POETRY AND STYLE

IN WORKS BY JANET FRAME

COLLEEN JEAN COWMAN

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies

in partial fiilfilment of the requirements
for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Graduate Programme in English

York University
North York, Ontario

9 August 1996
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POETRY AND STYLE IN
WORKS BY JANET FRAME

COLLEEN JEAN COWMAN

a thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of York
University in artial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
of DO& of Philoçophy

Permission has been granted t,19tR,6 LIBRARY OF YORK

UNIVERSITY to lend or seIl copies of this thesis, to the
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA to microfilm this thesis and to
lend or seIl copies of the film, and to UNlVERSlVY
MlCROFiLMS to publish an abstract of this thesis.
The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the
thesis nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or othewise
reproduced without the author's written permission.
 f i s dissertation answers the question of the place of poetic discourse in Janet

Frame's first six novels, published between 1957 and 1966. Generic intertextuaiity hgments

the nanatives of these novels. f o n i n g recursive patterns that elaborrite Frame's interrogation of

authority and classification in language in general. and literame in pmicular. The tint chapter

e.uamines key grammatical and rhetorical elementç of Frame's uncoIlected early poems to

determine stylistic recursions and to relate them to themes of l a n p g e , voict and creativity.

Chapter two considers the interplay and strucnire of the prose narrative and Frame's lyrics in

Owls Do C m while focusing on embedded contrasts in individual and socid language uses.

Chapter three discusses the array of genres including documentary, fictive prose, hymns, popuiar

songs and poetry, in Faces in the Water, and reveals the tem's subtle subversion of discourses

used by institutions for the purpose of social organizauon. The fourth chapter fin& that

e the Abhaber, tfirough its use of Frame's poetry and prose, asserts profoundly creative,
E d ~ of

inclusive patterns of communication in defiance of the linguistic divisiveness that, in her

portrayal, characterizes Western society during the Cold War. Chapter five studies the use of

' inherited texts' in Scented Gardens for the Blind to foreground the process of colonization

through the propagation of canonical te.= in social institutions. Chapter six looks at how Frame

combines conwting senres such as realism and fantasy and pend pieces, tg., .hglo-Sêuon

and World War I poems, in The AdaptabIe Man in order to work against restricted conceptions

of human existence and destiny. The final chapter examines A State of Sieeq which, through

interleaved quotations, allusions and Frame's own verse, structures junctures of joumey and

memory as ai& to the exploration of the significance of internalized influences and one's
relation to location This chapter expiicates the "place"Frame seeks to chart through her

character's journey and the received texts and ideas that shape that task In conclusion. Frame's

use of intene.uruality throughout her tvorks creates visible partem of how she sees team

generating meaning out o

fand among themselves. As empirical and imaginative reflections of
Fnme's vision these patterns point to how ianguage acts upon its users and how h e users

impact language with expressions drawn fiom the sociolect(s)and their own idiolects.
 Wirh heanfelt thanks, I wish to acknowledge the unflagging encouragement and
guidance of my supervisor, Dr. Frank Birbalsingh. To Dr,Roben Cluetf for hs invaluable
counsel and insights and abiding fairh in rny abilities, 1express my deep appreciation, t estend
my ttianks, too. to Dr. Teny Goidie and Dr. Graham Parker for their continueci patience and
carïng. Each mernber of rny examining cornmittee has shown me his support for this dissertation
in many speciai ways over a long period To have been the focus of such collective godwill and
generosity is tnily rniracuious.
1 am, as well, indebted to Professor D. R Ewen, whose superhuman efforts in
sourcing obscure and misquoted fragments of verse went welt beyond the cal1 of duty. Wirhout
Professor Ewen's help, this dissertation would lack much of the original scholarship it gves to
the study of Janet Frame's use ofquoted materiai.
The assistance of W. Peter H. Hughes, Senior Librarian of the New Zeaiand and
Pacific Collection at the University of Auckland made the flrst chapter possible. Many of Janet
Frarne's uncollected poems are unavaifable in Canada, and LW.Hughes kindly provided me with
copies of these poems and accurate bibIiographrca1 notes.
A nwnber of correspondents have provided thoughthi comments on my work
and shared their own research and writings with me. Their interest has been enormously
rnotivating. I wish to thank, particularly, Professor Lawrence Jones,Jemy Lawn and, not lest,
Monica Pavani, Janet Frame's Italian translater of Scented Gardens for the Blinds, for ber
radiant tetters.
1also wish to acknowledge, with gratitude, Dr. Patrick HoIland, of the University
of Guelph, for his role as my extemal examiner.
And finally, for my family, especially my husband, and friends, 1recognize the
loving support which has been there for me al1 along, and withour which 1couid not have corne
this far.
 vii

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. TIUS
Communal Wordmeam": The Style of Janet Frame's Early Poecry
1. The Speaking SpacesofOwls DoC?

2. Faces in the Water: "...a tiny poetic essence...'

4. The Edee of the Alphabet: --The Acid of Memory"

5. Scented Gardens for the Blind: A CoIoniai Education

6. The Adaptable Man: Adapting the 1

7. Astate ofSiege: fouchstones andsightlines

Conclusion

BibIiography
 Introduction

Janet Frame was bom in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1924. Her first published

short story appwrcd in The New Zealand Listener in 1946. Five years later, the Caxton Press

published her first collection of stones, The Lamon, which won a New ZeaIand literary award,

the H u k n Church Mernorial. Fme's pubfished worirs since The Lagoon ioclude: three shon

story collections, eleven novels, a volume of poew and tbee volumes of autobiography. She

has earned many distinctions, most notably the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1989 for her

novel The Camthians. International acclaim came shortly after the publication of OwIs Do Crv,

her first novel, in 1957. Recognition abroad itself, set Frame apart fiom her New Zealand

-
contemporaries but, more than this, her wnting - in its technique and its concems anticipated

the questioning of Iiterary and social authority that would not be seen in New Zealand for many

years. In his "Introduction"to Owning the Book, Mark Williams writes:

Cumow in poerry, Sargeson in the short story. dong with Brasch

as editor of landfa11 - al1 these ~~avoidable fatures on the literary
landscape were associateci with their Mmes and contained work
that everywhere dispiayed the power of their convictions and
preferences....
In the 19SOs and welI into the 1960s masculine redisrn and
cultural aationalism were still largcly uuchallenged features of the
official literary culture. Jounials and anthologies reflected the
viewpoints and intetests which routinely saw malenes and New
Zealandness as virtues.'
Especially when aware of this mntext, readers cannot help but respond to the immediate

conirast Frame's novels ccmmunicate. Albzrt Wendt d c s c n i 'meeting' Owls Do Crv h i l e he

was a ccllege student "Chvls Do Crv wds different; it had a different (and for me, a new) way of
saying and seeing pakeha and their sociery. And it made me want to find out about you [Janet

Fnme] and why yow writing was so d i f f e r e n ~ ~ ~

It is my interest, too, to discover why Frame's writing is "SO different." In t h s

smdy of her work I have chosen to eauamineone of the most noticeable cornponents of her

novels: poetry. The range of the poetic dimension of Janet Frame's writing is astonishing. -411

of her eleven noveIs contain elements of poew, including. passages of prose poetry, oripinal

verse and quoted pieces from sources as diverse as an Angio-Saxon eleg, King Leu, Nice in

Wonderland, verse fiom a play by W. H. Auden and Chnstopher [shenvood, the hymn "Shall We

Gattier at the River" and n m r y rhymes. Each novel uses the clements in differenr ways.

retlecting remarkable textual modalities. One novel blurs fantasy and realism, scuttling easy

categorization of the genres; another, distons quoted Fragments to transform "an exhausted

literruy culture" (Williams 15).

Frame's crincs have commented variously on her collected poems, short srories

and novels but no one yet has looked comprehemively at her early separately published poetry or

at the later use of p o e q in her novels. Furdiemore, the matenal that she quotes in the novels

rem& for the most part unartributed and, thus, ~ninve~gated.

1 begin by looking at the poems

Frame published before she published Owls Do CN. These poems demonstrate particular

propensities evolving in Frarne's style. Later, in the novels, these propensities cleariy Foreground

the poetic forms she uses in contraditinction to prose and its generic codes. 1 examine Frame's

first six novels as a representative sampling of her oeuvre and determine her style from the

recursive panerns evident throughout. This focus on her early novels dovetails with that on the

early poems. In addition, it reflects Frarne's developing sense of formal dyamics within the
S e m of the novet, with resulting vanarions in her rnethodologies. in such a quanrity, the

recursions represent stabie elements of Frame's q d e , thus indicating a certain predictability to

the recursive patterns in Iater works.

The fkst cbpter outiines the prominent sytactical feanires of Frame's

deveIoping poenc style. in addition. I describe her use of apostrophe and the rhetoncal question.

These devices not only shape her ç~itax,they afso indicate her deepening awareness of voice

and audience as ~mcrrbedrepresentations. This close look at the poems clarifies the habits of

expression and thought of Frarne's verse forms.

The subsequent chapters examine Frarne's use of verse in Owls Do Crv, Faces in

the Water ( 196l), The Edge of the Aiohabet ( 1962), Scented Gardens for the Blind ( 1963),The

Adautabfe Man (1 965) and A State of S i e ~ e( 1965). Where Frame uses poeuy that is her own, I

analyze recursive syntactical and rhetoncal features of her style to define the characrerzstic

manner in which she writes. Where Frame quores or refen to material not her own, 1 idemi@the

piece and note aiterations to the source materiai, if ang. Frame does often alter the texas that she

quotes, and 1 look at mon changes in detail since they are subtle indicators of the conceptual

-
fhmework of her tem. I emphasize interte.xmdity chiefly, the ways in which Frame joins

prose and poetry - to reved recursive patterns in the generic and narrative links. Her mixing of

the genres takes many forms becawe she uses them lalogically. For this reason, critics such as

Gina ~ e r c e ?and Joseph and Johanna Jones identify in her wn'tings .-...a deliberate effon to

trespass conventionally accepted boundanes...'" I look at the thematic and formal expressions

of "trespass" in each novel. Thus, the specific workings of intertemalil - that is. the

-
immediate collocations5and the overall structwing receive artention.
 nie second cbpter examines Frarne's binary opposition of the prose and lyrical

discourses of Owis Do Cy. i discover thar, hough the fiaginenteci nanative, the "singer,-

-
Daphne. comects the nvo genres in spite of the boundaries that convention would maintain

between them. in Faces in the Water, studied in Chapter three. the use of discourses to empower

some goups and create powerlessness among others is a mong motif. Yer the interplay of the

genres that Frame employs creates significant gaps. These constitute the subversive -'place"

where the voice of the rnarginaiized narrator can be heard. Chapter four fin& rhat, in The Edge

of the Alphabeg both pragmatic and creauve uses of langage threaten the stable identity that the

writerinarrafor attempts to inscn'be for herself Frame embeds the novei with circula patterns,

wtiich enhance the text's ambiguities and its themes of transformation and m e d g unfolding.

