- Janet Frame
Infobox Writer
name = Janet Frame
bgcolour = silver
caption =
birth_date = birth date|1924|8|28|mf=y
birth_place =Dunedin ,New Zealand
death_date = Death date and age|2004|1|29|1924|8|28
death_place =Dunedin ,New Zealand
occupation =Novelist ,short story writer ,essayist ,poet
magnum_opus = "An Angel at My Table "
genre =modernism ,magic realism ,postmodernism
influences =Rainer Maria Rilke ,Virginia Woolf ,Emily Brontë ,Charlotte Brontë ,W. H. Auden ,James Joyce ,Dylan Thomas ,Gustave Flaubert ,William Faulkner ,Marcel Proust ,William Styron ,Henry David Thoreau ,Edgar Allan Poe ,Stephen Spender ,Robert Browning ,Lewis Carroll ,Nathalie Sarraute ,May Sarton ,Patrick White ,Frank Sargeson ,James K. Baxter , Ruth Dallas,Denis Glover ,
salary =
networth =
website =
footnotes =The New Zealand author Janet Paterson Frame, ONZ, CBE (
August 28 ,1924 -January 29 ,2004 ) published eleven novels in her lifetime, together with three collections of short stories, a book of poetry, an edition of juvenile fiction, and three volumes of autobiography. A twelfth novel and a second volume of poetry have appeared posthumously.Frame, well-known for her literary output as well as her personal history, narrowly escaped
leucotomy just at the time her first book won a national literary prize.cite web|title= Janet Frame, 79, Writer Who Explored Madness|first= Douglas|last= Martin
url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980CE6DF1138F933A05752C0A9629C8B63
date=January 30 ,2004 |work=New York Times|accessdate=2007-11-17] Partly as a result of her dramatic past, Frame, aptly described by scholar Simone Oettli as an artist who paradoxically wanted simultaneous fame and anonymity, [Oettli, Simone. Rev. "Wrestling with the Angel: A Life of Janet Frame," by Michael King. "World Literature Today" 76.1 Winter 2002: 142.] has become the focus of a wide range of biographical myths posited by literary critics and the general public alike. [Brown, R. 'The unravelling of a mad myth.' "Women's Studies Journal" 7(1): 66-74.] [Wiske, Maria. "Materialisations of a Woman Writer: Investigating Janet Frame's Biographical Legend" Peter Lang (SW): 2006] Although Frame's work — which eschewed the dominant New Zealand literary realism of the time, combining prose, poetry, modernist and postmodernist elements with a somewhat magical realist style [http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=3546633 "A literary angel mourned"] - "New Zealand Herald ", Saturday31 January 2004 ] — was met with a decidedly mixed critical and public reception, [Reid, Tony. "Visionary view of the 'tapestry of words.'" Interview with Janet Frame. "New Zealand Herald"February 12 ,1983 : 2.1] King, Michael. "Wrestling with the Angel: A Life of Janet Frame." Penguin (NZ), 2000.] her status as a respected novelist of international repute, coupled with her remarkable life-story, immortalised in her autobiographies and in directorJane Campion 's film-adaptation of the texts, have earned her a place in twentieth-century literary history.Biographical overview
Born in
Dunedin , on the east coast ofNew Zealand 'sSouth Island , Frame entered the world as the third of five children born to George, a railway worker, and to Lottie (née Godfrey), a former housemaid to the family of writerKatherine Mansfield . DrEmily Hancock Siedeberg , New Zealand's first female medical graduate, delivered Frame at St. Helen's Hospital in 1927. The future author spent her early childhood years in various small towns in New Zealand's South Island provinces ofOtago andSouthland , including Outram and Wyndham, before the family eventually settled in the coastal town ofOamaru (recognisable as the "Waimaru" of her début novel and further featured in her subsequent fiction [Leaver-Cooper, Sheila. "Janet Frame's Kingdom by the Sea: Oamaru". Dunmore (NZ), 1997] ). As described in detail in her autobiographies, Frame's childhood featured the deaths of two of her sisters, Myrtle and Isabel, who drowned in separate incidents at a young age, and the epileptic seizures suffered by her brother George (referred to as "Geordie" and "Bruddie").Frame, Janet. "An Autobiography" Century Hutchinson (NZ), 1989.]In 1943 Frame began training as a teacher at the
