Copyright is owned by the Author of the thesis. Permission is given for a copy to be downloaded by an individual for the purpose of research and private study only. The thesis may not be reproduced elsewhere without the permission of the Author. ALLEGORY IN THE FICTION OF JANET FRAME A thesis in partial fulfIlment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at Massey University. Judith Dell Panny 1991. i ABSTRACT This investigation considers some aspects of Janet Frame's fiction that have hitherto remained obscure. The study includes the eleven novels and the extended story "Snowman, Snowman". Answers to questions raised by the texts have been found within the works themselves by examining the significance of reiterated and contrasting motifs, and by exploring the most literal as well as the figurative meanings of the language. The study will disclose the deliberate patterning of Frame's work. It will be found that nine of the innovative and cryptic fictions are allegories. They belong within a genre that has emerged with fresh vigour in the second half of this century. All twelve works include allegorical features. Allegory provides access to much of Frame's irony, to hidden pathos and humour, and to some of the most significant questions raised by her work. By exposing the inhumanity of our age, Frame prompts questioning and reassessment of the goals and values of a materialist culture. Like all writers of allegory, she focuses upon the magic of language as the bearer of truth as well as the vehicle of deception. She shows that language, in transferring culture and custom from generation to generation, is an instrument of immense power; it may create and preserve, or it may instigate destruction. Judith Dell Panny July 1991 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To all those who have made this study possible, I extend my thanks. I would like to thank Janet Frame for her hospitality and her courteous interest in my work. I have appreciated the careful attention, perceptive questioning and efficiency of my supervisor Dr William Broughton, and have appreciated the critical response of Dr Doreen D'Cruz as second supervisor. I would like to thank Dr Peter Brown for discussion on the topics of Myth and Rilke, Dr John Muirhead for sharing his expertise on Paradise Lost, Dr John Ross for his advice in bibliographical matters, Mrs Cheryl Woolley for her assistance in the field of psychology, Dr Peter Donovan, Dr Bronwyn Elsmore and Mrs Fay Pollok for their help on matters relating to the Bible, and Dr Hazel Riseborough for help with understanding Maori names. To Dr Jim Pollok, thanks are due for information relating to the Maniototo Plain, to Dr Alison Campbell, expert in chemistry, for data on bird-lime, and to Mr Colin Griggs for his expert knowledge of funeral procedure and embalming. Others helpers include Professor Axel Vieregg, Mrs L R Pound, Dr RussellPoole and Dr Gerard O'Connor. This thesis has provided material for two conference papers. The first was presented to the AULLA XXV Con9ress in February 1989 at Macctuarie University, Sydney, on the topic, "Allegory and Irony in "Snowman, Snowman" and Living in the Maniototo" . The second paper, entitled "World and Underworld in Janet Frame's Novels" was presented to the 13th Conference of New Literatures in English at Mannheim, Germany, in June 1990. The thesis has also provided materialfor a chapter which has been accepted for a forthcoming new edition of Bird, Hawk, Bogie , edited by Jeanne Delbaere. The chapter is entitled "Opposite and Adjacent to the Postmodern in Living in the Maniototo." Thanks are due to Professor Jeanne Delbaere who kindly sent me two of her critical essays on Frame that were unavailable in New Zealand. Thanks are also due to Professor Dr Norbert Platz of the University of Mannheim, Professor Dr Gerhardt Stiltz of the University of Tiibingen and Professor Dr Herbert Kraft of the University of Miinster for allowing me to discuss the work of Janet Frame with them and their students. A two-year Vice-Chancellor's PhD Study Award has made the research possible. To the staff of the Massey Library and the staff of the National and Alexander Turnbull Libraries, thanks are due for their willing and competent assistance. I am grateful to Susanne Shirriffs for her expertise in word processing. I thank, also, my children for their encouragement, and, in particular, I thank my husband Rolf. His continuous support and his skill as reader, critic and discussion partner have helped to make the four-year study a pleasure. Judith Dell Panny iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ................ ...................... i Acknowledgements . 11 1 Introduction ... 1 2 Living in the Maniototo . 22 3 Owls Do Cry ..... .............. .... .......... 52 4 Faces in the Wa ter .... ........ ... ...... ........ .. 68 5 The Edge of the Alphabet . 84 6 "Snowman, Snowman" ............................ 