Verse hgments take on new shapes in Scented Gardens for the Blind. Chapter five discusses

Frame's use of the "cento" in this novel to imply conuasts between imperid male and colonial

femde writing. The Adaptable Man develops the concepts of source and influence explored in

the previous chapter. Thus, chapter six illuminates the mucrures that Frame embeds in

Adautable Man. The structures embedded in this novel fiinction as literal figurations within the

narrative. paradoxically si-g the Iimitations on and potentialities of creative writing. The

fina1 chapter follows the narrative arc in A State of Sie- fiom quored poetry and prose through

to Frarne's use of her own poerns. This approach reflects the linearity of the journey that

' motivates' the narrative and, yet, it also incorporates the inexorable movement toward the

'%enseof collapse" and the coltapse of 'rational' sense explicit in the final poem.

On al1 Ievels, Frarne's Mting reflects a self-conscious awareness of language as

an instrument of communication. That she understands writing as one mems of communication

arnong many is evident ttuoughout her oeuvre. Silence and gestures, too. are acts of

communication. For e-uampie. in A State of Sieee, an act of wordless communication among

farnily members happens when siblings rnove to stand with their spouses, thus pairïng o t f the
'

unmanied elder sister with the bed-ridden rnother. whom she then mtist take care of. Frame

links the event to a traditional moment in legend This sort of intertexrd transformation often

appears in her narratives. At once, the moment reflects the parriculars of rhis instance

experienced, perceived and toici, and the storied traces of social and cuIturai king. 1 look

closely at instances where Frame ernphasizes her characters' eqxriences with allusions to or

quotaxions corn other narratives.

1 explore the specific forms that Frame's poerns and novels eauhibit,from word

level through sentence level to stanzas or chapters, and as whole tem. These forms discover

where language places one's se@ From the earliest p m s to the 1st novei smdied here, Frame

e.uplores the ability of lan-e provisionally to situate place and self, in al1 the various senses of

those terms. She demonstrates that it can be done, for example, despite the institutional speech

in Faces in the Water and through Daphne's "songs fiom the dead room" in Owls Do Cm.

The patterned nuances of interte.% syntax and rhetoric peculiar to Frame's

compositions shape her representations of place and se/f: These have not been discussed before

now in studies of Frarne's writings. As well, 1 analyze narrative structures that relate directly to

the poenc content of the novels. The use of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Throueh the

Looking-Glas in The Adaptable Man is one example of source matenal that has received scant

critical notice and, yet, shapes the structure of the novel. In the middle of that novel. a mirror of
quoted words iIIustrates that langage distorts even as it reflects the reverse of an irnagined

rediq.

My aim is to consider the formal elements of Frarne's use of poeuy in her prose

fiction. Keeping in mind the range and fiexibiIity of Frame's witings and tbe vision of language

pomyed therein, [ look to find the influences on her poetic style to bener understand the shapes

and rneanings of her fiction.

NOTES

I
Mark Williams, "tntroductiou," Openine; the Book (Auckland: Auckland University Press,
1995) 12-13.
'Albert Wendt "Ta Manuia Lou Aso Fanu,-' The inward Sun: Celebratine the Li fe and Work of
Janet Frarne, e d Elizaberh Ailey (Wellington: Daphne Brasell, 1994) 184.
' Gina Mercer, Janet Frarne: Subversive Fictions (Sc Lucia, Queensland: University of
Queensland Press, 1994)passrm.
J
Jones, Joseph and Johanna, "Fretful Sleepers," New Zeaiand Fiction (Boston: Twayne, 1983)
56.
'Collocation involves a princi le of distance ("CO-location"). Collocates are usually lexernes
lnowr adiective. verb. ache$) found in oroximitv to a swcified focal lexeme. or ncde. nie
concept ;an enend to'other lin stic ' items,' suéh as vine fragments or quoktions. ailowing
for interpretations of the sipni?
icance(s)
Il of their intercomectedness in larger
- formai constnrcts,
i.e., above sentence level. -
 Style in the Eariy Poems:
-This C o m m u n a i Word-meam"

Janet Fnme's first novel, Owls Do Crv, appeared in 1 957. The poems published

before it are uncollecteci and have never been çtudied comprehensively. Most criticai work on

Frame*sm l y wrîting focuses on The L u o o n : Stones, her first published book of fimon ( 195 1 1.

The poems show the development of Frame's already suons sense of poeric discome. This

chapter examines her stykaic explorations in verse h o u & recurçive syntacticd patterns and her

refinements of voice and sense of audience. I consider these elements in connection with the

rhetorical devices Frarne Favuurs, in particular, apostrophe and the rhetorical question. The

aspects of Frame's poetic style discused in this chapter. and the sensibility they connote.

represent the groundwork for subsequent chapters. As a whole, the data assembled here indicate

propensities evident e d y on in Frame7swriting career. Laer in this work, these propensities

will be seen to influence the ways in which the poetic principles underlying Frame's style,

deveIoping over t h e , infom the structural and conceptual %ametvorks of hcr noveis,

During her teenage years, Janet Frame published severai poems in The Oamaru

iMaiI. the Iocai newspaper. The first poems of her adulthood appeared in 1954 in The .Jrw

Zealand Listener. These are the p m s upon which this chapter tocuses. Like the rnajority of

the poetry published separate From her novels, these initial Listener p e m s ' are occasional or

topical in their apparent inspirasion. They were written after she had beeun woriung as a

waiûess at the Grand HoteI in Dunedin and focus on her elcperiences in this milieu.

Late in 1954, Frame quit the hotel and lefi Dunedin She went to \ive in
Auckland, where she met Frank Sargeson He offered her a place ta live and work, and helped

her teceive support through a disabiiity benefit, an incorne that enabled her to spend time

developing her writing skiIls. Frame's association with and encouragement by *e famous

writerv2provided a turning point in her career as weil as in ber life: "1 was smazed and gateful

at his acceptance of me ris a wrÏter doing daily work"; "1 ,@ned my life as E had tvanted it to be-'

( Fnme, h e e l 129; 1 46). Fmme had direct contact with other -ers' for the fim time and was

making ber place among them. She was wriring -poems, and a kw stones- r Frame. Ance1 147)

and planned and compieted Owls Do Crv during her eighteen months ar Sargeson's home. Three

poems she wrote there were publishedJthe l a s in Landfdl: Y sensed that if you didn't appear

in LandfalI then y u couid scarcety cal1 yourself a writer." (Frame,Ance1 127) The contrasts

between the five poems published whde Frame worked at the Grand Hotel and h s e published

whde she lived ber 'writer's Iife' with Sargeson show that this was an important formative and

transitional time in her career. She was refining her poetic techniques, developing her sense of

voice and style within the genre.

Even in Frame's earfiest poems her poetic style is marked by cornpiex schemes of

construction isynt.acbc, lexical, phonernic) and by numerous, oflen difficdt tropes (a

extended metaphor, para do^ personifkation, reification). The density of schemes Iends weight

tu the surface meaning, or 'content.' of the poems. However, these obvious formal marks of

enunciation, "the act of utterance in discourse," skew emphasis on the enounced '.bat which is

unered. suted. or narrated."' A prominent eiement in Frame's oeuvre is her foregrounding of

language as a procrss of meaning w h c h is individually conceived and therefore not necessarily

constant among readen. In contrat, srde is likely to be stable:

 ...sqie is...the mark of the rnaker, whether the maker be an
individuai, a group, a whole society, or a combinarion thereof.
Style, therefore, has an e.xistence in the propensities of the
individuai, group, society, and those propensities are visible o d y
in the re;ur,or in a body of te.=."

The phase -the mark of the maker" refers specificaily to those patterns of recursion which

distingush a text as king in the swle of the one, or those. who composed it. The principle of

recursion charts the distinctive f a m e s of one's idiolect a-ginst those elements of lanpage

decided by, for example, the "constraints of tirne. place, tenor, and genre..." (Cluea 18). The

patterns of such features give "a text such as a poern...a material idenary ( these sigüfiers and not

others) defined within the structures of a &en language" (Easthope 7). Every reading for style

posits a distînguishable hand at work in the peculiar recursions of a text's quantitative linguistic

features. Recmive syntacucd patterns, sornetimes in conjunction with rhetorical features, dius

determine the styie of a writer. The tem syntau, as used here, refers to:

...phrase, ciause- and sentence mucture. How lexical items

(lexemes) are literaily =(Ta..) together ( S-vn) to f o m rneanineful
utterances (Cluen 20).

The nvo major forms of syntacticd arrangement of clauses in English are virtual opposites:

parataxis (.'-equaIplacing"). which sets independent clauses after one another widiour

subordination and ofien wîthout coordination, and hypotêuis (--placingunder"), the subordinated

arrangement of clauses.'

Hypomxis most often describes dependent clauses marked by relative pronouns

and subordinarors. It applies as well to the arrangement of dependent non-finite clauses.

Frame's sentences in the early poems are tiequentll;left-branched and almost always hypotactic.
These characreristics, plus the overail complexity of her synta,, show her styIe to be 'devated'

compared to mon contemporary poems. It is quite ' hi&' neither following the trend ~owardthe

'iow' style, which favours parataxis, nor approachng the ' rniddle,' which baiances the number

of h p m c t i c and pintactic arrangements?

Frame's use of hypotaxis is distinctive because the majority of her dependent

clauses are non-finite instead of the more common subordinate and relarive clauses. Poetic

discourse achieves compression on man? levels and may encourage the non-finite clausal

construction: -'non-furite clauses...have no distinctions of person. number, or modal

auxiliary....(and have) the fiequent absence of subjec~.."~These features create a potemial for

ambiguity, thereby contributing to the wordplay k t is so much a part of poetic discourse.

