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Why does Miles get expelled from school?
The letter the governess receives from Miles’s school simply says he is no longer welcome at school; the fact that the headmaster doesn’t go into detail prompts the governess’s imagination to run wild, conjuring all manner of dark possibilities. By the end of the story, however, it is explained that Miles “said things” to the boys at school he “liked.” What Miles said is not expanded upon. His infraction might involve knowledge of heterosexual acts, masturbation, or homosexuality, knowledge he may have imparted to the other boys. The reader is left to wonder if what Miles said is a result of some sort of unknown violence or abuse he experienced himself, or if he was perhaps expressing romantic inclinations towards the other boys. However, it is impossible to know for certain.
Why doesn’t the governess contact the uncle?
The uncle’s primary condition, upon hiring the governess, is that she “should never trouble him—but never, never: neither appeal nor complain nor write about anything,” a condition later reinforced by Mrs. Grose, who says she never wrote to tell the uncle about Peter Quint’s behavior for similar reasons. In addition, the governess is determined to prove herself to her employer, and unwilling to relinquish her authority over the children.
Can Miles and Flora see the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel?
It’s unclear whether the children can see the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, which casts some amount of doubt on the governess’s version of events and, indeed, the very notion that there are ghosts at all. Though initially believing neither Miles nor Flora can see them, the governess becomes increasingly convinced that they can, her suspicions solidifying into certainty after her second encounter with Flora at the lake. At the end of the story, it’s possible Miles spies Quint through a window—the governess appears to think herself vindicated, at any rate—but all the reader really knows is that Miles has yelled Quint’s name and asked where he is, and that his heart stops thereafter.
Why doesn’t the governess leave Bly?
The governess feels a strong sense of duty in regards to the children. She is charmed by them, and also by their uncle. It’s implied she has a romantic interest in her employer and wishes to impress him. Similarly, she is taken in by Miles and Flora’s pure natures, and she feels driven to protect them from what she perceives to be evil spirits, and later to rescue them from the same. Narratively, the fact that the governess stays to play the hero in spite of the danger underscores one of the novel’s key themes: the destructiveness of heroism.
Does Miles die at the end of the story?
At the story’s end, Miles collapses. Following this collapse, the narrator states “his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped,” so the reader can draw the likely conclusion that Miles does indeed die. Miles’s death is described by the governess as being the result of Peter Quint’s ghost finally leaving his body, and that he succumbed to the force of the dispossession. Whether this is actually what happened, however, is left to the reader’s interpretation; there’s also a case to be made that Miles is strangled by the governess, who says the “the grasp with which [she] recovered him” is quite strong, that she “held him—it may be imagined with what a passion.” This reflects the obsessive, smothering nature of the governess’s interest in the children throughout the story.
