Janet Frame

Janet Paterson Frame was born to a working class family in Dunedin, 1924From a young age Frame knew she wanted to be a writer and felt passionately about the stories that were scribbled down in her notebook. Sadly writing was most definitely not a job for a lady and so Frame was resorted to school teaching instead. The feeling that this was not her place in life, her awkward physical appearance, as well as a string of family tragedies (her brother suffered from epilepsy and two of her sisters died by drowning when they were both very young) isolated Frame and because of this, her reclusion left society to deem her abnormal. As a result of a breakdown whilst acting as a trainee teacher, Frame spent four and a half years inside mental asylums, incarcerated because she was deemed to be Schizophrenic. Despite the trauma and tumultuous years of imprisonment, Frame continued to write (often about incidences inside the mental hospital) and it was lucky enough that it was her writing that saved her from an operation that could have left her a vegetable; The Lagoon and Other Stories was awarded a literary prize so grand that it forced her doctors to let her leave.    When she was finely free, Frame decided that her passion would no longer be only a hobby and she set out on her journey to becoming an author. New Zealand society had deemed her too strange to live alongside them, so after writing Owls Do Cry with help from her mentor (and the man who’s garden shed she lived in) Frank Sargeson, Frame packed up what she still had of her life and moved to Spain.

She then moved to England where she was officially freed from her condemning diagnosis and continued to publish tales with clear emotional attachments to the time she spent in the asylums. Frame settled into her new life as a writer, accepting that living alone, unmarried and without children was to be her future, so that she could focus on her stories. When it finally came time, to avoid any troubles Frame chose to return home under the alias of Janet Clutha (named after the Clutha River.) Once back in New Zealand, criticism of Frame’s unique literary style began to bring her international acclaim with her way of writing being described as “(Pushing the) boundaries of the traditions she drew from and grew out of.” This earned her a great deal of publicity however Frame, still worried about being condemned as socially awkward and being put away again, chose not to appear in all of the papers, on the radio and in the eye of the public. Despite initial attempts to stay out of the media, Frame was horrified to learn of her reclusive status and even worse; myths about her appearance and personal nature. Nearing sixty, she released an autobiographical trilogy with hopes to stop the rumours; however she did not count on the literary success of her autobiography being so grand.

Frame was now a New Zealand icon, whether she wanted to be, or not!  In total, Frame published eleven novels, five short story collections, a volume of poetry and one children’s book.  She won a multitude of awards including New Zealand’s highest civil honour, when she became a Member of the order of New Zealand in 1990. Frame passed away in Dunedin in 2004. It is believed that it was Frame's concern with language, its relation to truth and her immense dislike of conventional "realities” or “kitsch ideas” that led to her fame and status in New Zealand and abroad.  Many of Frame’s stories are strongly biographical with references to growing up in New Zealand and of her times in the mental asylum; common themes of her novels being insanity and fear of persecution, concerns Frame felt most definitely. Frame’s autobiographical trilogy was also turned into a film by the award winning director Jane Campion titled An Angel At My Table. She looks to be inspired by awakenings both in nature and in humans, whilst constantly searching for her true identity. Frame draws upon our multicultural land in many of her novels and it is clear that as soon as she was released from the bounds of our society, she was free to look upon it in her works. She recalls, “"Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination."