Janet Frame

Janet Frame
Born 28 August 1924(1924-08-28)
Dunedin, New Zealand
Died 29 January 2004(2004-01-29) (aged 79)
Dunedin, New Zealand
Occupation Novelist, short story writer, essayist, poet
Genres modernism, magic realism, postmodernism

Janet Paterson Frame, ONZ, CBE (28 August 1924 - 29 January 2004) was a New Zealand author. She wrote eleven novels, four collections of short stories, a book of poetry, an edition of juvenile fiction, and three volumes of autobiography during her lifetime. Since her death, a twelfth novel, a second volume of poetry, and a handful of short stories have been released. Frame was known for her dramatic personal history as well as her writing. She was scheduled for a lobotomy that was cancelled when her first book was awarded a national literary prize.[1] Several biographical myths are associated with Frame,[2][3] partly as a result of her traumatic personal experiences. Some of these experiences featured in her work,[4] such as her autobiographical trilogy, and also in director Jane Campion's popular film adaptation of the texts. Frame was described by scholar Simone Oettli as a writer who simulaneously sought fame and anonymity,[5] Frame eschewed the dominant New Zealand literary realism of the post-war era, combining prose, poetry, and modernist elements with a magical realist style,[6] winning many literary prizes despite mixed critical and public reception.[7]

Contents

Biographical overview

Oamaru: The clock tower on the old Post Office, vividly described in Frame's debut novel, Owls Do Cry, as well as in her third volume of autobiography, The Envoy from Mirror City

Janet Frame, born in Dunedin in the south-east of New Zealand's South Island as the third of five children of Scottish New Zealander parents,[8] grew up in a working class family. Her father, George Frame, worked for the New Zealand railways, and her mother Lottie (née Godfrey), had served as a housemaid to the family of writer Katherine Mansfield. Dr Emily Hancock Siedeberg, New Zealand's first female medical graduate, delivered Frame at St. Helen's Hospital in 1924.

Frame spent her early childhood years in various small towns in New Zealand's South Island provinces of Otago and Southland, including Outram and Wyndham, before the family eventually settled in the coastal town of Oamaru (recognisable as the "Waimaru" of her début novel and further featured in her subsequent fiction[9]). As recounted in the first volume of her autobiographies, Frame's childhood was marred by the deaths of two of her adolescent sisters, Myrtle and Isabel, both of whom drowned in separate incidents, and the epileptic seizures suffered by her brother George (referred to as "Geordie" and "Bruddie").[10]

In 1943 Frame began training as a teacher at the Dunedin College of Education, auditing courses in English, French and psychology at the adjacent University of Otago.[11] After completing her two years of theoretical studies with mixed results,[12] Frame started a year of practical placement at the Arthur Street School in Dunedin, which, according to her biographer, initially went quite well.[13] Things started to unravel later that year when, following a suicide attempt involving a packet of aspirin, Frame began regular therapy sessions with junior lecturer John Money, to whom she developed a strong attraction,[14] and whose later work as a sexologist specialising in gender reassignment remains controversial.[15]

Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, where Frame was first committed in 1945.

In September 1945, Frame, still enrolled in teacher training, abandoned her classroom at Dunedin's Arthur Street School during a scheduled visit from an inspector,[16][17] and shortly thereafter was admitted to the psychiatric ward of the local Dunedin hospital for a brief period of observation.[18] Unwilling to return home to her family, where tensions between her father and brother had become increasingly unbearable, Frame was then committed to Seacliff Lunatic Asylum.[19] Over the course of the next eight years, Frame was repeatedly readmitted, most often voluntarily, to a number of psychiatric hospitals in New Zealand, which, in addition to Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, also included Avondale, in Auckland, and Sunnyside in Christchurch. During this period, Frame was first diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia,[20] which at the time was treated with electroconvulsive therapy and insulin.[21]

In 1951, while she was still a patient at Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, New Zealand's Caxton Press published Frame's first book, a collection of shorts titled The Lagoon and Other Stories.[22] The volume was awarded the Hubert Church Memorial Award, at that time one of the nation's most prestigious literary prizes, and resulted in the cancellation of Frame's scheduled lobotomy.[23][24] Four years later, following her final discharge from Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, Frame met writer Frank Sargeson.[25] and, from April 1955 to July 1956, lived and worked out of his home in the Auckland suburb of Takapuna, producing her first full-length novel, Owls Do Cry (Pegasus, 1957).[26]

Owls Do Cry. Dennis Beytagh's cover illustration for Frame's début novel, released by New Zealand's Pegasus Press in 1957.

