How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"I've made up my mind. I came home, my dear," I went on, "for a talk with Miss Jessel."
I had by this time formed the habit of having Mrs. Grose literally well in hand in advance of my sounding that note: so that even now, as she bravely blinked under the signal of my word, I could keep her comparatively firm. "A talk! Do you mean she spoke?"
"It came to that. I found her, on my return, in the schoolroom."
"And what did she say?" I can hear the good woman still, and the candor of her stupefaction.
"That she suffers the torments – !"
It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my picture, gape. "Do you mean," she faltered," – of the lost?"
"Of the lost. Of the damned." (16.6-7)
Hmm…interesting. Who's being deceptive now, Governess? We don't know why the Governess decides to fabricate this little section of the story – after all, we saw her interaction with Miss Jessel in the schoolroom, and there was no conversation that we could see. However, here she tells Mrs. Grose that she's received confirmation that the ghost is damned. Can it be that the Governess is just trying to create her own justification for her actions by bringing religion into it?
Quote #8
The appearance was full upon us that I had already had to deal with here: Peter Quint had come into view like a sentinel before a prison. The next thing I saw was that, from outside, he had reached the window, and then I knew that, close to the glass and glaring in through it, he offered once more to the room his white face of damnation. It represents but grossly what took place within me at the sight to say that on the second my decision was made; yet I believe that no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time recovered her grasp of the act. It came to me in the very horror of the immediate presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration – I can call it by no other name – was that I felt how voluntarily, how transcendently, I might. It was like fighting with a demon for a human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how the human soul – held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm's length – had a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead. (24.1)
The struggle between good and evil is made perfectly clear here – Quint and the Governess are actually fighting over Miles's soul.
Quote #9
[…] he was at me in a white rage, bewildered, glaring vainly over the place and missing wholly, though it now, to my sense, filled the room like the taste of poison, the wide, overwhelming presence. "It's he?"
I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed into ice to challenge him. "Whom do you mean by 'he'?"
"Peter Quint – you devil!" His face gave again, round the room, its convulsed supplication. "Where?"
They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name and his tribute to my devotion. "What does he matter now, my own? – what will he ever matter? I have you," I launched at the beast, "but he has lost you forever!" Then, for the demonstration of my work, "There, there!" I said to Miles. (24.22-25)
In the Governess's triumphant eyes, Quint has lost the battle for Miles – however, the boy's wording makes it unclear who is the "devil" here, the Governess or Quint.