While the genre may demand the recmive non-finite clause, Ftame's style is

itsei f highly predicative. in addition to ber preference for non-finite consuuctions, she regularly

distributes infinitives and participials botb as adverbials in a direct dependent relationship to the

superordinate clause and as rank-shified aciverbials and modifiers, that is, within other cfauses

and phrases. As well. recursive irnperatives (as in Frame's use of rhetoricai apostrophe) often

foregound the predicator by ody impl-kg a grammatical subject. Frame's gemds and

modification of nouns by participial adjectives M e r reveai her extensive use of verb foms.

Her obvious propensity for these particular forms and her emphasis on predicarion relations

mark her syntactical style as very cornplex and non-linear.

The few instances of relative and subordinate clauses reveai a pattern of similar

emphasis. Frame employs seriation, the setting together of lmmatically parallel units

(sentences, clauses, phrases, or words), aiong with eIlipsis of the relative pronoun or
subordinator. She thereby suppresses the ciausa1 subject and usually the awiliary verbs. creanng

a focus on repea~edparallei prediwxion reiarions. .Lui excerpt From the conciuding stanza of

"The L i b a n " iltustrates this and other predicative and verb-form i ë a ~ ~of
e sFrame's style:

...he is ourselves,...!
**********
who shall ride in the lift ride high in the lift to the top fIoor/'
be wined and dined wish the sky-windof snow-breath, then the
bel Y
liilled, the padded tongue stifled by our own btrick silken answer..

This density of clauses dependent on antecedents and arranged herarchically is typical of

Frame's cornp1e.q hypotactic style. She holds the convoiutions of her synta... in check though,

with schernes like parallelism, linkage or syndcton, a n d here, the h c t i o n adverb of time.

-%en". Each of îhese enforces a superficial Iinearity h o u $ symmetry and sequence. A tight

closure of the poem resuhs: the markers of the discourse, the enunciurmn, stand out as if in

reiief against the surface meaning, the silencrng "answerv.

The shifts from present tense to past, and the active voice tu passive, relate to the

literat death of the third person and by extension of the subjective cornpiement in the first line

of the quotation, the deaths of "ourselves": the represented speaker and readerfs). Further.

withn the relative clauses. the carefid arrangement of the predicators suggests a blurring of

distinctions benveen third person, speaker and reader. Frame uses four relative clauses: the first

("who shall ride") is followed, still at the same clause level, by three predicators ('-ride", again,

and --wined"and -'dined). The relative pronoun "who" is elliptical in each of the last three

clauses, as is the modal auxiliary "shall". Through ellipsis the speaker's explicit self-

referentiality becomes implicit: in each of the last three relative clauses, Frame suppresses the
overt speech markers designaang the ctausai subject and intennonaliv. The shifi is most

noticeable in the fia nvo relative dauses where. in a single line, stie repeats the sarne

predicator, modi-g it twice with virtually the same prepositionai phrase, but dropping both the

clausal subject and modal awiliary of intent.

Frame's synta.~and deictic lexis in the w l y poerns develop roles for the

represented speaker and the reader in which the two merge through the enunciation process of

p e t k l a n m e . Likewise, her rhetorial tactics are such rhat they foregound and --directly

involve a panicipant other than the writer.'[O Assumptions of an ontor's pre-eminence and of a

silent auditor characterize ' conventional' rhetoric which, in order to 'elevate' the styiistic level

of a work, exploits the "heightened dramatic quality" (Leech 184) of the Ianguage conveying

these assurnptions. The rhetoric of Frame's early poerns contrasts the syntax in that it clearly

shifts from an initial reinforcement of a reader as a silent recipient of the enounced towards

explicit signs of the reader's participation in the process of enunciation. The two rhetorical

devices Frarne uses most fiequently to this end are the rhetorical question and aposnophe.

The rhetorical question is ordinariiy a fom of direct address which manipulates

the one addresscd (whether a fi-mire in a text or the reader) into a passive reiationshp with the

speaker. It requires and even e m c t s no answer from the addressee. The answer is impiicit in

the question:

. . A is a positive question...understood as if equivalent to a

negative statement....the reader is challenyd to question the
positive assertion, onIy to be overwhelrned by the cealizarion that
none but a negative answer is possible (Leech 184)."

Frame fint uses rhetorical questions in 'Timothy",a dream-like remzrnbrance. The fint h o
stanzas are an account in the third person by an implied narrator of the memones of a first

person speaker. "Talking of Italy he said t rernember the me...' The M,h r d sranza is

composed of rhetorical questions posed by an indeterminate speaker. The questions seem to

denote cIosure of the poem witfiout resolution. since the aoswers are not e.uplicit. T o ~ t h e with
r

numerous metaphors, the rhetorical questions reaffimthe theme of the previous stanzas and

move the poem beyond the particdar experience toward an abstract ' auth': the apprehension of

Iife as tenuous in relation to ever-present pain and death.

WiH only heaviness of death break the shetl and let flow the wine?,'
Or will ever bock of btossom, knife of bee-s wing'? or new larnb's
foott
trample the Eire out bleed wine frorn rny iron Wt?/

The final speaker may be the -he" of the t i r s line whose direct first person

speech is blurred by the absence of quotation marks. or it may indicate an explicir resurnprion of

the voice of the implied narrator. In any case, the ambiguou identity of the speaker exciudes riie

reader from the speech process because rhere are no telctual markers tndicaung or accepting the

reader's role in the making of rneaning. The questions posed fix the reader in a, firm position 3s

one addressed. They present an apprirent choie between negative and positive assenions. but

the firn '-or"of the second iine is misleadmg. There is no choice for the reader to m a k Setause

the questions deal in paradox n t h e r than choice. The speaker wonders if oniy dexh --\viIl break

the shell and let flow h e wine-• or if ' life' \vil1 --mer' (always'? sornetime in the hure*?)-'bleed

uine from my iron fruit''. Lexis connoting life characterizes death ("flow"), while Içxis

connoting death characterizes life ("bleed"). The overiapping connotations of the questions. the

lesis and the irnapy ofwar teiescope life and death. Life and death are the same thing;
perspective only makes ttiem s e m different. The r d e r ' s perspective, thus. is not an important

issue bere.

Frame also uses rhetoricai questions in "Waiting for Daylight". her t i r s poem

published in LandfaIl. It appeared dmost two yeus after 'Timothy". Questrons in ths poem are

an oven s n m c e into the m

l -,e of poetic discourse. Two questions open "Waitingv: "Why

doesn't the &y speak? Has the four o'clock f?ost/ got at its throat'?" Immediately these

questions foregound the speechsiience dichotomy built into the rhetoncd question and poenc

discourse in genenl. Frame reverses the silence, showing that it speaks when the -'waiting" ends

and answer and daylight corne in the open white print-free space where words and p r n srop:

We wait The negro dark whitensJ

minstrels rnorning, takes the sun's apartheid promise:
From bfack clodfiee: pities the fair desperate heavy
blindness/
of people burdened with mow, falling fiom sleepJ'
the sweet chariot swung low for to carry.!

Polysemy is eveqwhere in this final sranza: process is enacted in the absence of the fixed

meaning and function of words such as "minstrels" (vbhj; "rnorning" (mourning, ubmj; --fair"

(whit&just/righteous):and so on. The final h e s are aiso ambiguous as to whether "falling From

sleep" leads to reaiakening or to death.

Whereas -'Timothy" reflected a basic, conventional usage of the rhetoricai

question as a device to 'elevate' the discourse level, Frame's use of the same device in

"Waiting" dernonstrates her general poetic development. The artifice of the rhetorical question

is displayed in the opening lines of "Waitin,a", and its inherent probiernatic in terms of speaker

and addressed is explored and developed. Ironicdly, since the question implies an authorial
amer, Frame alIows no tesolunon or final answer in the poem's close. She ovenIy links the

reader wirh meanings rnade during the process of reixiing, ratfier rhan inscribing the reader as a

passive recipient of meaning,

Apostrophe. like the rhetorical question, calfs upon an addressee (not necessarily

the reder) who cannot respond and sometimes does not h m . It wpicalIy presents the addressee

in a passive role and marginalizes the reader as an 'eavesdropper' on a speech that is directed

dsewhere. The situation of the addressee parallels in many ways the view of a silent and n e u d

reader in reIaaon to the te= A literal or -'contemat absurdity' anses "when the addressee is

dead or not even human" (Leech 185). So too, the position of the reader as one 'outside' the

enunciation process creates a sense of incongmity. Apostrophe is denoted by vocatives.

impetatives and second person pronouns. Of the five earliesr poems, it appears in three: "The

Liftman"; -'OnPaying the niird Instahent"; and T r i o Concert". "On Paying" rnakes use of a

classic example of apostrophe by closing with an invocation tu an abstract personification, i.2.

thought.

"On Paying" uses the conventionai opposition of the pastoral and the urban,
underscored with alIusions to the Biblical FaIl from innocence. to express the f e u that "the

coiIed city" will dehumanize thought and dienate "faithful" pets and the creation of poeny.

Frame treats the poetic process metaphoncally as the laundenng of thought. and p e t s as

pedorming a priestly function: "the pets have washed ciean the hss and curse of our being."

Furthemore, the apostrophe to thought expresses an anti-technolog stance (presumably inspired

by the occasion to which the title refers) by revilinp; "the easy menace of a mindless wash-

machine" in favour of hand-wash.

 R e represented speakrr taiks of pets as "they", as though she herseif is not

uttering poetry and is not then one of 'them'. With the use of the second person plurai. the

phrase -ou king' reinforces this pmense and creates a tàlse connection berneen the speaker

and the reader. But the speaker & a poet, and the priestiy, benedictory terrns depicting poets give

her a speciai starus and connection with langage that the r d e r is not e.qressly party to. Words

and images repeatedly associated with the poet-priests deter the reader fiom assuming a role in

the process of enunciation. Stanza one is made up of a sinsle left-branching sentence, with w o

main dependent clauses preceding the superordinate ciause:

Here in this communal word-smam flowingi

...with snow-capture)
**********
...here stone on worn word-stonei...

The deictic adverb of place, '*here7',opens the poem and begins the second dependent clause.

With al1 its apparent irnmediacy and joined with the specificity of the determiner *'thist', "here"

foregrounds the text's poetic discourse. It points to Ianguape as the ' place' of the poet's work.

In the second stanza, the word-stream becomes "waves that are strects flowing with people and

lives/ and putterspoil ..." Other people and their !ives are passive in the creative process; rhey are

the îlotsarn out of which the poet shapes poetry.

