ABSTRACT
Rereading of Henry James's novella The Turn of the Screw provides a nice example of how a new and provocative interpretation can be based on the detection of a cryptic subtext. The text provides the governess's misguided inquisitorial zeal with some attenuating circumstances. There may be more involved to the governess's conduct than that which stems from mental confusion and tragic error, and the cryptic subtext suggests the possibility of a more provocative reinterpretation. The realization of the presence of the cryptic subtext of Herod's massacre of the Holy Innocents allows for an even more devastating moral critique of the Governess's state of mind. But the detection of a cryptic subtext not only allows for the possibility of new hypertextual links changing the interpretation of a text. It also provides a kind of delayed hermeneutic satisfaction that adds to the pleasure of the text.
