Sloughing off the burdens: Ada's and Isabel's parallel/antithetical quests for self-actualization in Jane Campion's film The Piano and Henry James's novel The Portrait of a Lady

[When Warburton proposes, Isabel] would have given her little finger at that moment to feel strongly and simply the impulse to answer: "Lord Warburton, It's impossible for me to do better in this wonderful world, I think, than to commit myself, very gratefully, to your loyalty." But though she was lost in admiration of her opportunity she managed to move back into the deepest shade of it, even as some wild, caught creature in a vast cage. (James, The Portrait of a Lady 106-07)1

[After Ada's husband realizes she has betrayed him he] takes her right hand and holds it in place with his boot so that only Ada's index finger shows.... The axe falls. Ada's face buckles in pain. Blood squirts. . . (Campion, The Piano Screenplay 97)2

The world, in truth, had never seemed so large; it seemed to open out, all round her, to take the form of a mighty sea, where she floated in fathomless waters. She had wanted help, and here was help; it had come in a rushing torrent . . . she believed just then that to let him take her in his arms would be the next best thing to her dying. This belief, for a moment, was a kind of rapture, in which she felt herself sink and sink. In the movement she seemed to beat with her feet, in order to catch herself, to feel something to rest on . . . the confusion, the noise of waters, all the rest of it, were in her own swimming head . . . she felt each thing in his hard manhood that had least pleased her, each aggressive fact of his face, his figure, his presence, justified of its intense identity and made one with this act of possession. So had she heard of those wrecked and under water following a train of images before they sink. But when darkness returned she was free. (James, The Portrait of a Lady 542)

The rope tightens and grips her foot so that she is snatched into the sea, and pulled by the piano down through the cold water.... Down she falls, on and on, her eyes are open.... She kicks at the rope, but it holds tight around her boot. She kicks hard again and then, with her other foot, levers herself free from her shoe. The piano and her shoe continue their fall while Ada floats above, suspended in deep water, then suddenly her body awakes and fights, struggling upwards to the surface. (Campion, The Piano Screenplay 121)

I

Some time before I learned that Jane Campion had chosen to direct Henry James's novel The Portrait of a Lady as her next film, I was struck by a strong affinity between her earlier film. The Piano, and James's novel. I had already decided to write up an analysis of a relationship of the two works. So it is with some pleasure that I can hypothesize that Campion may have sensed a connection between Portrait and Piano, because her efforts to direct a film version of Portrait immediately follow in the wake of Piano's huge success. Two other feature films she has directed, which also involve unusual, intense women, are Sweetie (1989) and An Angel at My Table (1991). The Piano (1993) is not only Campion's most important film to date, but has also earned her the prestigious Paime d'Or. Moreover, her success deserves even greater praise because, not only did she direct Piano, she wrote both the story and screenplay. Furthermore, I am certain that after Portrait has been released as a film, there will be an energetic rush by reviewers and critics alike to compare Piano and Portrait as films. There will also likely be some people who think to compare Campion's other films with James's Portrait. As the pairs of quotes provided at the beginning of this paper attest, the references both stories make to fingers as well as to near-drownings suggest the relationship of the works is remarkably interesting and perhaps an intention on the part of Campion.

I saw Piano and, shortly after, I read Portrait for the first time. I could not help but connect the two works in a profound way in terms of structure and meaning. The connection is so powerful, in fact, that it seems as though Campion might have created Piano as a reaction to her own reading of Portrait. This may seem strange at first, because Piano is filled with surrealistic images and powerful symbols, while Portrait is a cerebrally realistic novel filled with typical Jamesian elaborateness. In fact, the works are realized so differently that I consider them often to be antithetical rather than obviously similar to one another. But this seductive, antithetical element intrigues me as well, because, in spite of the fact that the two works do not resemble one another in style or tone, Piano seems to echo Portrait structurally, and the heroines experience revelations related to strikingly similar struggles between their natural selves, including their sexual selves, and their positions within a Victorian society which demands that they live up to certain moral and aesthetic ideals.