Dunedin College of Education , while at the same time auditing courses in English, French and psychology at the adjacentUniversity of Otago . Shortly after her arrival at university, Frame, in the throes of an emotional crisis,Page number began regular therapy-sessions with junior lecturerJohn Money , to whom she developed a strong attachment, and whose later work as a sexologist specialising in gender reassignment remains controversial. [Colapinto, John. "As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who was Raised as a Girl." Harper Collins, 2000.]While practising teaching in Dunedin in 1947, Frame dramatically abandoned her classroom during a scheduled visit from a school-inspector. [Lloyd, Mike. "Frame Walks Out." "Kotare" 5.1, 2004. http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Whi051Kota-t1-g1-t4.html#name-120555-1] Shortly thereafter the psychiatric ward of the local Dunedin hospital admitted her as a patient.Page number Following this brief internment, Frame, unwilling to return home to her family, where tensions between her father and brother had become increasingly unbearable for the would-be-author, transferred to
Seacliff Mental Hospital nearKaritane north of Dunedin, where doctors diagnosed her as suffering fromschizophrenia .Page number Over the course of the next eight years, Frame repeatedly readmitted herself to a number ofpsychiatric hospital s in New Zealand, including Avondale and Sunnyside. The institutions treated her with insulin and, according to her own account, administered over two hundred rounds ofelectroconvulsive therapy .In 1951, while Frame remained interned in
psychiatric hospital , New Zealand's Caxton Press published her first book, a slim volume of short stories titled "The Lagoon and Other Stories". The work won the Hubert Church Memorial Award, at that time one of the nation's most prestigious literary prizes, and resulted in the cancellation of her scheduledlobotomy . [Frame, Janet. "An Autobiography" Century Hutchinson (NZ), 1989. ] Page number Four years later, in 1955, following her final discharge frompsychiatric hospital , Frame, at the time staying with her sister's family in theAuckland suburb of Northcote, met the New Zealand writerFrank Sargeson . From April 1955 to July 1956 Frame lived and worked in an old army hut in the garden of Sargeson's home inTakapuna , producing her first full-length novel, which the publishers — rejecting the author's original title, "Talk of Treasure" — released as "Owls Do Cry" (Pegasus, 1957).Page numberFrame left New Zealand in 1956, living and working for the following seven years in Europe, primarily based in
London , with sojourns inIbiza andAndorra .Page number While abroad, Frame — still struggling with anxiety and depression — admitted herselfPage number to theMaudsley Hospital in London, where American-trained psychiatrist Alan Miller, who studied under Money atJohns Hopkins University , proposed that she had never suffered fromschizophrenia .Page number She would subsequently brandish a letter from him certifying this opinion to critics claiming madness as a source of her genius. In an effort to alleviate the ill-effects of her years spent in and out ofpsychiatric hospital , Frame then began regular sessions with the psychoanalyst R.H. Cawley, who encouraged her to continue to pursue her writing, and to whom she would eventually dedicate seven of her novels.Frame eventually returned to New Zealand in 1963 and accepted the
Burns Fellowship at theUniversity of Otago in 1965.Page number In subsequent years, the author lived in several different parts of New Zealand'sNorth Island , includingAuckland ,Taranaki ,Wanganui , theHorowhenua ,Palmerston North , Waiheke, Stratford, Browns Bay and Levin.Page number In addition to these numerous, and somewhat infamousPage number shifts of residence,Frame also travelled a great deal, principally to the
United States , where she received offers of residencies at the artists' coloniesMacDowell andYaddo .Page number Partly as a result of these extended stays abroad, several Americans became some of Frame's closest friends, [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.] including the painterTheophilus Brown , of whom she would he say, he was "the chief experience of my life", Page number and his long-time partnerPaul John Wonner , along with the novelistsMay Sarton , John Marquand, Jr. and Alan Lelchuck. In addition, Frame's one-time teacher/therapist and longtime friendJohn Money lived and worked in North America from 1947 onwards, and Frame frequently used his home inBaltimore as a base.Page numberIn 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. Director
