It is no secret that Joyce Carol Oates' short story "Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly" is a re-working of Henry James' literary work "The Turn of the Screw". However a ever burning question that becomes evident when reading Joyce's short story is what exactly are the true motives of Miss Jessel and Peter Quint. Looking further in depth with respect to the short story it will be determined if Oates' short story provides a convincing interpretation of these two characters.
             At first in Oates's version the reader seems to be brought face to face with the dark and hidden acts that bound Jessel and Quint to the children. The idea of group sex. Looking further in depth the reader is confronted with a scene that is a particularly appetizing memory of Quint that supports this idea. It is sex, the need to touch and fondle both children's bodies as the two adults engaged in sex themselves. This scene is a dark underlying theme which might be the reason that attracts Jessel and Quint to the children and contributes to the horror atmosphere within the story.
             Continuing a second aspect in Oates's tale is Jessel's facial contortions and desperation which explained by her frantic attempts to get at Flora. Equally explicit is Flora's longing to be reunited with her dead governess. Quint also recognizes that he is connected with Miles in the same sort of intense manner. In Oates's story, when Quint remembers Miles it is as a "child starved for affection," a child who hugged and kissed Quint, "seizing him around the hips, burrowing his flushed little face into the elder man as a kitten or puppy might, blindly seeking its mother's teats". For Oates it seems that Flora and Jessel feed each other in their excessive and mutual need for each other, just as Miles and Quint do.
             All in all there are two possible levels of ghosts haunting the short story, Jessel and Quint, the substitute love objects
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