TRAUMA AND RECOVERY IN JANET FRAME'S FICTION by JENNIFER LAWN BA(Hons), The University of Otago, 1989 MA, The University of British Columbia, 1991 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of English) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVER^TJJY OF ^ITISH COLUMBIA July 1997 © Jennifer Lawn, 1997 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be, allowed without my written permission. Department of The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date a£ Oo^W / 7 1 "7 DE-6 (2/88) 11 ABSTRACT Focusing on four novels by Janet Frame in dialogue with texts by Freud, Zizek, Lacan, and Silverman, my project theorizes trauma as the basis for both an ethical and an interpretive practice. Frame's fiction develops a cultural psychology, showing how the factors of narcissistic fantasy and the incapacity to mourn contribute to physical and epistemic aggression committed along divides of ethnicity, gender, and linguistic mode of expression. Employing trauma as a figure for an absolute limit to what can be remembered or known, I suggest that reconciliation with whatever is inaccessible, lacking, or dead within an individual or collective self fosters a non-violent relation with others. I begin by querying the place of "catharsis" within hermeneutic literary interpretation, focusing on the construction of Frame within the New Zealand literary industry. With Erlene's adamantine silence at its centre, Scented Gardens for the Blind (1964) rejects the hermeneutic endeavour, exemplified by Patrick Evans' critical work on Frame, to make a text "speak" its secrets. My readings of Intensive Care (1910) and The Adaptable Man (1965) address inter-generational repetitions of violence as the consequences of the failure to recognise and work through the devastations of war. The masculine fantasy of totality driving the Human Delineation project in Intensive Care has a linguistic corollary in Colin Monk's pursuit of the Platonic ideality of algebra, set against Milly's "degraded" punning writing. In The Adaptable Man, the arrival of electricity ushers in a new perceptual regime that would obliterate any "shadow" of dialectical negativity or internal difference. The thesis ends with a swing toward conciliation and emotional growth. The homosexual relationship depicted in Daughter Buffalo (1972) offers a model of transference, defined as a transitional, productive form of repetition that opens Talbot to his ethnic and familial inheritance. Working from within a radical form of narcissism, the novel reformulates masculinity by embracing loss as "phallic divestiture" (Kaja Silverman). iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Table of Contents iii List of Abbreviations v Note on Editions vi Acknowledgements vii INTRODUCTION 1 A State of Siege 3 The Labyrinth and the Minotaur 9 Frame and Social Critique 25 Chapter One: Three Uses of Secrecy 35 Three Uses of Secrecy 3 9 Reading Frame 41 Theological Hermeneutics 54 Evasion 57 Fantasy Space 65 The Death of Speech 69 The Haunted Critic 76 Chapter Two: Recovery 81 Historical Trauma 87 Tom's Dream 93 Private Dreams 97 Public Dreams 105 Descartes' Dream 112 The Apocalypse of Numbers 119 Splitting the Alphabet 123 Hoopnet 133 Chapter Three: No Telephone to Heaven 139 Underexposure 145 Overexposure 153 "The telephone is out of order" 162 No Telephone to Heaven 166 Conclusion 175 Chapter Four: "Face to Face with Myself 177 The Unique Art of Dying 184 The Supermarket and the Gas Chamber 188 iv Narcissus was a Boy 202 Owning Up 208 Two Seasons 212 Greek Love 217 Afterword: Where to Write 221 Bibliography 225 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Books by Frame AB An Autobiography New York- Braziller 1991 AM The Adantahle Man New York- RraziHer 1Q65 CP The Carpathians. Auckland: Century Hutchinson, 1988. DB Daughter Buffalo New York: Braziller, 1972. EA The Edge of the Alphabet. New York: Braziller 1962 FW Faces in the Water. New York: Braziller, 1961 IC Intensive Care. New York: Braziller, 1970. LM Living in the Maniototo. New York: Braziller 1979 ODC Owls Do Crv. 1957 New York-Braziller 1960 EM The Pocket Mirror New York: Braziller, 1967. SG Scented Gardens for the Blind. New York: Braziller, 1964. SS A State of Siege. New York: Braziller, 1966. YF Yellow Flowers in the Antipodean Room New York: Braziller, 1969. Books by other authors RF The Ring of Fire: Essavs on Janet Frame. Ed. Jeanne Delbaere. Aarhus, Den.. Dangaroo, 1992. SE The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1957. VI NOTE ON EDITIONS For the sake of consistency and availability I have used American editions wherever possible, given that Braziller reprinted Frame's fictional and poetic