<b>A different affair from my own scant home: Marx and the issue of class in english literature

Abstract

As he shifted from the manufacturing of studies on philosophy to the conception of a dialectic on economy, Karl Marx triggered a vast array of reflections upon the issue of class – and upon how both subject and society shape and are shaped by such issue. The reason why it is so difficult for distinct possibilities of class organization to be envisaged is because this logic of capital accumulation has become the master narrative of social functioning. Nevertheless, truth is there is still time to transform capitalism as for a more egalitarian social order to be established. Therefore, the relevance of understanding how The Turn of the Screw (James, 1898) is inserted within the spatial and temporal context of Victorian England seems, at least to me, not amenable to question. A Marxist literary approach towards productions like James’s one does not look for slotting in literature a discussion which is not there – on the contrary, it might give one an opportunity to rediscover what has always been present, but also neglected. There is no ahistorical literature; there is no ahistorical anything – hence the need for moving beyond such problematic understanding of the literary environment.