Exploring the ongoing shift in our cultural narrative illustrated through film

Jane Campion begins her tale of love between Fanny Brawne and John Keats, Bright Star, with a portrait of Fanny as a master of that undervalued, mostly female art form –hand stitching with needle and thread.

Feelings are especially everything for poetry too, of course.  And, outside of us literary types, the poet’s task of tracking the subterranean suffers, along with hand stitching, an undervalued rank in the hierarchy of “productive” human endeavor.  The life of a poet is not practical.  At least sewing produces something to clothe the body and one can “get money from it,” as Fanny points out.  While John’s friends resort to huddled teas round the topic of his support, “Could we not between us start a collection?” 

Read the complete Parlor Discourse on The Nature of Love in Jane Campion’s Bright Star here.