Specifically, he prompts readers to question the concept of narrative authority: who has the power to tell a veracious account, replete both shocking facts and stories left unexplained. As the 19 th century was a time in which folklores and fairytales were popular, and science was supplanting religion as an accurate source of information about the past and natural phenomena, James’s novella challenges readers to question the role of storytelling in the Victorian era. It is therefore unclear from the start who the narrator of the story is: it could be the governess narrating, the orator relating the story to a group of frightened friends, or perhaps even James himself acting as the puppeteer of the characters that he created. The prologue that he includes sets up the core of the novella as a tale being told orally. While James’ novella skillfully embodies the important virtues of a well-received story-reflected in the first line of the narrative, “The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless” (James 22)-he demonstrates a uniquely deliberate control over what he has written, a conspicuous ownership over the characters he created and the stories they tell. This helps to create a parable replete with suspense, a quality of many well-crafted stories. In The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, the characters withhold much of their interior lives from both one another and from the reader. Above shows a mocking cartoon of Charles Darwin as an ape, demonstrating the difficulty that people who believed in the story of the Bible had in understanding his theory of evolution-a new story entirely. James's deliberate obscuring of a definitive reliable narrator parallels the lack of certitude with which people of the 19th century could believe the contradicting stories that science and religion tell.