oeuvre from Owls Do Cry to Intensive Care during the 1980s and early 1990s. I use the earlier Braziller reprints with caution, however, considering Frame's comment in "Departures and Returns" (1982) that she was "surprised and horrified to find" that when her earlier works were printed in the United States (presumably by Braziller) many of her words had been "'translated' into American English, often with little knowledge of the original meaning" (91-92). Frame does not specify which texts were affected. There is much bibliographic work to be done on the substantive differences between the various editions of Frame's fiction; at stake is the political question of cultural difference asserted through linguistic particularity. Frame insists that the words of New Zealand writers should not be wrenched out of shape to accommodate hegemonic cultural interests: We want our words. If I write of a bach by the sea I do not want it to be turned into a bungalow or cottage or mansion. If we write of a tangi, we mean just that: a tangi. This absorption, even within one's own country, of another culture means a form of imprisonment for able-bodied words which languish and could die exiled from the literature, never having the opportunity to work within it and enrich it. How much more magnified this imprisonment and exile may be in a world-setting, when countries high in literacy and publishing opportunities, reinforced by an abundance of exported films, can almost vacuum-clean, overnight, another culture and language. ("Departures" 92) Where relevant, I have used a footnote to indicate substantive variations in quotations from Frame's early works, Owls Do Cry and Faces in the Water. Yellow Flowers in the Antipodean Room was published under the title The Rainbirds by W. H. Allen (London, UK.) and Pegasus (Christchurch, NZ). Vll ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to all those who have contributed to this project. I particularly thank my thesis director, Margery Fee, for her energy and encouragement, and my committee members, Bill New and Michael Zeitlin, for their detailed, trusting, and efficient attention to my work. Tessa Barringer, Colleen Cowman, Vanessa Finney, Andrew Gurr, Catherine Kirkness, Dorothy Lane, Anne Maxwell, Susie O'Brien, Erin Soros, Janet Wilson, and Mark Vessey generously allowed me to read unpublished manuscripts. Ruth Brown and Janet Wilson instructed me gently in the protocols of personal footnotes. Susan Ash, Ruth Brown, Imogen Coxhead, Kasey Cummings, Jocelyn Harris, Alan Horsman, Lawrence Jones, Kevin McNeilly, Gina Mercer, and Shelagh Murray responded to my sometimes arcane requests for information with cheerfulness and expertise. Rachel Lawn, Owen Lawn, and Lois Lawn gave scholarly and emotional support. John Burns was a computer whiz. Karen de Jonghe, Stephen Milnes, and Linda Moore helped miscellaneously. Gaik Cheng Khoo, Janice Fiamengo, Marian Gracias, and Gabi Helms proof-read with flair. Rob Mills did my dishes. Erin Soros read the entire manuscript in one go. Alex Hart saved me literally hundreds of hours of work with his extraordinary generosity in lending his Frame papers and allowing me to touch a letter signed by herself. Financial support was provided by a Canadian Commonwealth Scholarship and two Teaching Assistantships held at the University of British Columbia. Extra special thanks and love- to Janice Fiamengo, Liz McCausland, and Peter Wilkins: editors, therapists, bons vivants; to my parents, for their love and support; to Sara, for calling. Permissions Page 46, photograph by John Maynard depicting Frame with actors (from left to right) Karen Fergusson, Alexia Keogh, and Kerry Fox. Reproduced by kind permission of John Maynard. Page 169, from Christoph Asendorf, Batteries of Life: On the History of Things and Their Perception in Modernity, ed. and trans. Don Reneau, © 1993 The Regents of the University of California. Reproduced by kind permission of the University of California Press. 1 Introduction There seems no better way to open this study of trauma and recovery in four novels by Janet Frame than with a corpse and a mystery. Here is the scene, then. A small white house on an island in the far north of New Zealand. In one of the bedrooms lies a body, a dead woman, Pakeha, middle-aged. A broken window. A cold stone in the corpse's hand. Nearby a newspaper with the words "Help help" scrawled across it in red, and with a nonsense poem in place of news. Talk on the island about prowlers, louts, an "element" of trouble in the local community. How did she die? What does the note mean? Where is the prowler now? How will you know? *** This is the world of Janet Frame that my thesis will inhabit.