Story summary
Trama e riassunto di Le due magie
- 8 min di lettura
- 10 parts
- Audio a breve
A governess at a lonely country house sees a stranger on the tower and fears for the two children in her care.
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Le due magie in breve
Riassunto: 8 min di lettura
- Tempo di lettura
- Circa 5 h 5 min4 h fast, 6 h slow
- Durata
- 72.300 parole
- Livello nella biblioteca
- Medio longer sentences, everyday words
- Prima pubblicazione
- 1898by Henry James
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). Quanto tempo ci vuole per leggere i classici · Aggiornato
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Le due magie in short
The Turn of the Screw tells how a young governess, bound to silence by an absent employer, sees strangers she believes are dead servants and fears they want the two children in her care. The tale is told through nested voices, and it never lets you decide whether the horror is outside her or inside. Covering End moves the same careful eye to a sunny comedy about a debt, a daughter, and a visitor who falls in love with a house.
What Le due magie is about
What would you do if a stranger kept appearing on the tower of a house where you alone must protect two children, and no one else could see him? That is the problem of the young governess in The Turn of the Screw, the first of two works in this book. It begins on Christmas Eve, when guests by a fire trade ghost stories and Douglas promises something worse than all the rest.
Henry James tells it through layers of voices. A friend repeats what Douglas says, Douglas reads from an old manuscript, and the manuscript speaks in the governess's own words. The second work, Covering End, is a comedy set in one afternoon in an old English hall, where a mortgage, a marriage plan and a bold American visitor collide. One story builds fear from what is never said. The other builds laughter from what everyone says at once.
A chi è rivolto. Readers who love unsettling ghost stories, unreliable narrators and old English houses will enjoy this volume, as will admirers of witty comedy about money, class and love.
The story in 10 parts
Key idea 1 · free to read
A Christmas fire frames a dreadful manuscript
The book opens in an old house on Christmas Eve, where guests have just heard a ghost story about a little boy. Douglas speaks up with a challenge. If one child gives the effect another turn of the screw, he asks, what do you say to two children?
He will not tell the tale from memory. It lies written in a locked drawer in his London rooms, so the guests wait two days for the packet. The writer was a woman who was once his sister's governess. She sent him the pages before she died.
She was the youngest daughter of a poor country parson. At twenty she answered an advertisement and met a rich, charming bachelor who needed someone to look after his orphaned nephew and niece at his country house in Essex. His one condition was that she must never trouble him, never write to him, and must settle every question herself. She agrees, and Douglas adds that she was in love with him. The story begins with a lonely young woman bound by a promise of silence.
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She arrives at Bly and finds paradise
The governess reaches Bly on a June afternoon after a jolting coach ride and a night of doubts.
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A stranger on the tower looks straight at her
One evening the governess walks the grounds, half hoping to meet her handsome employer.
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Mrs. Grose puts a name to the face
Hearing the description, Mrs. Grose goes pale.
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Night watches and a boy on the lawn
The governess begins to keep watch at night.
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Autumn brings confrontations she cannot win
Summer turns to autumn, and a strained quiet falls over Bly.
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Is she a protector or is she mistaken
The story invites you to ask who is really in danger.
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Voices inside voices tell the story
James sets the tale inside a frame.
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Covering End opens with a mortgage and a plan
The second work shifts to a comedy set in the great hall of Covering End, an old English country house on a hot August Saturday.
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An American visitor falls in love with the house
Into this tight little bargain comes Mrs. Gracedew, a radiant American widow from a growing place called Missoura Top.
Read all 10 key ideas now
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Characters, plot and themes
Main characters
- The governess A parson's young daughter in her first post, she sees strange figures at Bly and is sure she alone can save the children.
- Mrs. Grose The kindly housekeeper at Bly, she cannot read, loves the children, and gives names to the figures the governess describes.
- Miles A charming, clever boy of ten, sent home from school for reasons nobody will state, and eager to see more of life.
- Flora Miles's younger sister, a golden-haired child of eight with a calm manner that hides what she knows.
- Mrs. Gracedew A bright, fast-talking American widow who loves old English houses and wants to save one from being sacrificed.
- Clement Yule A radical former soldier who inherits Covering End and must choose between his political principles and keeping the house.
- Mr. Prodmore A rich, pompous holder of the house's mortgages who wants Captain Yule as a son-in-law and a Conservative candidate.
- Cora Prodmore His flustered, honest daughter, who is expected to catch the Captain but loves a young man whose name she fears her father will dislike.
How it ends (spoiler)
In The Turn of the Screw, the governess faces Miles alone and makes him admit that he took her letter. When Quint appears again at the window, she forces the name out of him. Miles cries out and looks for the figure he cannot see, and she clutches him, but his little heart has stopped. In Covering End, Mrs. Gracedew buys out Prodmore, Cora is free to marry Pegg, and Yule proposes to Mrs. Gracedew, who finally identifies Yule to the visitors as her future husband.
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Domande su Le due magie
What is The Turn of the Screw about?
A young governess is hired to care for two orphaned children at a country house called Bly. She begins to see two strange figures and becomes convinced they are dead servants who wish to harm the children. The story follows her growing alarm.
Who are Peter Quint and Miss Jessel?
Quint was the master's valet, and Miss Jessel was the earlier governess. Both are dead before the story begins. Mrs. Grose names them from the governess's descriptions and says the two were close, and that Quint had great influence over the children.
What does the turn of the screw mean in the title?
It comes from the fireside exchange: Douglas asks about two children, and another guest answers that they give two turns. It means tightening the pressure by degrees, and it also describes how the tale builds.
Are the ghosts in The Turn of the Screw real?
The story is written so that readers can take the ghosts as real or as the product of the governess's mind. Only she sees them, yet her descriptions match people she never met. Readers have argued over this question for generations.
What happens in Covering End?
In this prose comedy, a rich mortgage holder tries to marry his daughter to the heir of an old house, and an American visitor who adores the house steps in. It is set in one afternoon in the great hall and is full of quick talk.
Cita questa edizione
James, Henry. The Two Magics. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-two-magics.
James, H. (2026). The two magics. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-two-magics (Original work published 1898)
James, Henry. The Two Magics. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-two-magics.
@book{james2026two,
author = {James, Henry},
title = {The Two Magics},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-two-magics},
note = {First published 1898}
}
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