Frame left New Zealand in late 1956. Over the next seven years, her most prolific in terms of publication, she lived and worked in Europe, primarily based in London, with brief sojourns in Ibiza and Andorra.[27][28] While abroad, Frame — still struggling with anxiety and depression — once again readmitted herself[29] to psychiatric hospital, this time the Maudsley in London, where American-trained psychiatrist Alan Miller, who, coincidentally, studied under Money at Johns Hopkins University, proposed that she had never suffered from schizophrenia.[30][31] In an effort to alleviate the ill effects of her years spent in and out of psychiatric hospital, Frame then began regular therapy sessions with the psychoanalyst Robert Hugh Cawley, who encouraged her to continue to pursue her writing, and to whom she would eventually dedicate seven of her novels.[32]

Frame returned to New Zealand in 1963, accepting the Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago in 1965.[33] In subsequent years, the author lived in several different parts of New Zealand's North Island, including Auckland, Taranaki, Wanganui, the Horowhenua, Palmerston North, Waiheke, Stratford, Browns Bay and Levin.[34]

During this period, Frame also traveled a great deal, occasionally returning to Europe, but principally visiting the United States, where she accepted residencies at the MacDowell and Yaddo artists' colonies.[35] Partly as a result of these extended stays in the U.S., Frame developed close relationships with a number of Americans,[36] including the homosexual painter Theophilus Brown (whom she subsequently referred to as "the chief experience of my life"[37]) and his long-time partner Paul John Wonner, their friend, the homosexual poet May Sarton, as well as John Marquand, Jr. and Alan Lelchuck, among others. In addition, Frame's one-time university tutor/counselor and longtime friend John Money lived and worked in North America from 1947 onwards, and Frame frequently used his home in Baltimore as a base.[38]

In the 1980s Frame authored three volumes of autobiography (To the Is-land, An Angel at my Table and The Envoy from Mirror City) which collectively trace the course of her life leading up to her return to New Zealand in 1963.[10] Director Jane Campion and screenwriter Laura Jones adapted the trilogy, first intended for television broadcast, but eventually released as an award-winning feature film, An Angel at my Table, featuring a trio of actresses, (Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh and Karen Fergusson) portraying the author at various ages. As a result of the autobiographies, which sold more than any of the author's previous publications,[39] and, even more so, Campion's successful film adaptation of the texts,[40] a new generation of readers encountered the author and her work, pushing Frame increasingly into the public eye.

The autobiographies gave Frame an opportunity, as she herself stated, to "set the record straight" regarding her past and in particular her mental status.[41][42] Still, critical and public speculation has frequently focused on the subject of Frame's mental health.[43] This trend continued in the years following Frame's death when, in 2007, The New Zealand Medical Journal published an article by a medical specialist who proposed that Frame may have registered on what is referred to as the autistic spectrum,[44] a suggestion that was disputed by the author's current literary executor.[45][46][47][48]

Over the years, Frame's work, principally released by American publisher George Braziller, garnered a number of literary awards, most notably the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the last novel published in her lifetime, The Carpathians. The final decades of Frame's life also saw an increase in the number of civic awards and honours bestowed upon the author. In 1983 Frame became a Commander of the Order of British Empire (CBE) for services to literature and was made a member of the Order of New Zealand, the country's highest civil honour, in 1990.[49] Frame also held foreign membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, received honorary doctorates from two New Zealand universities, and achieved recognition as a cultural icon in her native country.[50] Rumours occasionally circulated portraying Frame as a contender for the Nobel Prize in literature, most notably in 1998, after a journalist spotted her name at the top of a list later revealed to have been in alphabetical order,[51][52] and again five years later, in 2003, when Asa Bechman, the influential chief literary critic at the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, wrongly predicted that Frame would win the prestigious prize.[53]

Starting in the late 1970s, Frame's writing became the focus of academic criticism, with approaches ranging from Marxist and social realist, to feminist and poststructuralist. In subsequent years, a number of book-length monographs on Frame have been published, including Patrick Evans’s bio-critical contribution for the "Twayne's World Authors Series," Janet Frame (1977), Gina Mercer's feminist reading of the novels and autobiographies, Janet Frame: Subversive Fictions (1994), and Judith Dell Panny's allegorical approach to the works, I have what I gave: The fiction of Janet Frame (1992). A collection of essays edited by Jeanne Delbaere was first published in 1978, with a revised edition released under the title The Ring of Fire: Essays on Janet Frame in 1992. That same year, Dunedin's University of Otago hosted a conference dedicated to a discussion of Frame's work, with many of the papers subsequently published in a special issue of The Journal of New Zealand Literature.

Wrestling with the Angel. The front cover of prominent New Zealand historian Michael King's award-winning biography on Frame, first published in 2000.

