land from Maori and trying to exploit them.Maori blend in the country and move
through the landscape in such a way that white people can never match there.Stewart
would not be in the country if it were not in the process of being colonized.He is
obsessed with owning more and more land and he treats the Maoris like children .
Stewart complains to Baines "What do they want the land for? They don't cultivate it,
burn it back. How do they even know it's theirs"(pg.121). Stewart appears as a
confused man ,who tries to control his world,his music,his sex ,is emotional deadness
with moments of humour when he orders Flora to witewash the indigenous trees after
she and some of her friends are caught rubbing up againstthem in a playful way. The
Piano for him is an object of no value until it can be exchanged for some land.Value
for him is seen in terms of exchanging or buying property of land.
Therefore,Baines is a more sympathetic character than Stewart because he is more in
touch with the Maori among whom he lives and they in turn are more in touch with the
nature in the play.Although Stewart is very conservatively severely dressed,he wants
to show that he is a gentleman and he only cares about how he appears to others as we
have seen in the play. The camera captures him to comb numerous times his hair and
care not so much about the image of his future wife but more about the reflection of
his face in the small framed photo where Ada"s is represented.
As opposed to Stewart,Baines is dressed informally,he stays more close to the
land,gives not a big emphasis in the outer look but more to his feelings,has softer
tones,as also his face marked with the special tatoos moko expressing not only
Maori"s identity but also his affinity with both Maori and nature,as a white Tarzan of
The Piano.He has gone bush and has a strong relationship with the Maori people.He is
the natural man that speaks Maori like native.He is not afraid to go down to go down
the river and wash his dirty clothes in public in front of the native women there.Baines
is more native than civilised with his apperance in the film.When Ada arrives and
brings the piano with her,Stewart sees it as invaluable untill Baines puts a value on it .
It becomes a commodity with exchange value and Ada learns to bargain her body for
her desire, the piano.Stewart puts her in that position .He has no idea of what empathy
with the woman means. In falling back on his patriarchal authority , he turns Ada
against him permanently, where she sees him like a monster. Baines, on the other hand,
thinks always of Ada and the importance of the piano to her . He hears her in her
silence, while Stewart does not hear her at all. Stewart is never a husband to Ada. His
behavior makes Ada look elsewhere, since he is not prepared to give her anything she
needs. Stewart slips easily to the role of tyrrant for Ada,since her father chose him as
his daughter"s partner.He is presented with a puritan patriarch order.
The two men's contrasting relations to the Maoris also serve to give us their measure,
perhaps a little too obviously: Baines is linked to the 'natural' people and more
interested in Ada than in music.
Baines is illiterate but not ignorant. Watching Ada play her piano, listening to the
music with which she speaks, he can detect a passion in this woman that he too wants
to play.Stewart is a man that values have failed him,although he tries to show Ada his
patriarchical figure.Most of the cases,he undermines her like a bargain.He has already
accepted her muteness and he thinks that she snob.As opossed to Baines,Stewart
denies the affection of love.Stewart wanted to know how she looked ,although Baines
wanted to know how she felt.Her muteness fascinates Baines but creates dreadful
thoughts for Stewart.
Baines, a man with no education,without manners and no restraints the antithesis with
Ada,but also the only man the appreciates her beauty and respects her autonomy.He
has a sensuous play of touch and smell and that is his language with Ada.Their bodies
become the dictionaries and instruments of expression,while the piano serves the smell
of the salt sea and the sound of the keys.It is so expressive and erotic as Ada is
elevating the scale in her piano climax as Baines in the meantime massaging her leg
through a hole in her black stocking.Baines has no interest in piano lessons. But he
talks Ada, who finds him repulsive, into an exchange. She will earn her piano back,
key by key, if she will tolerate his indecent sexual desires while she plays. Ada, forced
to submit to unwanted contact with Baines to regain the piano her husband
sold without her consent. But Ada's need for the piano outweighs her rage and
resentment. Ada's willingness is enforced as Baines ups the stakes, more keys in
exchange for more sexual favors from Ada.However, Baines is ready to drop his pants
at almost any excuse,as opposed to Ada that sheds her inhibitions, and her clothes, at a
slower pace.Baines’ seduction of Ada is lengthy, slow, deliberate shown in the film
with the help of a warm afternoon sunshine between them.
By giving her the power to bargain with him, Baines has liberated something in Ada.
He is the one who recognizes the sexual passion contained in Ada's piano playing.
He and Ada are becoming imprisoned by their passion for each other. His passion for
Ada makes him free her not only from the bondage of her father but also from
Stewart,whereas Ada builds a better and more balanced relationship with the
masculine figure of Baines .He is the man that can admit her feminine elements and
she can also in turn accept his masculine in her.
Baines is somehow feels sickened about that degraded bargain at a point and he
wants Ada only if she wants him, and is prepared to send her away. She must now
decide if she wants to give herself to him of her own free will and that is the liberating
moment of her sexual passion . After she leaves, Baines is haunted by the echo and
odor of a woman that she has left him with awe and lot of thoughts.
Stewart makes two attempts to rape her,but she manages to drive him crazy with
frustration and unables him to rape her at the end.He feels unable anymore and his only
alternative is to imprison Ada and Flora in the home by nailing shut the door and
windows.
The piano has lost a key and now the wife will lose her finger. The punishment
from Stewart symbolically fits the sexual crime.In a rage Stewart chops off Ada's
index finger with an axe. When he tells Flora to give the wrapped finger to Baines, it
it is with the warning that "if he ever tries to see her again I'll take off another and
another!" (Campion, 104). Stewart shows here by cutting her finger his patriarchy's
brutal denial of female passion in all its liberating possibilities .Afterwards Flora is
made to deliver the finger, instead of the piano key, to Baines.
Stewart, unable to be a man with his strong wife after that incident , is after finding
himself near her bed where he is sexually aroused by her victimized condition
and undoes his pants. But when Ada's eyes open, Stewart is stopped in his tracks,
stopped in his tracks, and hears the voice that sounds in her mind. A man in Stewart"s
position ,though deeply repressed in his sexuality,expects to be able exercise his rights
over his wife,but even there he fails.His hopefulness about winning Ada"s heart and
love is as pitiable as his violence on her is odious.Even Flora does no longer see him as
a threat to her relationship with her mother.He understands that he must let her
leave with Baines.
Sacrifice precedes the powerful resolution of the impossible conflicts in this film.
Stewart sacrifices Ada to restore her and he regains himself. Flora finds her own voice
when she risks the complete sacrifice of her mother's love. Baines sacrifices land, then
the piano, then Ada, and after regaining her, finally sacrifices his old identity entirely
for Ada and her love.As far as Ada's side, she sacrifices the piano for her love of
Baines, for Flora, and for her own will to live.
The film ends with ambiguity. Baines, Ada, and Flora move to a town where Ada,
is fitted with a metal finger,which has repaired Stewart's assault , gives real piano
lessons and is learning to speak. Baines is there to love her and so is Flora. But Ada
dreams of still being attached to the piano in the deep sea. Here we return to The
Piano's deep structure of imprisonment and freedom. Imprisoned by silence, by
passion, by bars, by men, by New Zealand, by Victorian custom, and by the will that
was not her own, Ada escapes to freedom and finds her voice.She unexpectedly finds
the voice she silenced as a child and the love she perhaps never knew.
