The relationship between Ada and Baines in Jane Campion's The Piano (1993) is a peculiar one with blurred lines of consent. While Ada grows to love Baines, their initial relationship is perhaps more unsettling. Ada, a mute Scotswoman, is sold into marriage by her father to a New Zealand man named Alistair, but his friend Baines is drawn to her and her piano playing. He keeps her piano, which had been stranded on the beach, at his home, even retuning it for her.
Baines tells Ada that she will let her buy the piano back one key at a time if she lets him do "things he likes" while she plays. Ada renegotiates, allowing him to do these things in exchange for the black keys. If rape is defined as "any act of sexual intercourse that is forced upon a person," then surely Baines' coercion and manipulation could be classified as rape. Their sexual relations were not born out of love or even lust, but out of Ada's deep necessity for her piano, the only way she can audibly express herself. Ada could have said no, but Baines is fully aware that playing the piano is the most important thing to her. He preys upon this need.
After a while, Baines decides that these interactions are turning him "wretched" and Ada into a "whore" (essentially, he is slut-shaming the woman he coerced into engaging in sexual relations with him). Ada later realizes she cares about Baines and misses him watching her play the piano. She returns to his home and makes love to Baines. By the end of the film, Ada starts a new life with Baines and her daughter Flora elsewhere in New Zealand. Ada and Baines are obviously in love at this point and their later relations are consensual, but does that make their earlier interactions any less manipulative or emblematic of rape?
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