The closing invocation to thought confinns the reader's margnal position:

O thought rubbed between Stones, handled and worn cleani

in deep Stream or sunless roorn of m i n d
Iet not your intimacy be quite broked

let -ou not live revotved and separate, sprung'

clean to a switch and dried without any suri/...
The direct discourse of aposrophe generaIly foregounds the speaker by intensifiing and

d m I ' n a ~ n gthe speech act GrammaticdlyTthe corollaq lies in rhe presentmon of the subject

matter in the obicctive case aiter the verb "let".

7'houghtw is the monolithic possession of pets in the second stanza o P O n

PayingM.it is %eir thought". and it is not pluraiized By the third stanza, "thought" becornes

the referent for the second person pronouns, displacing the eariiet ' wthem' split c reader and

speaker pet-priests) set up by the represented speaker. The reader now has no explicir,

active relationshp with thoughr. ianguage, and poetic process. This m l y poem iflustrates that

Frame's use of apostrophe belies her sense of language as "this communal word-stream".

The Listener published "Trio Concert" one month f i e r "On Paying". Both use

apostrophe, but, in Trio", the reader is now the addressee. Amstic creation is again the cenrral

theme, though dus time the focus is on music. The speaker engages the reader with imperatives

and the second person plurai:

Look where the peopIe have corne blindfold and in breath to findi
builion lying face upward on the clifK..

Let us unbandage our eyes. Look where three musicians

underground hack rock/....
they die a lirtle for us. Look where we unwind!
our own glistening fetter of shillings to walk their ciiW ....

The imperatives evoke authoriry for the speaker, while the pronouns link speaker and addresser

by making the narrated experiences shared and immediate. Here, again, Frame glorifies a r t i s q

and the anist, presenting the audience as spectaton needing guidance in their vicarious

participation in the creative process.

 The eariiest of Frame's poems show her working with conventiona1 rhetoricai

etements and techmques of poetic discourse, expioring their effects and their underiying

assumptions conceniing the speech act the impiied speaker and the impiied auditor. In the

process, her works demonstrate an increasing awareness of rhetoric's propensity to revai its

own saucfures. She look more and more closeiy at language-s'pre-conmcted' nature and

uses this broadened view of the communal word-stream to question values encoded in English.

aspecially tfiose which reinforce, or seem to reinforce, paradigms of authority and

rnarpalization.

The fim poem Frame published while living with Sargeson is entitled "The

Transformation". The themes of language, art and creativity continue. The poem's title alludes

to Fram Katka's short story 'The Metamorphosis". The poem itself i1lustrates refinemçnts in

Frame's styfe, particulariy in her controi of 'voice7- a sensitive indicator of a writer's rapport

with her readershîp. For the first time in her published poetry, Frame uses the firçt person. The

poem begins: "1 undemand something..." With ths simple declamive, Frarne breaks open the

"I" persona of the implied speaker. She eschews the oratorically-based devices examined above
and, instead, foregrounds tropes like simile, meraphor and paradox a s favoured devices. She

images the rhetonc of oratory after Kafia's sense of the deadening aspect of communal

language:

... Kafka's beede who was~

like a man of comic or story held in stance
by a gaudy balloon of speech sprouting dumbly! ...
**********
Thus held fast a life-time anchored alwayd
with featherweight balloon and mock silent promis&...
The narrator of 'The Meramorphosis" is compietely omniscient - so detached in his

snaighûorward account of Gregor Sarnsa's tramformation into a dungbeetle that an ironic

n everyone reacting to the change but Gregor himseif.

perspective solours the c ~ t e r i z a n o of

Frame's speaker admits oniy partial understandingof the story. This partid knowledge pares

away the familial and social emotionaiism eauamineciby Kafka and focuses on the issue of

language as a social instrument, The terms of the language of urban. indusmal sociesy are.

literally, bullshit: hence, Gregor's transformation. Gregor attemprs freedom from the

constraints of living an insect life in human form by adopting insect form. Not sqrisingly, he

still fails to fit into the human worid.

Discoverhg the power of language is dl-important to Frame. Frame's speaker,

speakmg as the represented pet, suggesu a parailei between p e t and the dungbeetie througb

their munial creativity and insight into language:

he chose the transformation, untrod where he stood.,'

created his own music became a beetle a droppedi
crochet biotting his page a black shrivelIed seed-pou
spat &om his mouth...l
...He became the dream the dungbeetld
sucking feeding upon the exmernent of w o r c

Ultimately, the -1" of the poem's first line is the referent for both speaker and reader; both are

acbve in the creation of an understanding about "something" linguistic ~

J literary, and
K

therefore both are active in the process of poetic enunciation.

F m e ' s next poem, "The Ferry", was her last m l y poem to be published in the

Listener. It came out Juiy 13, 1956, hvo rnonths before "Waiting for DayIi&t'' appeared in

Landfall. "TheFerry" appears to have more in cornmon stylistically with "On Paying" and "Trio
Concert" tfian either "The Transformation" or " W a i ~ g because
" of its particular use of

apostrophe and the hetoricaf quesion Fnme c o n m c r s a passive addressee in the poem

through imperative predicators and apostrophic second person pronouns. These grammaticai

and rfierotical features underline an identification between the addressee and the reader. The

>ou' is inswcted: "...now read your paper matin,' arrange your halo of headline..." The "now"

of the addressee's mding coïncides with that of the readcr's reading; authorid direcnve enacis

both.

Frame inscribes the adckessee/ reader as subject in T h e Fe-- by constantly

repeating second person forms and references. The represented speaker is completely

omniscient and authoritative. From the beginning, rhe speaker tells the addresseereader not ody

what to do, but what is to be seen on the fer* joumey: "...it is only yacht-sails; .... it is only

peninsuias and isiands..."

Crossing in the Ferry, even the chiidrem'

have chocoIate bombs. Warring against the SUL
the summer, the yachts wamiing at the blue hearthj
you too cary in your hand or throat or hart/
your cherished confection of ice. What if it grow?/
Why, then, will you lie down on your chocofate spread/
as on a siab of tomb or a death-bed, in sieep/
that chills your memory and fiosts your living will?

The temporal references s h f i from present to future, and the iconography fiom seemingly
objective realism (" ...it is only...") to metaphors of incipienr annihilation. The politiczlly

passive tourïst, one of many, carries the means of sel fdesmction in "hand or throat or hem".

The final question tums ironically on the condition of the oblivious subject. AS an answer to the

penultimate question, it may be read as rhetorical. In this case, the words "Why. then, ..." are
sxclarnatory. The finat question, rephrased, makes the positive assesrion ' you wiil lie down...'

and affirnis the speaker's amhonative position Yet "Why, t h e e..." is ambiguous and may be

read, aiso, as posing an actuaI question. The spdcer demands to know why the tourist a m out

this insidious apathy.

The last stama fürther reflects the paradoxicd nature of the roies of speaker ruid

reader in relation to the centrai theme of death. For once. the creativity of the bst is not the

main issue. A-bomb testing in the Pacific may have inspired Frame co w i t e the poem. but it is

the realizauon of the inevitabiliq of death, from whatever cause, that permeates T h e Ferry".

?he final stanza inuoduces allusions to death and feny journeys fiorn Greek mytholoe, focusing

m familjar with the depths of Phlegethonl'Acheron; he

on T h e Captain, Charon/' voyager of S

knows it is so; ..." The omniscient narrator aiso hows that death is inevitable, but the point,

h a l l y , is to irnpress it on the addresseetreader: -and you know it is so." Frame reveds the

addressee's subconscious apprehension of death, while at the same time poinring our the

narrator's shared subjection to uitimate death.

As subjects (in the broadest sense), the speaker and reader corne together on many

levels of this poern. But in specifically discursive ternis, both are the products and producers of

the discourse. Frame's realization and foregrounding of the subjectivity inherent in discourse is

the 'place' where she b q i n s fully to eauplorethe communal aspects of -'this communal word-

stream". Coming out of Frame's process-oriente4 predicafive synta. and her rendenngs of the

conventional rhetorical roles of represented speaker and addresseeireader are expiorations of the

boundaries to be found everywhere in human life: kom those Iines found on maps to the

demarcations of henry genres; From the culnirat and linguistic delimitations that tell ' woman'
from ' man' to those vaIuauons h t would define and name ' something' and 'nothing'.

Published in 1957, T h e Dead" is ttie las poem of Frame's early poerry, as I have

defined it. The poem was published almost a year after Frame left New Zedand to travel in

Europe, and it is the o d y poem she pubtished during her seven y e m a w y fiom home. Tnis

penod is devored to fictional writing in pnenl. both novels and short s ~ o f i d ' She did not

publish poetry ouuide of her novels again u n d 1961.' j T h e Dead" expresses themes thar are

already staples in Frame's writing: memory, fleeting life, and silence. These themes can invoive

the idea of boundq-crossine, which Frame does appiy in T h e Deady by describing itç

occurrence during sieep, when the dead enter the dreams of the Living in hopes o f ariaining

perpetuat Life withtn the rnernory of the dreamer. The dead, who are the thematic subjects, are

repeatedy referred to ris "they". The subjectivity of the represented speaker and reader is

implicit in the m t e d -we" that draws the two together by impticit contras on the levels of

linguistic focus, imagery and active vs. passive representation, Frame avoids apostrophe and the

rhetorical question, imead rdying on figures such as metaphor and metonymy ro elaborate rhe

simultaneous commingiing and separation of '-us" and '-theni" in dreams:

...thcy beg in vain/

for bed luid food at the old lodging house of drertm - forage:
perhaps a small c m of mernoryi
a nightmare breathing of their name:...

The speaker and reader merge in the .'breathing of their name". The end result is a striking

unerance which captures a confluence of the enunciated iueif and the actual process of

enunciation.

-'The Dead" may have a loose connection with a group of poerns that Frame w o t e
after her mother's dearh - ar any rate, the tirne-frame is fairly close. In An .-gel at mv able,''
Frame describes her techrucd focus at h e tirne:

My preoccupation then was with the condensed irnagery and the

-
use of generai tenns love, dath, charie, hem - which are Iike
srnail grenades set within a poem - the feeling, touchmg them.
explodes itseif into poweriess fragmentsand so ar the end of the
poem the feeling has either b e n desroyed or disperse& and
nothing remains. The condensed irnagery aiso has the effect of jet
traveI - you see nothing of the landscape beneath and are thus
unaffected by it, and when you arrive at your destination - or the
end of the poem - you are fiesh - apart Erom the tediurn of
traveIIinp - as when you set out, and the poem mi&t as well be
nothing a shadow. (Frame, Amel 165.)

