# The Turn of the Screw — Character guide

> Key figures in The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

- [The Governess](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_turn_of_the_screw_se/characters/narrator.md): She is the daughter of a country parson, barely twenty, hired by an absent uncle who refuses all contact and leaves her wholly in charge. Her fierce devotion to Miles and Flora curdles into a desperate vigilance when she
- [Miles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_turn_of_the_screw_se/characters/miles.md): Miles is the master's nephew, entrusted to Bly along with his sister and forbidden any mention of the school that expelled him. He is affectionate, disarming, and unnervingly self-possessed — a child who seems to be mana
- [Mrs. Grose](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_turn_of_the_screw_se/characters/mrs_grose.md): Mrs. Grose has kept Bly running through masters and mistresses, and she loves the children with a motherly, unlettered warmth. She is torn between her instinct to protect them and her dread of speaking ill of the dead — 
- [Flora](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_turn_of_the_screw_se/characters/flora.md): Flora is Miles's younger sister, left at Bly with him under the governess's care and rarely mentioned by their uncle. She is sweet, obedient, and unnervingly composed — until she begins to slip away to the pond and to lo
- [Miss Jessel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_turn_of_the_screw_se/characters/miss_jessel.md): Miss Jessel was a lady, hired to teach the children, who left Bly under a cloud and died soon after — of what, Mrs. Grose will not say. She is remembered as beautiful, proud, and fatally entangled with Peter Quint, a man
- [Peter Quint](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_turn_of_the_screw_se/characters/peter_quint.md): Quint was the master's own man — clever, spoiled, and, by Mrs. Grose's account, 'too free' with everyone in the house. He took a peculiar fancy to Miles, and the boy has never once spoken his name. His face at the tower 
- [Douglas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_turn_of_the_screw_se/characters/douglas.md): The man who introduces the governess's manuscript to the house party in the prologue.
- [The Master](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_turn_of_the_screw_se/characters/the_master.md): The children's uncle and employer who hires the governess and forbids her from contacting him.
- [Luke](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_turn_of_the_screw_se/characters/luke.md): A servant at Bly who brings the governess a letter about Miles's expulsion.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_turn_of_the_screw_se/characters