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 Jane Campion's The Piano, serves in several ways to break into the theoretical debates developed by Jacqueline Rose and Juliet Mitchell. Unlike her previous work which valorized the mad woman Sweetie or Angel at my Table, The Piano makes strides to find and describe the problematic position of women inside the symbolic, rather than valorizing her position outside of it. Here Campion has told in some ways her own story, resolving the problematic positions developed in the previous work.
The movie begins with a woman who in many ways is symbolically burdened by the feminine position. She finds herself the property of a man, burdened with a child, devalued for its birth out of wedlock, unable to assert herself or to act on her desires. Most importantly, she is unable to speak, we understand from the voice over that this has been since childhood and either as a willful refusal or as a neurotic symptom, this is never clarified. She does however seem to be able to communicate through her piano. This piano however has been left on the beach by the husband who has in essence bought her, a colonial settler who sees no practical purpose for it.
The Piano and its position in the movie at first seems to occupy the space of a woman's voice, of a woman's language, outside the phallus. One is tempted to construct this language as the universal of language of woman, as Jacqueline Rose notes, a common feminist "...misreading of the whole problem which leads to the recasting of the whole problem in terms of woman's place outside language, the idea that women might have of themselves an entirely different speech" But Campion has complicated this position, even as it seems an available reconstruction for critique, sensitive to the colonial politics this woman finds herself in, it is two other women of the settlement who object to her music, finding odd, not at all what music (played from the sheet) should be like. While this re-enforces the idea that this music is a form of spontaneous para-lingual expression, Campion has carefully chosen other women, as those who reject it. Likewise, it is HK who believes he can understand the music, who understands, but who understands it as a siren song, as a seduction, even while explicitly, in the terms of the trade, acknowledging HH's lack of interest in this seduction. One could imagine the music is a personal language, or the idiomatic tenderness expressed toward the daughter, but this ultimately, because there is no other in their relationship, does not constitute a language.
HH desperate in the pianoÕs absence, carves piano keys into the table and trains the daughter to sing the notes as she plays. If the piano had been a part of her body, her voice and her phallus, then we see the narcissistic relation to this child being transformed, re-engineering another phallus from bits and pieces of her world. The daughter is already understood to be her voice, speaking with the sailors and settlers for her mother. When they arrive they sleep together under one dress, as if they were sharing occupation of the same clothing or the same body. One understands CampionÕs construction of this woman's body as being far from natural, even in her seeming refusal of the phallus. Ultimately, she proves more of her body is invested the piano than her "body" itself, nor is her voice natural, but one mechanically facilitated, no matter how spontaneous, immediate it seems.
She refuses the new husband affection when he refuses to retrieve her piano from the beach where it has been left. She finally persuades the character played by Harvey Kietel leads her down to the beach to see her piano while the husband is away. She plays it for some time through the packing crate as she had done earlier the night of her departure. Kietel understands something of the significance of the music to her, and is at least himself visibly moved by it.
HK uses this knowledge to enter a series of contracts, these contracts constitute the plot of the movie. HK offers to trade some of his land to the husband in exchange for the piano, which, stranded on the beach is of not value to the husband who has no intent of retrieving it. The piano, HH's property, but under law her husbands, is thus traded without HH's consent. She insists that it was not the husbands property to trade, yet under the law it is.
It becomes obvious that Kietel's motive is to enters into a contract with Hunter to watch her as she plays the Piano in increasing states of dishabille. Their arrangement, one favor for every black key on the piano. As KietelÕs demands increase, she bargains for more of the keys per favor. We understand that this series of contracts constitute a system of exchange, one where the woman's body is a primary, but not exclusive term. Her body is equated with the piano, the piano with Maiori land. As it further unfolds, the terms become more concise. the keys correspond not only to her body as specular/sexual object, but to her fingers, which in turn allow her to "speak", as well as the daughter who will betray her.
HKÕs position in the movie is always split. He exists as a guide and translator for the settlers, speaking both English and Maori (but troubled, for he is unable to read either language or music). He bears the tattoo markings of a Maiori tribesman, is on familiar terms with the tribemembers and attempts to protect their interests in trading. But he cannot help by his very position to facilitate colonization. Likewise, HH's speech is born by these natives to the settlement. This is further complicated by a few short scenes involving of the native Maiori involved in land negotiations with the colonist husband. Kietel, tattooed to become part of the tribe, illiterate, but bi-lingual negotiates for both sides. One must question where his allegiances lie.
When the husband becomes jealous and learns of their arrangement, he locks HH in the house. The other settlers find this odd, ask if the lock (presumed to keep out the Maiori) is not to be placed on the other side of the door, but of course the husband has found the other in his own house more dangerous. This suggest the radical otherness of gender, embodied in the now locked domestic space is as threatening as that of culture for him. HH, in desperation to communicate with HK, burns a message onto the side of one of the piano keys (I believe is a "d", the note corresponding to the right index in base position), wraps it in cloth and sends the daughter off with it. The daughter, who has been refused her privileged place by the mothers side, betrays her and takes the key bearing the note to the "father," a father only in name. In the climax, HH's right index finger is violently cut off by the husband with an ax. The exchange, both functional and symbolic of the note, bearing her desire, corresponding to this finger and its "voice" is evident, its place as a phallus, and this "father's" authority to castrate is then also seems certain.
The husband then, refusing to burden himself any longer, sends HH away, and she leaves on a Maiori boat with HK. During the journey, the piano, straddled across the thin Maiori canoe, threatens to capsize the boat. After a brief argument, the piano is cut loose and promptly slides over the side. A rope, still lashed to the piano catches HH's leg and pulls her down with the piano. For some time we are convinced that the moral will be played out in this allegory of feminism, and she will drown, smothered in the mother ocean of primary narcissism, unable to escape, still refusing the phallus. But she does not, she finally frees herself, and rises to the surface. In so doing, she does not return to her "natural body", or choose her child, or Kietel over the piano, rather, I believe, she comes to understand how she can operate within these systems, that she can choose a voice, a surrogate or replacement in this system even as its structure is prescribed.
As the film closes, she narrates her new position, she is learning to speak. More importantly, HK has fashioned her a new finger, a metal finger in a leather brace which allows her to play a new piano. As she plays, one can hear a faint click, a new sound, ever so often, as this metal finger taps the ivory. This sound then, the tapping of this finger which supplements the music is clearly a surrogate for what has been castrated. It operates not only as the phallus HK constructs for her out of "love," but also a rupture in the symbolic itself, serving to question the naturalization of that order around a single gendered/gendering/engendering term. In other words to ask the question which Rose notes remains unanswered in Lacan, "The fact that the refusal of the phallus turns out once again to be a refusal of the symbolic does not close, but leaves open as still unanswered, the question as to why that necessary symbolization and the privileged status of the phallus appears as interdependent in the structuring and securing (never secure) of human subjectivity."
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