Frame's h d c selfcriticism seems to efface her early poew, but her sense of the efecr of the

"general terms" is revealing because, in contra% the perspectives she deveIops in her novels are

highly particular to the experiences of her individual characters.

Frame gravitated to the novel's form in an expressly psychological way: '* ...I

begm to th* in fiction, of 3 chiIdhood, home life, hospiral life,..." (Frame, h g e i 149; my

emphases.) Notice her avoidance of the general in her choice of the singdar determiner -'a'' - it

modifies those topics she treats in fiction into particular events and contingencies. Frame uses

the space that the novel provides to detail aspects and specifics of the mundane and to explore

the potentialities of the form itself In those of her novels that incorporate p o e v into the prose

narratives, she activates a rich and dpamic vein of intertemlity. Frarne's refusal to abandon

poetry, even though working in a genre traditionally wriften wholly in prose, points to her

continued search to find her own sense of the place heId by an individual voice in "this

communal word-stream".
i
Janet Frame, "The Waitresses," NZL 9 Juiy 1954; T h e L i b a n , " NZL 13 Aug. 1954; "On
Paying the Third Instaiment" NZL 1O Sept, 1954; "Trio Concert," NZL 29 Oct. 1954;
"Timothy," NZL 26 Nov. 1954.
- Janet Frame, hJlneel at-Mv Table: .4n Autobioaaphv: Volume 2 (Women's Press: London.
1984) 139.
3
Sargeson, of couse; also. Charies Brasch; C. K, Stesd; Maurice Duggan; Denis Glover, and
Pada (P.T.) Lincoln, e.e
' FrameT-The Transformation," NZL 28 Jan. 1955;'The Ferry,- NZL 13 luly 1955; --Waiting
for Daylight" Landfall 10 ( 19%): 296-7. "The Dead," Landfall 1 1 ( 1957): 148 appeared whiIe
Frame was living abroad. It is unclear if it was written whle she was at Sarseson's.
j Antfmny Eashope, Poetm as Discourse (Methuen: London, 1983) 43.
6
Robert Cl uert, Canadian Literarv Prose: A Prelirninarv Stvlistic A tIas (ECW Press: Toronto,
Ontario, 1990)2 1.
Eanhope conaans parataas with " s p t a x i ~ a. ~t e m erroneously used to denote hypotaus.
rather than clausal arrangement in general.
s
Denis Glover's Arawata Bill, for exampie, tends towards a 'low' style through parataxis: "ihe
pass was wrapped/ In a blanket of miw And the ratn carne again,/ And the wind whipped"
("Camp Site"). A piece by Gloria Rawlinson dernonsaates the qualities of the ' middle' style:
"Then he made the boy, the boy who stilU In autumn twilight shakes,when no wind snrsj The
yelIow apples korn the trees, or swings/ On oldest boughs; but he was not the boy;; ..." ('The
Boy"). Seiected fiorn: AlIen Cumow, ed, The Penmin Book of New Zealand Verse
(Auckland: Penguin, 1960) 226; 248.
9
Quirk and Greenbaum, A Universirv G r a m a r of Enalish (London: Longman, 1979) 3 12.
'O Geofnry N.Leech, A Linguisuc Gwde to Enelish Poetry Rondon: Longman, 1969) 184.
11
Quirk and Greenbaum's definition includes the opposite function: "...a positive rhetorical
question is like a strong neeative assertion, while a negative question is like a strong positive one
(200):'
' Novels: Frame. Faces in the Water (Christchurch: Pegasus Press. 1961; New York: Braziller,
196 1); The Edce of the Alphabet (Christchurch: Pegasus Press. 1963; New York: Brader,
1962);Scented Gardens for the Blind (Christchurch: Pegasus Press, 1963: London: W. H. Allen,
1963). Short Storv Collections: The Reservoir Stories and Sketches (New York: Braziller,
1963); Snowman, Snowman: Fables and Fantasies (New York: Braziller, 1963).
!'Eight separately published poems appeared between 1961 and 1969,at which point € m e
ceased publishing poetxy altogether. In 1967, F m e published her only collection of poetrv, The
Pocket Mirror: Poems (NewYork: BraziIler, London: W. Fi. Allen). Ail of Frame's poems are
documented in the only comptete and accurate bibliography of her poetry: Alexander Hart and
W. H. New, -'Janet Frame: An Eoumerarive Bibliography ta 1990," The Rine of Fire: Essavs on
Janet Frarne, e d Jeanne Delbaere (Sydney, NSW: Dangaroo Press, 1992) 246-250.
I4
-
cf.: Frame,h e e l 16.1-166.
 The Spedcing Spaces of Owis Do Crv

in the third volume of her autobiography, Janer Frame says: "1 prepared to

toierare the poeny I knew I would write in the mi& of witing my novel (Owls Do ~ r v ) . " '

Clearfy, Frarne h3d corne to view the writing of individuai poerns as secon* to witing 3 novel

and the publication of her individual poems diminished as fiction writing increrisingiy engaged

her. The srarement is less about generic precedence, however, than it is about the limits of

poew's "condensed irnagery" (Angel 165) and its correspondin& concise fonn. Frame does

e.uperiment with voice and point of view ù1her e d y poems, yet in other ways, includinç

snucwe, she adheres to established modes of expression. With the exception of "Waiting for

Daylight", each of the poems progress from its beginning towards epiphany and closure.

Ftame's continued w-ritingof poetry merges verse and prose in her novels, ailowing her to

e.uperirnent at length with the expressive capacities of boti~What exacdy happens when

Ftame's poep becomes part of the fictive process? How does interte;utuaIiv shape Frarne's

style and the m y s in which her writing makes meaning? What are the thematic and fomal

results of the interplay between the verse passages and the prose narrative within which they are

placed? To find answers to these questions, 1 begin with an examination of the patterns formed

by verse and prose in Owls Do Crv.

Frame's cntics and reviewers approach the poetry in her novels as subordinate or

oppositional to the prose. Pamck ~ v a n s ffor example, simply glosses the themes and imagrq

of the verse and, then, oniy when connections with the prose narrative are apparent. Gina

'
~ e r c e rasserts Frame's '*subversion" of the novel Y a genre through disniphon by poetic foms
and subject rnatter. The argument that foilows fiom Mercer's line of tho@t is piausible but

incornpiete. One may reverse the focus and suggest that Frame is also breaking open and

subvemng the seif-contained worid giimpsed through the peephole of a poern. Reaching an

understanding of the poetics informing Frame's novels requires a deeper e.uamination of the

verse passages than myone has done so far. ffer expressed attitudes to poeûy and prose add

breadth, revealins not a hierarchicd perception of the zenres, but a vision of valuarion jenerareci

by their users.

When Frarne was w r i ~ Owls

g Do Crv in 1956 it was not a new idea for a New

Zealand writer to use poetry in a novel. Robin Hyde. for instance, included her own poems and

those of othen in her novel The Godwits Fiv (1938).' In .h&ne1 at mv Table, Frame touches

on ~odwits'while recalling a conversation with F d Sargeson about Hyde:

'Xobin Hyde aiways used to lie down. She would corne lirnping in
here and fling herself down on the bed"
''Oh-"
'Have you read her books?"
"I've heard of them," I said, "1 know some of her poems."
1 didn't say that 1 had read an essay which described her 1st novel
as "fanîasywithout bailast",the phrase staymg in my mind as an
eauampleof what to e.xpect from critics if one wrote a novel. What
did it mean? Did fmtasy need bdIast? I felt interest in such
territory because aithough i'd not had personal experience of
lnhabiting unreiieved fantasy, i had known those for whom t'antasy
was its own ballast. They were then free,but nowhere (Frame,
.4ngel 140).

The Godwits Flv, like Owls Do Crv, is at Ieast partly autobio-pphical. Hyde's inclusion of

poeny in the novel is important to her characterization of the heroine, Eliza Hannay, because it

suggests in E I h a poetic spirir akin to Hyde's o w n 6 Hyde's technique of using poerry as a

means of filfing out and intensi@ng characten'zation resembies Frame's, especiaily where poeny

is the means by which a c b c ~ eaccesses

r his or her private wortd of imagnanon But for

Frame. much more than for Hyde, both poeay and prose are reginers to be used for the

exploranon and illumation of profound concerns about individual and social uses of languqe.

Frame's double vision of language divides roughiy dong the lines of Saussure's
-
parole and lanme. ' She sees language both as discrete, amibutable utterances, and as a çystem

that is apparentty self-evolving and therefore, uqovemable by its users in the actitity of

utterance making and in the more important process of one's living each &y. Hence, Frame's

interest in the effect that The Godwits Rv had on its criric and in the "nowhere""territory" that

this effect suggests to her. She senses the existence o f ' places' which language circumscribes

and society sanctions while dso recogninng assertions of individual cenuicity. even in the fixe

of social and cutturai marginalization.

in Owls Do Crv, as in most of Frarne's wn'ting, she e,uamines versions of centre

and margin, looking always to their shfting gourds and the silent 'speaking'spaces between

them. Out of ths examination, Frame assesses how siution and time continuaOy affect

language and perception. She m e r questions how it is that distinctions of al1 sorts may stand

us such in the purview of individuals and society as a whole. To this en4 Frame's combination

of poetry and prose creates friction on many levels of the novel and illuminates the separarion

benveen the genres. But an array of allusions speak to and of the silence within this space,

discovering an eloquent dialogue in hushed division. Owls Do Crv takes a hard look at the many

divisions that are embeddod in language and that. by extension, imprint a11 personal endeavours.

[t reveals deleterious aspects of linguistic ' encapsularions,' ranging from the Frustrations that
ineffability presents to the inadequacies of cultural clichés, and the perniciousness of institution-

based classificririons. Frame sees thar there are bridges as weil as divisions in lmguage. but aiso

that her society, modem Western society, suppresses cornmunicanon throua its institutions.

working nther to dot individuals into separate, manageable groups.

