To express mental state, strong emotions, takes great skill. Voluminous prose or a few lines of poetry is the best that we can do to approximate what we feel. For the sculptor or painter the task is harder since he has to do without words. He can use the expressions of the face, the line of the body and especially the hands to suggest what the subject is experiencing. The hands, the fingers, the endpoints of ourselves to the external world, visually are surprisingly communicative of internal turmoil. In the end the artist depends on the reader, on the onlooker to make the leap in transference based on common experience.
In the Wright’s version of P&P, Darcy takes the hand of Elizabeth in helping her into the carriage. A close-up of Elizabeth’s face shows a rapid progression from surprise, to doubt, to amazement. Amazement as she feels his hand holding hers, his thumb gently pressing to intensify the sensual contact. Elizabeth’s eyes are fixed in surprise on Darcy’s face but it may be that she is as surprised by what she feels, the surge of warm blood through her veins, the nascence of sensuality. The scene shifts to a close-up of Darcy’s hand as he spreads his fingers by flexing his hand. This gesture has caused a degree of controversy as to meaning. The actor playing Darcy has been supposed of lacking in clear and convincing body language. I saw the scene as poetic rather than explicit. The splay of the fingers was an unconscious gesture, a prognostication of consciously expressed love. It is worth noting that the same emphasis on a close-up of the hand is repeated in the scene at Pemberly when Elizabeth has surprised Darcy. Here the hand is cupped, flax, in disappointment of her leaving him so suddenly.
An aside – the gesture of Darcy holding Elizabeth’s hand is used in the BBC’s version but the hand is glowed, the skin to skin contact is missing and thus the emotional charge.
I recently saw a small exhibition of Italian Renaissance sculpture which had a statue of the Rape of Sabine Women - http://www2.students.sbc.edu/dwarzski00/giambologna.jpg
The woman is held as a trophy above the shoulders of the male figure. She is in a state of high distress with one arm reaching for the sky, the other for the earth, the fingers of both hands are spread out. The hands are similar to Darcy’s splayed fingers. I would suggest that the director used the image of splayed fingers to suggest an agitated state of Darcy’s mind, overwhelmed by a new emotion.
