Janet Paterson Frame (28 August 1924 – 29 January 2004) was a New Zealand author. She is internationally renowned for her work, which includes novels, short stories, poetry, juvenile fiction, and an autobiography, and received numerous awards including being appointed to the Order of New Zealand,The Order of New Zealand Honours List New Zealand's highest civil honour.
Frame's celebrity derived from her dramatic personal history as well as her literary career. Following years of psychiatric hospitalisation, Frame was scheduled for a lobotomy that was cancelled when, just days before the procedure, her debut publication of short stories was unexpectedly awarded a national literary prize. Many of her novels and short stories explore her childhood and psychiatric hospitalisation from a fictional perspective, and her award-winning three-volume autobiography was adapted into the film An Angel at My Table (1990), directed by Jane Campion.
Biography
Early years: 1924–1956
Janet Frame was born Janet Paterson Frame in Dunedin in the south-east of New Zealand's South Island, the third of five children to parents of Scottish descent.King 2000, p. 16. She grew up in a working-class family. Her father, George Frame, worked for the New Zealand Government Railways, and her mother Lottie (née Godfrey), served as a housemaid to the family of writer Katherine Mansfield. New Zealand's first female medical graduate, Dr Emily Hancock Siedeberg, delivered Frame at St. Helens 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 subsequent fictionLeaver-Cooper, Sheila. Janet Frame's Kingdom by the Sea: Oamaru. Dunmore (NZ), 1997). 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, who drowned in separate incidents, 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, auditing courses in English, French and psychology at the adjacent University of Otago.King 2000, pp. 51–2. After completing two years of theoretical studies with mixed results,King 2000, pp. 61–2. Frame started a year of practical placement at the Arthur Street School in Dunedin, which, according to her biographer, initially went quite well. Things started to unravel later that year when she attempted suicide by ingesting a packet of aspirin. As a result, Frame began regular therapy sessions with junior lecturer John Money, to whom she developed a strong attraction,King 2000, pp. 64–5. and whose later work as a sexologist specialising in gender reassignment controversial.Colapinto, John. As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl. Harper Collins, 2000.
In September 1945, Frame abandoned her teacher-training classroom at Dunedin's Arthur Street School during a visit from an inspector.King 2000, p. 66.Lloyd, Mike. "Frame Walks Out." Kotare 5.1, 2004 She was then briefly admitted to the psychiatric ward of the local Dunedin hospital for observation.King 2000, pp. 69–70. Frame was unwilling to return home to her family, where tensions between her father and brother frequently manifested in outbursts of anger and violence. As a result, Frame was transferred from the local hospital's psychiatric ward to Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, a fabled and feared mental institution located 20 miles north of Dunedin.King 2000, p. 71. During the next eight years, Frame was repeatedly readmitted, usually voluntarily, to psychiatric hospitals in New Zealand. In addition to Seacliff, these included Avondale Lunatic Asylum, in Auckland, and Sunnyside Hospital in Christchurch. During this period, Frame was first diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia, which was treated with electroconvulsive therapy and insulin.King 2000, pp. 97, 105.
In 1951, while Frame was still a patient at Seacliff, New Zealand's Caxton Press published her first book, a critically acclaimed collection of short stories titled The Lagoon and Other Stories.King 2000, p. 106. The volume was awarded the Hubert Church Memorial Award, at that time one of New Zealand's most prestigious literary prizes. This resulted in the cancellation of Frame's scheduled lobotomy.Frame 1991, pp. 222–23.King 2000, pp. 111–2. Four years later, after her final discharge from Seacliff, Frame met writer Frank Sargeson.King 2000, pp. 123–4. She lived and worked at his home in Takapuna, an Auckland suburb, from April 1955 to July 1956, producing her first full-length novel, Owls Do Cry (Pegasus, 1957).King 2000, p. 133.