Owls Do C m is as much about junctures and blurred boundanes as it is about

lines of demarcation and their uses. The motif of the masure hunt is the s u a t e g Frame adopts

in approaching the first of rhese themes, while the murder mystery illuminates the second- The

opening Iyrical passage alludes to both, although the allusion to h e second is oblique: "...and the

davs above bunt unheeded ...mock the last intuitive whodunnit whodunnit o f the summer

-
ttuush..."8 The placement of Daphne, the -singer" of the lyrics and the eldest Living sister. in

"thedead toom" (ODC1 l), filIs out the colloquid generic reference and, in the novel's

conclusion, newspaper repons of murders and trials reinforce the previous retêrences. The

motifs of treasure hunting and murder mystery appear to be separate, as childhood experiences in

contras to those of a d u l t f i d Yet even with these evident contrarîes, Frame creates areas of

overiap and interconnection. For instance. in the second part of the novel, "Twenty Years After",

the youngest sister, Teresa ("Chicks").now a mother, writes in her diary: "1 have enjoyed

reading Jemima Puddleduck by Beamx Potter.... It was aIrnost like real life with its intnpe and

near-murder." (ODC132) The admixture of chldhood ruid adultbood bien& through Teresa's

writing down her sense of a t e s that is intended for children but, neverthe!ess, is overlaid with

adult perceptions of life.

Frarne draws on one of the geat examples of conjoined contraries: Blake's Sones

of Innocence and of Experience: Shewine the Contraries of the Human Soul ( 1794). She
specificalty points to the "Tnnoduction"to the Sones of Innocence i 1789) in the first lines of

Daphne's lyics: "THE DAY is eariv wirh birds beeinnina and the wren in a cioud pioing like the

child in the -mm,d r o thv . h a u ~ vDI=-" (ODC i 1 ) The "Introduction" is a pastoral

~ ~ i wthv

lyric rvfiich, in the classical sense of the pastoral, depicts a menacing Nature withm the idyll

itse\~*innocence does not s~andîlone; experience m u s be apprehended as its counterpart. The

poem describes a piper who, upon seeing a child on a cloud, is asked by the chld f i r s to pipe a

son$ then to drop the pipe, sine "'song of happy chear'-*''and. lastly:

"Piper, sit thee down and writei

in a book that al1 may read",'
So he vanished from my sighb'
And 1 plucked a hollow reed,
And I made a rural p e n ~
And 1 stain'd the water clear:
And I wrote my happy songs!
Every child may joy to h e a d

Singing from the dead room, Daphne expresses the k a s impending adulthood has held and

continues to hold for her. She hears the w e n as Blake's piper h e m the chiid and inspired also.

she m c n b e s her songs. joys and fears.

The expression ofjoy is monito-. tike adanger sign. it seeks to protect

innocence. But, as Frarne knows, such warnings are not prfectly success%i: "...-

rnioht have known, which is the thoueht before the stealth of fate:..." (ODC 1 1 ) Frame links the

transition of the word From speech to wntren character with the chld who gows up and with 3

defiling of song - a 'pure' lanpage - by ink, the once clear water, now stained. Hue. innocence

is tiilly valued only with its loss, and then it is ceiebrated with and in a tàllen lan,auage. Other

obvious literary allusions include G e l ' s Song from The ~emwst," Greek mythology!.:' and
Dylan Thomas's Fem Hill ("Tirne hefd me green and dyrng ïhough I sang in rny chains like the

sed' [1946]). 'j Taken together, d l the ailusions impart intertextuai resonances of ihreatened

innocence, time, dath, spiriniai rebinh, and. through the combinanon of their shared image?

and syrnbols, creative effort in writing.

Patrick Evans believes that the works of ail the witers whose influence Fnme

simpiy a worid but & worlQ embracing al1 possible acts and
citesi' fom, for her, -*no<

emotions and eventualities."(32) He sees men her use of Shakespeare as reflecting -'a reader's

interest..simply (to) provide confirmation and illustration of her own ideas." (33) Only one

w-riter, ro his mina exerts aa influence over her style:

...the influence's of Rilke's "Sonnets to Orpheus" (src)is cleariy

different, for aione of ail works this volume has ciearIy and
substantially affected the style and subject matter of Janet Frame's
fiction,particularly the exlier novels, to the exrent that Rilke's
poeay might be seen as the alembic in which her entire art was
formed (33)

Unfomately, Evans offen no M e r expianation of his sense of Frame's style or of kIkefs

precise stylistic influence. As weli, he begs the question of the effect of Frame's having read

Rilke in translation. There can be no doubt of Rilke's intluence in many aspects, but "her entire

art" is not the distiIlate of his poetry done, which Evans's metaphor sugests. As 1 noted in

relation to Frame's early poetm, by the time she begins Owls Do Cm,her synmx and rhetoncal

constructions are both consistent and idiosyncratic. The distinctive features of her style are

clearly ber own. Given this relative stabiiity, Frame's use of parody and other depamres fiom

her usual stylistic propensities result in richly emphatic textures of expression.

 Dylan Thomas's "Fern Hill" exerts the mongest influence on the opening of Owls

Do Cm. Daphne's Iyic echoes that poem on many levek: imagery and use of coiour. season and

animate semng certain aspects of the subject matter, the point-of-view that looks back on

chiidhood: use of deictic pointers; and so on. iMany of the echoes are inverted, giving a beautifid

unrrpodean response to this e.uample of a British romantic pastoral lyic. "Fern Hill" alternatcly

celebrates and mourns a lost solden age ofchildhood innocence, the @fi of Time personified.

Daphne's lyrîc iniüally reflects this same theme and cetebratory tone. But, in the second

sentence, the tone shifi with a predicateless (and therefore seemingly vapid) intejecrion: ''ah
the t i ~ s vwee mal1 hours of insects that iive uwn the crbpled mass blades and the face of the

first flower alive"( O K 11) This interjection rnocks romanticisrn's nostalgie, often psuedo-

contemplative attitude and reveals it as a cliché that dupes the willing ignorant who would

believe in pathetic fallacy.

In "Fern Hill" lefi-branched, hypotacuc sentences dominate. Suspension is a

favourite device, reflecting the speaker's dwelling on youthfid joy. Delay in jeaing co the c e n d

theme and the grammatical subject, "Tirne", typifies the two sentences that each make up the

fïrst two stanzas. The poem consists of six stanms, nine lines in each, tuith on1y Iines one and

two. and six and seven meeting the iefi-hand margn. Lines three, four, five, and eight and nine

are cenued, with four and eight being shoner than al1 the rest: the apperirance then is of an

hourglass and one-half, or, hvo minus one-haif. Either way. the tirne of chiidhood is whole, and

that of adulthood tmncated.

The synta,, of Daphne's first lyrïc is ri#(-branched and compounded. The

linkage of the independent clauses in the first paragraph is ovenvhelmingly polysyndetic: seven
a&s and one in cicven independent clauses, rwo of wbich have impIied subjects and one an

implied predicator. Right-branching and sytdeton @ve ths piece of prose-poeq a clear,

apparentiy Iinear narrativity that cornes tiom the focus piaced on the fiontal position of the

subjects and the relativeiy e d y gammarical completeness of the independent clauses.

This tendency varies fiom the patterns noted in Frame's eéirly poetry and is almost

completely antithetical to -'Ferri Hill". Thomas's hypomxis ends up heightening the centrality of

the subjea "Time," which the shape of the poem's first two stanzas i l l ~ ~soe obviously
s .

Frrurie gives primacy to no single subject relying on the curndative dismbution of ciauses rather

than culminauon En the first paragraph of Daphne's first lyric the grammatical subjects are

diverse and sornewbt seneric, despite their definite articles: "Theday": "the wren": "the place";

"Y;"thedays"; etc. Where Thomas retied on the penonification ofTime, Frame avoids that

trope,even though the world Daphne creates in Song is both animate and highly affective.

The processes of nature and tirne are never benevolent for Daphne. The connection she
once drew between henelf and name resuits from ignorance more tfian h m innocence:

and I ~Iantedcarrot seed that never came UV. for the wind breathed
a blow-awav spell;.... and it said to dant the carrot seeds IightIv
under a cotton-thin blanket of eanh. vet thev sank too d e e ~or
dried un.. (ODC1 1)

Daphne l e m s that lan,%ge easily misrepfesents States of being and potentialities ana seeins

this. she asks:

...lush ofsurnrner. ves, but what use the oreen river. the coid place.
if tirne and death uinned human in the uocket of mv land not rest
from takine underaraund the meen all-willowed and white rose
and bean flower and morning-mist ~icnicof sonr in ~ e p ~ e r - W C
breast of thnish? (WI I )
Thrs rhetoricd quetion seerns ro impiy a neptive assertion If "tirneand death" tabei Daphne

"human"and, sa. dienate her tiorn her "Iand", living wodd be too painfùf and. uitimateiy, Futile.

Yet Daphne's lyrics and the omniscient speaker's whole namtive speak against thrs sense of

htility. They nun langage upon itself: they reflect and transfomi the woràs "...ir is that wav,

and it seems h t wav. to fit in;" (ODC I 1 ) into a positive discovery and recuperation of

humanness and & l

langage acts.

The closing paragaph of the first lyric regsers Daphnetsdisgust for rituals that
imply an integrated wholeness of being but which ignore gaps and fadures in the alignment of

e'cperience and perception witb the envisioned gestalt. She satirizes the annual routines of

Christmas, which she now sees through adult eyes. The disappointment attached to the planring

of the carrot seeds underscores this paragaph, and the ami-nostalgie point of view continues.

Here, n'me is focused and precise: the opening phrase, "And now", which is emphatically

repeated, juxtaposes "The &y" and "the days".

The "now" that begins "Fern Hill" ( fWowas 1 was young and easy...") c o n t r a s

with Frame's use. Each brings the past into the present, but with significantly different

emphases: Thomas's is initial with a p a s tense predicator, while Frame's is medial with a

present tense predicator. Funhennore. Thomas weakens the tempoml deixis of the word "Now"

because its funcrion, unlike Ftame's, is primarily as a vocative inrejection. For Frarne. this word

connotes a present moment fraught with the potentialities of choice and action, and the constant

presence of the past in a moment gives up both warning and tresure as it points towards a
vision of the Future that brings together al1 phases ofbeing. Like a microcosm of the novel, this
first lyic [ooks backward and vie\= the roots of individuation and alienation, then suddenly

jumps forward to examine how these processes are c k e d forward and manifested

There are many Iayers of inthence in Owls Do Crv as a whole. Looking at the

explicit intextextuality of Daphne's first lyricai passage through the most immediate influences

illuminates the conte.- and resonances of Frarne's fim novel: it is a t e x set up in relation to

other te=, literary, in a specific sense, and linguistic, in the broadest sense. From the beginning,

Owls Do Cm gains its own voice out of an interplay with other wrinen works, die miculanon of

which points to the presence of diaIogism elsewhere in the novel. For example, at the end of the

tkst Iyrical passage. the narrator seps forward to state: "SingsD a ~ h n efiom the dead room." No

quotation marks appear in the passage (nor in those coming d e r ) . M e a d , the forma1 marker of

both the speech act taking place here and the intertextuai dialogue to denote the speech act is the

hyperbatic arrangement of a predicator preceding its subject The clause "Sinos Danhne..."

announces a convergence of t e m l events through its elevated, oratorical form of address.

