On the surface, Henry James's The Turn of the Screw seems to reinforce the status quo of American literature as masculine, whereby men are seen as having power over women while leaving women to become mere objects. James creates an unnamed female protagonist whose story is told through the guise of a male narrator. She becomes an object seen by Douglas's audience and is used simply as a means for the master of Harley Street to avoid being annoyed by his accusations. She is therefore presented as naive and in love, willing to do anything, including risking her own sanity, to keep her master undisturbed. However, upon closer examination, James actually creates a tale that subverts the traditional idea that men have power over women as it is the governess who has the final say in her story, not the male Douglas, and it is the he male heir Miles becoming the scapegoat leaves the housekeeper free, “terribly intelligent and kind” (James 24). Giacomo's unfinished tale creates frustration and confusion, but his experiment with form also draws attention to what has been largely left unconscious. Through Douglas's initial telling of the housekeeper's story, she is reduced to a nameless object that everyone listens to rather than listen to. While at the beginning Douglas has power over the housekeeper's story, in the end it is the housekeeper who has the final say and Douglas, who disappears only after the first seven pages, is never heard from again. James relinquishes power to the housekeeper and allows her to participate as there is no need to revert to the male voice once she takes over. Furthermore, since the governess remains nameless throughout her tale, this is hardly an issue of power since both the master and... halfway through the paper......until at the end "the air was clear " (116-117 ). In this way the governess is able to reverse the roles of passive/feminine and active/masculine as she denies Quint the power of her gaze and instead forces him to be the object of her gaze. Through his distortion of traditional male-dominated structures and ideas, James is able to not only draw attention to the inequality of men's power over women, but also uses the same tools to subvert this binary opposition. Through a distortion of the assumed patriarchal order, the governess is able to adopt masculine characteristics to wrest some of the power that was initially taken from her. Both consciously and unconsciously, James's unfinished loom, Miles's haunting death, and the disappearance of Quint's ghost, all point to a hidden power within the governess that allows her to survive long after her weaker male counterparts..