This Pedagogical War

While reading I get the sense that two factions are warring over the control of the children's minds and learning. This war becomes most manifest at the moment when the governess finds Miss Jessel seated at the governess' desk with a sense that she has equal right of occupying it: "she had looked at me long enough to appear to say that her right to sit at my table was as good as mine to sit at hers" (69). The governess continues to express concern that Miss Jessel and Quint are coming for the children and that the children may already be lost.

Throughout the text the children continue to test the governess to see what it is that she knows. Flora ignores Miss Jessel on the riverbank in a manner that suggests she wants to see how the governess will react and what the governess can ascertain from the situation. It also appears that Flora is simply testing whether the governess can even see Miss Jessel, which suggests another that Flora is looking for someone with a certain type of knowledge or perception.  "The little girl saw our visitant even as I actually saw Mrs. Grose herself, and that she wanted, by just so much as she did thus see, to make me suppose she did n't" (41).

Also Miles questions the way in which he is learning from the governess. He expresses the desire to return to school and even sees his upbringing under the governess as unsatisfactory and strange: "Well, I think also, you know, of this queer business of ours...Why the way you bring me up. And all the rest!" (73). To which the governess asks he means by the latter statement. "Oh you know, you know!" (73) he answers. I believe there is the recognition of something more which Miles knows, and as such Flora knows, that they continue to test whether the governess knows. This could be a sexual knowledge that is represented in the dishonorable Quint and the fallen Miss Jessel. Miles presents this knowledge directly to the governess and her reaction is to run away. But then as she decides to stay, she gives up on Miles as he has already been exposed to this knowledge and leaves him with Quint as she speeds to rescue Flora.