The sarne clause recurs throughout Owls Do Crv. It reveals how Frame uses the

Song, as a genre, to enter the point of transition between poetry and prose, creating a ' place' for

inter-genenc dialogue. Here. the lyricism that is implicit in most contempocary poetry connects

with a level of narrativity now generaliy associated with prose." Despite the ~ g a p h i c a l

conventions of the novel, whose format shapes Owls Do Cm, Frarne draws on and evokes the

orality of the chorus. Written, then, in poetic prose that suggests speech, the son? that opens

Owls Do Cm irnmediatety breaks and bridges the silence implied in the distinction of poetry and

prose. And as the novel progresses. the italicized passages increasingly break d o m into poetic

-
lines opening that space on the page wtiich prose literally covers because of its adherence to
le%@ right-hand rnargins. In the silence of the distance that Frame delineates between the

prose and the poerry. the powers of divisive social and linguinic strucrures stand out ciearly.

rtiough Iiteraily invisible. the presence and supposed authority of these structures is palpable.

Cherry Hanktn notes Frame's use of iralics in Owls Do C m in comection Wlth

nanative elernents in generai:

...other rnembers of the Withers family, during periods of stress or

dream, use Daphne's rather than their own patterns of thought...
These episodes, together with the italicized passages of prose-
poetry wbich are scattered throughout, suggest the positive vaiues
of the book even a s b e y comment upon and evaluate the
characters thernselves.l6

Kankin views the mixed-genre itaiicized passages as a m d o m corrective' to the prose sections
'

and their conventional elernents. This simplification of Frame's overall narrative technique does

not look at the many uniralicized passages of poetic prose in Owk Do Crv, and, most important

with regard to the argument of "pattern of thougfit", the unitalicized section of descriptive prose

in chapter fourteen which Daphne narrates in the fim person,

Anna Rutherford cornes cioser to reading the relationship between the italicized

passages and the narrative as a movement towards co~ection:"Janet Frame constantly stresses

the difficdty of communication...This of course presents technical problems - how can one
communicate the inabiliv to communicate.? A blank page. How cm these people reveal the

mnh? The italicized semons of Owls Do Crv is one anempt to solve the prob1em."'7 This brief

comment approaches Frame's interest in the processes of fracture and binding, however,

Rutherford focuses on patterns of division and distinction to the exclusion of inter-relationships

and inter-dependency. Thus, she does not explore the threshotd berween Frame's "this"world

and "that". '

The reiationship between the italicized passages and the linear narrative of Owis

-
Do Crv is emcmefy cornpiex It engages many Ievcls, modes, and even slight thou& ùnpormnt.

m e s of signification. For a starr, one bas ody to consider the interte.utuality of ths novel to

grasp its diverse interna1 and extemai reactions. There are enormous difficuities. therefore. in

attempting to chart the fui1 nanue of the italicized passages as Frame intenveaves them with the

narrative. Xot the Ieast dificulty is the resistance the novel offers to absolutin impulses.

especially whle at the sarne time baiting them!

There is a table of contents in Owls Do Crv. It indicates the novel's dit-ision into

the two parts, "Talk of Treasure"and "TwentyYem After", plus the epdogue. "Anyonewe

know?". "Twen'y Years Mer" is subdivided into sections named after the living sibiings:

"Toby";"Chicks";and "Daphne". The "Afteflin the title ofpart w o refers ro after the death of

the etdest sister, Francie. who died at age twelve when she feil into a tire at the dump which die

chkiren fiequented in search of "treasure". The before' and 'afief rime pends are nor as clear-
'

cut as the table of contents denotes. Daphne sin@ her openin3 Song from "the dead room".a

metaphoncal place the final two chapters of "'falk o f Treasure" reveal as the psychiatnc

institution where she !s undergohg ECT. To start. then, Daphne's first Song both foreshadows

and looks back upon the story that unfolds the roman type nmtive. Daphne's perceprions give a

pamcular shape to the evenrs experienced by a11 the members ofthe Withers famiIy. She alone

does not try to forset their collective pain, and she atone accepts that creativity is born of

sutTering and m e n death. Poetic diction and structures. a l o n with the italics, crnphasizt this
sensibiIity even when the voice is not e'cplicitly Daphne's. In "Talk of Treasure",the italicized

passages are unÿiily narrateci by Daphne. but this not always the case throughout Owls Do Cm."

Chapter five occurs early in "Tdkof Treasure". ft is the first lenghy italicized

passage &er Daphne's opening lyric. The phrase "Sina h ~ h n From

e the dead room"open5 the

ch apte^ the rest is told in the fim person. Daphne describes her retreat tiom a world which she

sees as based upon blind existence, into an inner sancnim where she processes the pain of Iivinç:

Sometimes in this world i have thouht the niefit will never finish
and the reaI citv corne no nearer and 1think 1wiIl stand for a
breath under the hwe blue-oum tees that I have in mv mind Mv
mes are used to the dark and as I see the tail trees with their bark
haif-mipped and the whitish flesh of trunk revealed underneath I
think of mv father savine to me or Tobv or Francie or Chicks,
J'lI fiav the skin off vour hide. I wil1. And I know that a wiId night
wind has swken those same words to the gum-mees ... IODC 2 3 )

In many ways these exterior and interior worids minor one another, particulariy in the power

smicnires Daphne sees in both. She does not see herseIf as the conuoller even of her onm

animace. intenor world Instead, she u n d e m d s char uncontroIIable forces pervade a11 levels

and aspects of being. The lesson of the carrot seeds killed the wdl of the chiId Daphne to

presume such potver for herself.

Chapter tïve represents Daphne's working through her grief at her sister's death.

The condition of ni& that extends From "thrs world" to the worid in Daphne's rnind retlecrs her

p e t : and even when day breaks there is no sun, nothing but min and cloud. Feelings of

transition, disjunction. and connectedness are al1 prominent aspects of this representation of

Daphne's g e v i n g process. The section actuaily precedes Francie's death, in relation ro the order

of the nanative of the s t o p itself This chronologicril incon,wiry reinforces the way Daphne's
experience disorients the rnind of the reader, who c m reaiize oniy Iater thar Daphne's grief is the

finai camiyst in a series of painfiil moments which Iead to her recreat into an interior world.

Frame's syntax and sentence boundanes in chapter five reflect the spatial and

temporal movements of Daphne's thought processes. As in the fint lyric, the primary concerns

are tirne, place. the speaking "ln."and rnemory. which are nateci. in that order. in the first

sentence: "Sometimesin this world I have thoueht..." Again, right-branching sentences and

polysyndetic coordination of independent clauses (IC's) predominate. However, rwo key

sentences" and two ICs within ri@-branching sentences are lefi-branching and hypotactic.

recailing the syntax of the early poems.

Deictic markers of time control the tempo of Daphne's thoughts fiom the outset.

Two such markers occur in the oniy tefi-brmching fC's in the first paragaph: "Sometimes....

-
and as 1 see the ta11 trees.... then even the sun travefs from dark to dark...." (myde-

emphasesj. The effect is m ordering of Daphne's imagined vision that lends it the surface

appearance of 'rational progressr. But it is ciear that ths ' progess' is in fact an approach to grief

that arises h m an imagistic crowding of mernories and a resimnce to and blun-Ïng of the order

of their a c u l chronology.

Frarne orders her sentences and IC's with a very obvious reliance on

polysyndeton. The coordinator "and" apperirs protùsely (never "but" or "or") in the first half of

the chapter in both initiai and medial positions. The surface order of sequence and certain-

nevenheless wavers with the clausai seriation. which, in the Hebrew fashion, avoids

specification of relations:

And know....
 And there is the skin hangin? in stn'us.... and I take off mv shoes
and the m - n u t s dig: in mv ket and I walk to the foreshore of
Waim m...lPDC 22)

The sense of a progressive order, speciously reinforced by the repetition of "and"as a

coordinator of lC1s,
break down as Daphne imagines people feeling the death inherent in life:

"...cil1 the ~ e o ~become

le eroded with the a e e n moth and al! crv inside themselves. Help. H ~ D . "

( ODC 22) After this stafemenq "and" lacks the force to si_@@ a comection based on a l inear

coherence of t h o u g k Hereafier, coordination of IC's with "and"becomes less Frequent and

except once, it only occus in the initial position. Beginning with the line: "And rhen even the

sun travek from dark to dark and 1 am not the sun"; the basis for coordination is now cleariy an

associational, often figurative, identification.

The shifi in the effect of what is esentially the same method of IC coordination
underscores a shift in the aspect of the prose with the insertion of lines of poe- between

paragaph blocks. Typically, die fim Iener of =ch poetic line is upper case.- nie mode of

address ref ects those staples of Frame's earIy poetry, apostrophe and the rhetorical question:

Yes. even the suni

And whv will it rain so much after the night?/
-
RainJ
UD north in the winter-time or midsummer the rain d n ~ in
s sheets
of silver DaDer....
**************************************
And the footoath in the nonhern citv?/
It melts under vour feet.!
And the rain falls in silver pamr.,' (ODC 23,13)

The apostrophe is direct and affirmative, acknowiedging an auditor who is not simply

eavesdropping but who is engaged in the thought processes that Daphne now represents in
poetry. The firn question is also affirmative, asserting symbolically that sonow will remain

d e r the time of grieving It provides the key word "raïn", which symbolizes tears anci sorrow.

Furthemore, "min*'becornes the node word for al1 subsequent images in the chapter. With this

connectedness of irnagery and syrnboIism, the "why" of the h t question slides fiom usage for

effect toward a non-rhetorid, genuine quest for information.