In 2000, the popular New Zealand historian Michael King published his authorised biography of Frame, Wrestling with the Angel, simultaneously released in New Zealand and North America, with British and Australian editions appearing in subsequent years.[10] King's award-winning and exhaustive work attracted both praise and criticism; some questioned the extent to which Frame guided the hand of her biographer,[54][55][56] while others argued that he had failed to come to terms with the complexity and subtlety of his subject.[57] Adding to the controversy, King openly admitted that he withheld information "that would have been a source of embarrassment and distress to her," adopting publisher Christine Cole Catley's notion of "compassionate truth," which advocates "a presentation of evidence and conclusions that fulfil [sic] the major objectives of biography, but without the revelation of information that would involve the living subject in unwarranted embarrassment, loss of face, emotional or physical pain, or a nervous or psychiatric collapse."[58][59] King thus defended his project and maintained that future biographies on Frame would eventually fill in the gaps left by his own work.[60]

Janet Frame died in Dunedin in January 2004, aged 79, from acute myeloid leukaemia, shortly after becoming one of the inaugural recipients of the New Zealand "Icon" award.[61][62] Since her death, a handful of posthumous works have been released, including a volume of poetry entitled The Goose Bath, which was awarded New Zealand's top poetry prize in 2007, generating controversy "among the nation's literarchy [sic]" who felt the posthumous prize "set an awkward precedent,"[63][64] in addition to a previously unpublished novella, Towards Another Summer, inspired by a weekend Frame spent with British journalist Geoffrey Moorhouse and his family.[65][66] In 2008, two of Frame's previously unpublished short stories set in mental hospitals appeared in The New Yorker.[67]Another of her previously unpublished short stories was carried in The New Yorker in 2010.[68]

