Reason Held Passion by the Throat
2014; Volume: 4; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2378-3524
Autores Tópico(s)Literature Analysis and Criticism
ResumoReason Held Passion by the Throat is inspired by a phrase penned by Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre in her attempt to metaphorically describe a climactic moment in her life story ('Chapter 27') recorded in her eponymous novel. Bronte's nineteenth-century feminist classic has been adapted for the screen numerous times.1 Most recently, the film has been remade by Cary Fukunaga (2011, starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender); however, the adaptations which present this phrase most clearly and which will be discussed here are the BBC adaptation directed by Julian Arnyes (with Zelah Clarke and Timothy Dalton) and the classic Orson Wells and Joan Fontaine version by Robert Stevenson. A visual literalization of this phrase also occurs in a crucial scene in the life of Nina Sayers, the main character of Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, another contemporary film which revises a nineteenth-century classic, Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake.The films under consideration tell female coming-of-age stories which take the form of family romances. In each, the protagonist, having been brought up by a single (step)mother who encourages the repression of emotion, is awakened to passion as the result of contact with a male superior. Both Jane Eyre and Nina Sayers experience passion's ascendancy as traumatic, building to a climactic moment marked by the battle between split selves of control and passion. While the above title uses reason in an attempt to characterize the common ground covered by these two coming-of-age stories, the precise form reason takes in each work is noteworthy. The exact phrase in Jane Eyre is conscience, turned tyrant, held passion by the throat. In Aronofsky's work passion is held in check by a control mechanism that is more akin to devotion to an aesthetic ideal. The substitution of an aesthetic code in the second for the moral or ethical one in Jane Eyre is a transformation which the Victorians themselves underwent in transitioning from a nineteenth to a twentieth-century economy.In Bronte's work, the phrase conscience, turned tyrant, held passion by the throat occurs at the point at which Jane Eyre, a governess, having just experienced her own aborted wedding to her former employer Edward Rochester, Lord of Thomfield Hall, is brought to the attic of his country mansion. There she meets the impediment to her union, Rochester's legal wife Bertha Mason. Bertha has been brought from her lush birthplace in Jamaica to the cold damp halls of Rochester's English estate where she is sequestered in the attic, unbeknownst to Jane. Having introduced the other Mrs. Rochester, whom Edward claims is the mad daughter of a mad mother; he presents his side of the story attempting to justify his actions and to persuade Jane of its merits. Jane, who deeply loves Rochester, the man who has brought affection and passion into her heretofore dismal life as an orphan, wants to stay at Thomfield. However in the turbulent internal battle which ensues, reason/ conscience metaphorically seizes passion by the throat, forcing Jane to flee.In Aronofsky's film our title phrase occurs just as Nina Sayers is about to perform the role of Swan Queen in Tchaikovsky's ballet for the first time. She has been chosen by Thomas LeRoy, the artistic director of her New York ballet company, due to her artistic dedication and skill. Her professionalism and perfectionism has been instilled and nurtured by her ever-watchful mother who was herself a once aspiring ballerina. Thwarted by a premature passion which resulted in an illegitimate pregnancy, her mother now acts as a conscience of sorts, keeping her daughter focused on the right path. It is clear though that Nina has already internalized this control. While Nina embodies all of the qualities of the White Swan role, Thomas's version requires her to play the part of the Black Swan as well.The qualities associated with this second role are alien to Nina; they represent a new paradigm of perfection. …
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