The second quesaon in the conte'xt of this slippage, is then even less a rhetotical

one. It signifies Daphne's movement towards seeking answers outside the bounds of the

rhetoncai c o m c t . Daphne subverts the setf-containment of the rhetoricai question by showing

its conception of an answer to be sirnplistic. She draws her addressewreader into an inquiw of

sorrow through an idioqmcratic and associational confluence of thoughr, time, and situation.

Yet the role of language in t!!is inquiry is never accepted as neutrai. Daphne foregrounds and

cven refashions the conventions of these rhetorid devices to demonmate where and how

linguistic hand-me-doms may allow for idiolect

The chapter cIoses witti two small paragrriphs of poetic prose, erich of which

informs and reflects the other:

And a kin-sher, colour-fast. will sit on a teiegra~hwire and be

moked and sing with the silver dazzle.
Oh Francie. Francie was Joan of Arc in the ~lav.w e a r i n ~a helmet
and breastplate ofsilver cardboard. She vas burned, was burned
al the stake. (ODC 23)

in the narntive of the children's earfy lives, Francie has sung Anel's song "Where the bee sucks"

and played Joan of Arc in a school play, ironically foreshadowing her own death. Daphne Iooks

back on these things, henelf singing, rnetaphoricaily Iike the kingfisher on the teicgraph wire. as
s he b a r s the "siIver&le" of ECT treaments. Though she understands that language is itself

terriMn5 and that its powers of reveIarion are rooted in pain, and men abuse. nonetheiess,

Daphne chooses to explore her interior world through Song In the 'space'thar she designates,

she adapts language in order to deal adequately with her own pain and terrors.

"Tdkof Treasure"ends with chapters thirteen and fourceen registerïng the fidl
effect oCFrancielsdeath on Daphne. The third person speaker nanates chapter thirteen which is

an intimate, ironic, and ovenly iitemy description of the psychiaaic hospitai and ECT

perfonned en masse. The nanacor's omniscient point of view at once details general personal

horrors and ref3ect.s Daphne's loss of individuality and authority during treaunent: ".bdthe

women, submitàng their teeth, their eyes, their lives, mite. ernbarrassed or mad in their world of

mass red flannet."(ODC560 Funher reflecting this Ioss is the breakdown of the prose into

tiagments that resemble poetry in that some clauses are offset slightiy From the Iefi-hand margin

but the overall line arrangement is as for prose, not verse:

The nurse.... smiIes upon God or the devil who stands ready to
signal her with the lift of the hanci, a widening of his eyes. a signai
as secretive as a screm
and the head of the writhing crocodile is broken off. dragged
through the door at the end of the room.
and the door flings open Iike bvo paIms which gesture,
Cela m'est e d . Cela m'es cal. (ODC 56ff)

Daphne herseif narrates chaprer fourteen, reaffirming her voice in the first person

in b o a the genres of prose and poetry. Italicized poetry opens and closes the chapter, and is

unmediated by the narrarois usuai statement: "Sinjzs Daphne h m the dead room." The poetry
cieririy does came out of that same pIace and time, tttough, mon obviousiy since it continues

chapter five's image- of grief marryrdorn, and the "telemoh \viret':

Oh the wind is lodged forever in the telegraph wire for C M ~ W

there on a m v dav on the lonetiest ofroads of dust and m v e Y
...and the cross the crucifix/
of the leaninsz mies linked bv the everiasting wire of crviniq
of the wind lad-d forever in the teieeraoh wire for crvine; there..
(ODC 60)

Tirne md place shift to the earlier scene of the story3 n m t i v e in the unitalicized prose and

dialogue which make up the body of the chapter. The prose presents an earlier Daphne. as weil:

"Now that 1, Daphne, am the eldest sister, the eldest in the famiIy, not counting Toby who takes

fits and lies sometimes in hospita1 with Iips lolling together...." (ODC 6 1 )

Difierence through con- stands out as a major mategy in this ctosing chapter to "Tdk

of Treasure": iWics/rornan type; poenyiprose; beforefafter ECT;DaphneToby: and so on. Yzt

as in Daphne's fim lyric, this chapter eaupressesand manifests a vision of conjoined contraries.

Underlyïng the boundaries which exist as 'fact' is Daphnetsapprehension of ume and space as a

conanuum in which boundanes are not barriers to her expiorauons of "this" world and "that"

W.D. .bhcroft descnbes "( Daphne's) success in breaking out of time.. ..f which )

contrasu vividly with Bob's and Amy's (her parents) slavish dependence on mechanical time,

Daphne does reject "mechanicalrime1'but

symbolized by their three clocb in the I~tchen."~~'

cannor "break out of urnewaltogether-'' She knows that "time and deadi ~innrdhuman in the

pcket of mv land" (ODC 1 I), meaning that being human being subject to the passage of tirne

between the moments of binh and death. Human tirne is "the time of living, the unseen always"
(0DC 34), which is at once the period of one's existence as a physical being and the "timeless

sense of Being (Sein)"that Ashcroft (41) points out.

Chapter fourteen draws poerry and prose diaiogicaily doser than anywhere eise rn

the novel. The device that interweaves the genres is merno-, and as an aspect of Daphne's

interior journey, memory is the device through whch the speaking personae. chtld-Daphe and

adult-Daphe. corne tosether in their own intene.YNal dialogue. Memory runs dong the maze-

iike time-space continuum, evoking pleasure or pain:

And so on and on. And we walk like Theseus or an ashman in thel

Iabvrinth. with our memones unwound on threads of siIk or fire:.,
and &er davins bv what power the minotaurs of our vefter&v/
we return m i n and amin to the binh of the tbread. the Where.1 (ODC6 3 )

Memory is aot itself a j o w e y of seif-discovery, but it is the device essential to that journey

Daphne's Ioss of memory cutç her off from her past and threatens her joumey: "And childhood is

nothine, it is onlv the wind in the teleeradu wire for c ~ n there,

g the toothache in the cavitv of

ni!& ..." (ODC 60)

Daphne's mernories centre on her mother, the one who connects the family

members, and the one who, almost Iiteraily, is the birthpiace of Daphne's "thread"of memory.

Amy Withers is " a h i dof her husband (ODC 20): and. so, is subservient; and her faith is biind:

"You codd not see faith, but it was somewhere to help, like the air that was to uncrease the

school ninics..." (ODC 54) But her strength is abounding love, the expression of which her

husband thwarts. Daphne sees that the compensation is "foodand clothing... that wvs Our

motheis way of love" (ODC 6 3 )

 Expressions of Amy WithersJçlove extend to rnaw discourse forms: story-telling

( "Theirgrandmother was a Negress who long ago..." [OûC 127); ierter-writing ("Mymother

writes leners to the papei' [ODC 301); popuiar son@ and her own ("Francie. corne in vou

naughtv birdlthe min is murine down..." [ODC 60;i83]; and scripture ("Laynot uo for

vourseives treasures uDon ~" [ODC 601). Daphne quotes her mother e.nensively in the poetry

of chapter founeen. And in the process, Daphne retunis "tothe binh of rhe thread the Where",

diseovering that langage is the place' where memol is bom and re-born.
'

"Takof Treasure"closes with Daphne's description of the banier ECT has placed

beween h e r d f aud mernories she no Iongerfeels. The words gather together her p s t , presenf

and future in the promise of Song:

And the skv is now a blue mask to cover memorv. the ledaers, the:
wonder beneath dass,'
Rapwisel. Rapunsel, let down vour hair.!
B o p thv ~ i wthv
, h a u ~ vpipe./ (ODC64.)

The l a s Iine evokes mraordinary pain and irony, for we know fiom chapter thirteen that the

pipe of Blake's child now symbolizes Daphne's gaivanized pain and creativil: "Unconscious,

the head goans and writhes... and the pipe (is) taken fiom its mouth as if, had it lain any Ionsr

there, it may have played too enticingly its mclody of bIindness." (ODC 57)

At the end of Daphne's first person prose narrative, Amy Wi thers rejects tfie ide3

that Toby be institutionalized becawe of his epilepsy: "...and they did not put you away Toby for

our mother said, always, - No child of mine. No cbild of mine.'' (ODC63) Yet Daphne

eventually is 'put away', and neither she nor the omniscient narrator indicate why or men when,

saying only " h d Daphne lived there alone for rnany years" (ODC158,160). The rwenty year
gulfbetween "Taik of Treasure" and "Twenty Years Mer" is the longest unnarrated period in

the book It remains untold in recognition rhat words are inadequate or inappropriate. The

siience. however suggestive or fecunh is an act of privacy.

Daphne speciks in the Grst person for the tlrst time ctironologicdlv &er Frarxcie's

death, and thereafier oniy in italicized passages. Her sections in "Talkof Treasure" relate IargeIy

to her sensibility and to her personal experiences. However, in "Twenty Years ..\ftei', they relare

directly to her family as individuais, specially to each of the remaining siblings. Of the three

subsecuons, only those named for Toby and Chicks are preceded by Daphne's isalicized prose.

Daphne's subsection, the las&contains only two lines of verse that may, or may not, be atcnbuted

to her.

"Talk of Treasure" shows the Withers family while it is complete. Like many

families, they live with the coexistence of their disparate individual needs and condiuons: .Snyfs

unanswered negd for expressions of Iove and recognition from others; Bob and Francie's

disagreements about the giri's desire IO act and dress as an adult; Daphne's fear of losing her

chiidlike sense of "treasure";Toby's epileptic fits; etc. Francie's d a t h ruptures the h i I y circie,

dislocating the tentatively balanced disparities. "Twenty Yean Mer" eauaminesthe family in its

h g n e n t e 4 dislocated state, with speciaI attention to the siblings' awareness of their familial

and persona1 incompieteness.

The haives of OwIs Do Crv represent N O approaches to divisions and disparities.

Overall, separations and inconyniities occur as a natwal condition of Iife as an insidious

conceptuai basis of human insrinitions. "Talk of Treasure" look mainly at the coexistence of

devalued or ignored disparities, illustraring that disparate peopie and reaiities need not be
homogenized even though a larger whok incorporates them. "Twenty Yzars Afiei' approaches

the issues of sirniIarity and difference tiom another perspective. It examines the effecrs of

sociatly enforced divisions and the enforced homogeniry fostered within these divisions. The

centrai tension here is between Daphne's sense of the possibility of an organic wholeness of

being and the rigid conformiry her society demands and enforces in order that & stay whole

according to its values. