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Entrapment In The Turn Of The Screw And Affinity

Decent Essays

The Turn of The Screw and Affinity are told through first person narration of two female characters. The Turn of The Screw is narrated through the Governess she gives an subjective outlook on the mysteries of Bly. Unlike some first person narrators, the Governess is biased by her own thoughts and feelings, this is similar to Miss Prior, the protagonist within Affinity. Similarly both these protagonists are subjected to oppression within 18th century these characters are both isolated and entrapped by the social conventions of the time. Sarah Waters's novel Affinity echoes the entrapment felt by women both in prison and those imprisoned by society and expectation within the Victorian era. The theme of entrapment is significant because it successfully …show more content…

In addition, preventing the inmates from observing one and other. “He is seen but he does not see” (Foucault 200). The Prisoners are the object of observation.“The major effect of the Panoption: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power”. Sarah Waters toys with this effect, by complying and subverting it at the same time. Margaret embodies the belief in Foucault’s assertion that prisoners are seen but do not see. Margaret is manipulated by the panoptic structure into sticking to the idea that the women are in complete continual solitude. “It was a curative, she thought, as gazing at fish in a tank”. It is this idea of being watched that increases Margaret’s vulnerability. Margaret initially believes that it is she who is watching the prisoners. As Margaret is advised to become a visitor at Millbank to escape her own entrapment of her unstable thoughts, she is under the assertion that the visits are for her to observe the prisoners and to force her to think outside of herself rather than remain entrapped with herself. However the prisoners become just as much observers of her as she is of

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