with her arm around Miles. Episode illustrations were by Eric