Jane Campion and screenwriter Laura Jones adapted the trilogy into the 1990 film "An Angel at my Table ", wherein a trio of actresses, (Kerry Fox , Alexia Keogh and Karen Fergusson) portray the author at various ages. As a result of the autobiographies, which sold more than any of the author's previous publications,Page number and, even more so, Campion's widely successful film-adaptation of the texts,Page number a new generation of readers encountered the author and her work, pushing Frame increasingly into the public eye.Despite her growing celebrity, Frame generally avoided the limelight, although some commentatorswho? have occasionally over-statedOr|date=July 2008 her drive for anonymity and seclusion. In fact, Frame sustained an extended network of friends and made occasional appearances at literary festivals in
New Zealand ,Canada and theUnited States .Frame's memoirs, as the author, her biographer, and her publishers and critics have noted, aimed to "set the record straight" regarding her past and, in particular, regarding her mental status. [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.] Page number Indeed, repeated critical and public speculation has often focussed on the subject of Frame's mental health, most recently with rehabilitation physician Sarah Abrahamson's suggestion that the author may have been on what is commonly referred to as the autistic spectrum.cite web|last=Abrahamson|first=Sarah|title="Did Janet Frame have high-functioning autism?"|url=http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/abstract.php?id=2747|accessdate=2008-05-01] Although some contested Abrahamson's editorial, most vehemently Frame's niece and current literary executor Pamela Gordon, [Hann, Arwen. "Autism Claim Draws Fire from Family, Mum." "The Press" [NZ] .22 October 2007 : 10.] Sharp, Iain. "Frame of Mind" "Sunday Star Times" [NZ] .21 October 2007 : C8.] [Smith, Charmian. "Putting Janet in the Frame." "Otago Daily Times" [NZ] .27 October 2007 : 45.] who herself has a daughter with autism, both the "New Zealand Medical Journal " [Frizelle, Frank A. "Peer review of NZMJ articles: issues raised after publication of the viewpoint article on Janet Frame." http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/120-1264/2787] and the author [Abrahamson, Sarah. "Author responds to criticism of her 'Did Janet Frame have high-functioning autism?' viewpoint article. http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/120-1264/2787] defended the work.1983 saw Frame become a Commander of the
Order of British Empire (CBE) for services to literature, and in 1990 she was made a member of theOrder of New Zealand , the country's highest civil honour. [ [http://www.dpmc.govt.nz/honours/lists/onz.html The Order of New Zealand] Honours List.] Frame also held foreign membership of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters , received honorary doctorates from two New Zealand universities, and achieved recognition as a cultural icon in her native New Zealand. [The New Zealand Edge. http://www.nzedge.com/heroes/frame.html]Rumours occasionally circulated portraying Frame as a contender for the
Nobel Prize in literature , most notably in 1998, when some commentators reported her as the frontrunner after a journalist spotted her name at the top of a list subsequently revealed to have been in alphabetical order, [MacLeod, Scott. “Reclusive Frame tipped as leading Nobel candidate.” "New Zealand Herald".2 October 2003 .] and again five years later, in 2003, when Asa Bechman, the influential chief literary critic at the Swedish daily "Dagens Nyheter ", wrongly predicted that the author would win the prestigious prize. [Fox, Gary. "Sth African J M Coetzee awarded Nobel prize for Literature, dashing hopes of NZ writer Janet Frame." "IRN News".3 October 2003 ]In 2000, the popular 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. King's exhaustive work attracted equal measuresFact|date=July 2008 of praise and criticism; some questioned the extent to which Frame guided the hand of her biographer, [Ricketts, Harry. "A life within the frame." "The Lancet" [UK]November 10 ,2001 : 1652.] [Wilkins, Damien. "In the Lock-Up." "Landfall" 201 [NZ] May 2001: 25-36] with one critic likening King's role to that of a ventriloquist's dummy, [Evans, Patrick. "Dr. Clutha’s Book of the World: Janet Paterson Frame, 1924-2004" http://www.engl.canterbury.ac.nz/research/pde3.htm] while others felt that he had failed to come to terms with the complexity and subtlety of his subject. [Wikse, Maria. "Materialisations of a Woman Writer: Investigating Janet Frame's Biographical Legend" Bern (SW): Peter Lang, 2006.] King defended his project and maintained that future biographies on Frame would eventually fill in the gaps left by his own work. [King, Michael. "The Compassionate Truth" "Meanjin Quarterly" 61.1 (2002) 34]
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