Sexuality in Jane Campion

(Roland Barthes, A Lovers Discourse)

Jane Campion’s 1993 film The Piano opens with Ada’s mind speaking directly to the audience through blurred, intertwined fingers. As the film unfolds we begin to see the significance of this opening scene. An elective mute from the age of six, Ada has withdrawn from the male dominated society she inhabits. By communicating via her daughter Flora, her voice being ‘heard only indirectly’ (Bruzzi, 1993, p7) and expressing emotion through her music, Ada’s hands have become her only link to this society. Stewart has no idea how to approach Ada. The distorted images Campion uses as Stewart views his wife reflect the distorted male Victorian view of women, and through his inability to communicate or listen, Stewart cuts off Ada’s emotional link, her piano. By the time Ada arrives at her new home, she is trapped, not only within the barren landscape, which r

At the end of the film, when Stewart’s conscience awakens a voice within him, and he allows Baines, and Ada to leave, Ada realises on the trip to Nelson that to return to conventional society she must become Baine’s woman, not just Ada the woman. She must give up some inner part of her individuality, sacrifice part of her true self. Ada's ultimate choice is to accept that life, she has found love, but as Baine’s woman she will still be his property. The silver fingertip given to her by Baines merely replaces the patriarchal gold wedding ring of ownership she has worn since she first spoke to us. Campion wants to articulate the gaps and spaces of the silenced voice at the same time she wants to reclaim the sexual past of the heroine, showing how Ada struggles against the patriarchal system that denies female desire and subjectivity (Courington, p136).

As the lessons progress Ada becomes aware of the sexual power she has over Baines, (revealed to the audience through his ‘fetishism’ (Nelmes, p300) towards the piano in Ada’s absence, transferring his desire for her onto the object he recognises as an extension of her inner self.) she begins to take a more equal control of the relationship by actively bartering for keys. She becomes more sexually complicit in their actions without outwardly acknowledging it. Campion now reverses the accepted patriarchal, sexual cinematic roles between male and female. Baines suddenly reveals his naked body to Ada, offering it for her exploration. Soft lighting and filters are used in the conventional manner, but here it is Baine’s body that is the object of desire, bathed in the warm light, Ada in the role of masculine voyeur, the recipient of pleasure.

The landscape surrounding her husband’s house is dead. Nature is absent, reflecting Victorian mans destructive desire to control it. The infertile ground on which her marriage has been sown is surrounded by glutinous mud and dense, snagging undergrowth. To leave this world she must negotiate these obstacles, always climbing upwards, only to have to descend again into Campions grey tinted nightmare of marriage. We are given a vision of a Miltonic like version of Hell (Elledge), much like that of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, hidden within the seemingly beautiful island paradise of Eden, presented to us at the start as Ada is symbolically manhandled by faceless hands onto the beach.

In an att

Some topics in this essay:
Stewart Ada, Campion Stewart, Stewart Campion, Eve Milton’s, Baines Ada, Wuthering Heights, Piano Ada’s, Ada Flora, Sexuality Piano, Jane Campion’s, importance piano, lessons progress, baine’s woman, environment relationship, sexual desire, true self, ada’s own, piano ada’s, piano ada, soft lighting,