101 7 Scented Gardens fo r the Blind . 110 8 TheAGkl ptcU7le Man .............. .. .. ..... ....... 131 9 A State of Siege . 153 10 The Rainbirds . 172 11 Intensive Care . 186 12 Daughter Buffalo 214 13 The Ca rpathians 233 14 Conclusion . 251 Bibliography . .. 269 1 CHAPfER 1 INTRODUCTION If you're an actress and play Lady Macbeth, no one is going to assume that you yourself are ruthless, ambitious, etc. But if you are a writer and write about a character - which is a kind of acting - many people 1 assume that the character's beliefs and way of life are your own. - Janet Frame Janet Frame has reacted against the insistence of critics that her personal life is directly manifested in her stories and novels. In spite of disclaimers that the characters do not portray living persons,2 Frame herself has been identified with several of them: "Istina Mavet, the main person in Fa ces in the Wa ter is, of course, Janet Frame under another name. ,,3 Assumptions of this kind are surprising, since they disregard significant changes in the critical approach to literature. In the course of the last fIfty years, the emphasis has moved from historical and biographical analysis to the text itself and on to the reader's interaction with the text, whether in the name of 'The New Criticism', 'Structuralism', 'Reception Theory' or 'New New Criticism'. Two factors have come together to make Frame's work especially susceptible to biographical analysis and commentary. Since the appearance in 1964 of an article by Frame in The Times Literary Supplement entitled "Memory and a Pocketful of Words" ,4 it has been publicly known that Frame had spent eight years in mental institutions. Her In troduction 2 1965 contribution to the "Beginnings" series in Landfall proffered the same infonnation.s But since the publication of Owls Do Cry in 1957, the knowledge that Frame had suffered mental illness was widespread in New Zealand. This knowledge has been coupled with the fact that she is "even by contemporary standards, a difficult novelist. ,,6 It has been easy to assume, therefore, that Frame's world must be strange and that no one could reasonably expect to enter it. Frame's work has been viewed as the product of an unusual, even an aberrant mind. The level of difficulty has been regarded as a deliberate device by one "concerned to protect (herselfj against those who want to read (her) fictions as the expression of the writer's personal experience".7 Alternatively, Frame's idiosyncratic imagination has been blamed for the textual difficulty. Her admission that she sees everyday things "in an imaginary light - which is a bright light, without shade - a kind of inward sun", 8 has led to the assumption that "a world lit by an inward sun is difficult for others to see clearly. ,,9 One problem with such readings and such assumptions is that they diminish the likelihood of a satisfactory critical understanding of a work. The reader's search for a logical pattern or an underlying rationale is forestalled; there is no apparent need to fmd explanations for ambiguities, or answers to questions which are puzzling. To read an author's life into a text is to bring preconceptions to the reading which can obfuscate or narrow its critical appreciation. It is reductionist, not analytical. Janet Frame has won international acclaim and prestigious awards,lO yet, despite an abundance of reviews, articles and essays, it is surprising to fmd that few sustained Introduction 3 studies of her work have been published. Some of the fmest criticism appears in Bird, Hawk, Bogie, a collection of essays by different critics. It is scarcely, therefore, a sustained study, though the editor supplies an overview of Frame's work in her "Introduction" and contributes two further chapters. Publicationsdevoted to Frame and written by a single critic include two pamphlets and one book. Patrick Evans, author of the book and one of the pamphlets wrote in 1973 that, though Frame is "probably New Zealand's most successful contemporary novelist she has reached this position, curiously enough, without the impetus of unified critical understanding... This dereliction of critical duty seems to have stemmed from the difficulty of sensing 1 immediately where the centre of her work lies. "1 Four years later, Evans completed his book on Frame. In his "Epilogue", he notes that "Words are of course mined brilliantly for their poetry and as a source of humour and wit; but the more often this occurs, the more world and word become divorced. ,,12 Such a judgement raises the question as to whether the critic or the writer is to blame for the so-called divorce between world and word. Evans fmds "digression and 'difficulty' in texture and references. ,,13 In discussing Frame's vision, his own uncertainty is betrayed by statements such as "the artistic vision of Janet Frame has become rather doctrinaire" and "I cannot help feeling that this vision is also a little uncompromising".