Literary career
1957–1989 Frame left New Zealand in late 1956, and the next seven years were most prolific in terms of publication. She lived and worked in Europe, primarily based in London, with brief sojourns to Ibiza and Andorra.Frame 1991, pp. 325–63King 2000, p. 144. In May 1958 she legally changed her name to Nene Janet Paterson Clutha, in part to make herself more difficult to locate and in part to recognise Māori leader Tamati Waka Nene, whom she admired, and the Clutha River, which was a source of creative inspiration. Frame still struggled with anxiety and depression, and in September 1958 admitted herselfKing 2000, p. 184. to the Maudsley in London. American-trained psychiatrist Alan Miller, who studied under John Money at Johns Hopkins University, proposed that she had never suffered from schizophrenia.Frame 1991, pp. 374–5King 2000, p. 186. In an effort to alleviate the ill effects of her years spent in and out of psychiatric hospitals, Frame then began regular therapy sessions with psychiatrist Robert Hugh Cawley, who encouraged her to pursue her writing. Frame dedicated seven of her novels to Cawley.King 2000, pp. 196–7.
Frame returned to New Zealand in 1963, though not before spending a short period of time living in rural north Suffolk (near the town of Eye) which gave her the inspiration for her 1965 novel The Adaptable Man. She accepted the Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago in 1965.King 2000, pp. 278–282, 283–6, 292, 298, 3000, 330, 378, 517, 518. She later lived in several parts of New Zealand's North Island, including Auckland, Taranaki, Wanganui, the Horowhenua, Palmerston North, Waiheke, Stratford, Browns Bay and Levin.King 2000, pp. 392–3.
During this period Frame travelled extensively, occasionally to Europe, but principally to the United States, where she accepted residencies at the MacDowell and Yaddo artists' colonies.King 2000, pp. 317–20, 324, 333, 337–40, 342–5, 347–8, 355, 358, 364, 442, 443–5. Partly as a result of these extended stays in the U.S., Frame developed close relationships with several Americans.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. These included the painter Theophilus Brown (whom she later referred to as "the chief experience of my life"King 2000, p. 347.) and his long-time partner Paul John Wonner, the poet May Sarton, John Phillips Marquand and Alan Lelchuk. Frame's one-time university tutor/counsellor and longtime friend John Money worked in North America from 1947 onwards, and Frame frequently based herself at his home in Baltimore.King 2000, pp. 279–80.
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 traced the course of her life to her return to New Zealand in 1963. The Australian novelist Patrick White described the first two volumes as "amongst the wonders of the world". Director Jane Campion and screenwriter Laura Jones adapted the trilogy for television broadcast. It was eventually released as an award-winning feature film, An Angel at My Table. Actresses Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh and Karen Fergusson portrayed the author at various ages. Frame's autobiographies sold better than any of her previous publications,King 2000, pp. 470, 490–1, 495, 497, 506. and Campion's successful film adaptation of the textsKing 2000, pp. 448, 460, 466–67, 473–4, 484, 491–92, 495–6, 498, 511. introduced a new generation of readers to her work. These successes increasingly pushed Frame into the public eye.
In the 1983 Queen's Birthday Honours, Frame was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, for services to literature. That year, To the Is-land also received the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book of the Year Award, the top literary prize in New Zealand.
Frame intended the autobiographies to "set the record straight" regarding her past and in particular 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.King 2000, p. 433. However, critical and public speculation has continued to focus on her mental health. In 2007, after Frame's death, The New Zealand Medical Journal published an article by a medical specialist who proposed that Frame may have been on the autism spectrum, a suggestion that was disputed by the author's literary executor.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.King 2000, p.208.
During her lifetime, Frame's work was principally published by American firm George Braziller, garnering numerous literary prizes in her native New Zealand, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1989 for her final novel, The Carpathians.
1990–2000 On 6 February 1990, Frame was the sixteenth appointee to the Order of New Zealand,"Honours and Awards" (15 February 1990) 23 New Zealand Gazette 445 at 446. the nation's highest civil honour. Frame also held foreign membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and, in her native New Zealand, received two honorary doctorates as well as the status of cultural icon. 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,MacLeod, Scott. "Reclusive Frame tipped as leading Nobel candidate." New Zealand Herald. 2 October 2003.King 2000, pp. 456, 470, 497, 514. and again five years later, in 2003, when Åsa Beckman, the influential chief literary critic at the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, wrongly predicted that Frame 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