'In an informed analysis of the film, Richard Allen provides a comprehensive rationale for the "elective mutism" of Ada McGrath. He introduces the relation of muteness to the Gothic melodrama and explains how Jane Campion subversts and transforms the conventions of melodrama in her subject positioning of Ada.' (p.xii)
Editor's note: An earlier version of this essay was presented at Washington Square Institute for Psychotherapy and Mental Health, New York and published in their in-house journal Issues in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, 17:2, 1995.