Literary works

Novels

Short stories

Children's fiction

Poetry

Autobiography

Separately published stories and poems

Articles, reviews, essays and letters

Awards and honours

See also

References

  1. ↑ Martin, Douglas (January 30, 2004). "Janet Frame, 79, Writer Who Explored Madness". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980CE6DF1138F933A05752C0A9629C8B63. Retrieved 2007-11-17. 
  2. ↑ Brown, R. "The unraveling of a mad myth." Women's Studies Journal 7(1): 66-74.
  3. ↑ Wiske, Maria. Materialisations of a Woman Writer: Investigating Janet Frame's Biographical Legend Peter Lang (SW): 2006
  4. ↑ King 2000, pp. 84, 170-74, 210, 220,23, 287, 377, 456.
  5. ↑ Oettli, Simone. Rev. Wrestling with the Angel: A Life of Janet Frame, by Michael King. World Literature Today 76.1 Winter 2002: 142.
  6. ↑ "A literary angel mourned" - New Zealand Herald, Saturday 31 January 2004
  7. ↑ Reid, Tony. "Visionary view of the 'tapestry of words.'" Interview with Janet Frame. New Zealand Herald February 12, 1983: 2.1
  8. ↑ King 2000, p. 16.
  9. ↑ Leaver-Cooper, Sheila. Janet Frame's Kingdom by the Sea: Oamaru. Dunmore (NZ), 1997
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Frame, Janet. An Autobiography Century Hutchinson (NZ), 1989.
  11. ↑ King 2000, p. 51-2.
  12. ↑ King 2000, p. 61-2.
  13. ↑ King 2000, p. 61-2.
  14. ↑ King 2000, p. 64-5.
  15. ↑ Colapinto, John. As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who was Raised as a Girl. Harper Collins, 2000.
  16. ↑ King 2000, p. 66.
  17. ↑ Lloyd, Mike. "Frame Walks Out." Kotare 5.1, 2004. http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Whi051Kota-t1-g1-t4.html#name-120555-1
  18. ↑ King 2000, p. 69-70.
  19. ↑ King 2000, p. 71.
  20. ↑ King 2000, p. 69-70.
  21. ↑ King 2000, p. 97, 105.
  22. ↑ King 2000, p. 106.
  23. ↑ Frame 1991, pp. 222-23.
  24. ↑ King 2000, pp. 111-2.
  25. ↑ King 2000, pp. 123-4.
  26. ↑ King 2000, p. 133.
  27. ↑ Frame 1991, pp. 325-63
  28. ↑ King 2000, p. 144.
  29. ↑ King 2000, p. 184.
  30. ↑ Frame 1991, pp. 374-5
  31. ↑ King 2000, p. 186.
  32. ↑ King 2000, pp. 196-7.
  33. ↑ King 2000, p. 278-282, 283-6, 292, 298, 3000, 330, 378, 517, 518.
  34. ↑ King 2000, p. 392-3.
  35. ↑ King 2000, p. 317-20, 324, 333, 337-40, 342-5, 347-8, 355, 358, 364, 442, 443-5.
  36. ↑ King, Michael. 'Janet Frame: Antipodean phoenix in the American chicken coop." Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature 15:(2): 86-87; December 2001.
  37. ↑ King 2000, p. 347.
  38. ↑ King 2000, p. 279-80.
  39. ↑ King 2000, p. 470, 490-1, 495, 497, 506.
  40. ↑ King 2000, p. 448, 460, 466-67, 473-4, 484, 491-92, 495-6, 498, 511.
  41. ↑ Frame, Janet. "My Say." Interview with Elizabeth Alley. Concert Programme. Radio New Zealand, Wellington, NZ. 27 April 1983. Rpt In the Same Room: Conversations with New Zealand Writers. Ed. Elizabeth Alley and Mark Williams. Auckland: Auckland UP, 1992.
  42. ↑ King 2000, p. 433.
  43. ↑ King 2000, p. 433.
  44. ↑ Abrahamson, Sarah. ""Did Janet Frame have high-functioning autism?"". http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/abstract.php?id=2747. Retrieved 2008-05-01. 
  45. ↑ Hann, Arwen. "Autism Claim Draws Fire from Family, Mum." The Press [NZ]. 22 October 2007: 10.
  46. ↑ Sharp, Iain. "Frame of Mind" Sunday Star Times [NZ]. 21 October 2007: C8.
  47. ↑ Smith, Charmian. "Putting Janet in the Frame." Otago Daily Times [NZ]. 27 October 2007: 45.
  48. ↑ King 2000, p.208.
  49. ↑ The Order of New Zealand Honours List.
  50. ↑ The New Zealand Edge. http://www.nzedge.com/heroes/frame.html
  51. ↑ MacLeod, Scott. “Reclusive Frame tipped as leading Nobel candidate.” New Zealand Herald. 2 October 2003.
  52. ↑ King 2000, p. 456, 470, 497, 514.
  53. ↑ Fox, Gary. "Sth African J M Coetzee awarded Nobel prize for Literature, dashing hopes of NZ writer Janet Frame." IRN News. 3 October 2003
  54. ↑ Ricketts, Harry. "A life within the frame." The Lancet [UK] November 10, 2001: 1652.
  55. ↑ Wilkins, Damien. "In the Lock-Up." Landfall 201 [NZ] May 2001: 25-36
  56. ↑ Evans, Patrick. "Dr. Clutha’s Book of the World: Janet Paterson Frame, 1924–2004." Journal of New Zealand Literature 22: 15–3.
  57. ↑ Wikse, Maria. "Materialisations of a Woman Writer: Investigating Janet Frame's Biographical Legend" Bern (SW): Peter Lang, 2006.
  58. ↑ In addition to his work on Frame, King notes that he likewise withheld information in his previously published biography of Dame Whina Cooper. See: King, Michael. "Tread Softly – Biography and The Compassionate Truth," in Tread Softly Cape Catley, 2001: 9-17
  59. ↑ Day, David. "Best file it in the biscuit tin" Sydney Morning Herald October 18, 2008: 37
  60. ↑ King, Michael. "The Compassionate Truth" Meanjin Quarterly 61.1 (2002) 34
  61. ↑ Herrick, Linda. "Belated recognition for 'icons' of arts." New Zealand Herald July 2, 2003
  62. ↑ Kitchin, Peter. "Daring to be different." The Dominion Post [NZ] July 9, 2003.
  63. ↑ "Good for the Gander" The Listener (NZ) 18 August 2007
  64. ↑ Moore, Christopher. "Dubious Decision" The Press (Christchurch, NZ), 1 August 2007
  65. ↑ King 2000, p. .
  66. ↑ Moorehouse, Geoffrey. "Out of New Zealand" Guardian [UK] November 16, 1962.
  67. ↑ Mathews, Philip. "Back on the page" The Press (Christchurch, NZ), 26 July 2008
  68. ↑ http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/04/05/100405fi_fiction_frame

Sources

External links

Commonwealth Writers' Prize — Best Book Winners
1987–1990

Olive Senior (1987) · Festus Iyayi (1988) · Janet Frame (1989) · Mordecai Richler (1990)
1991–2000

David Malouf (1991) · Rohinton Mistry (1992) · Alex Miller (1993) · Vikram Seth (1994) · Louis de Bernières (1995) · Rohinton Mistry (1996) · Earl Lovelace (1997) · Peter Carey (1998) · Murray Bail (1999) · J. M. Coetzee (2000)
2001–present

Peter Carey (2001) · Richard Flanagan (2002) · Austin Clarke (2003) · Caryl Phillips (2004) · Andrea Levy (2005) · Kate Grenville (2006) · Lloyd Jones (2007) · Lawrence Hill (2008) · Christos Tsiolkas (2009)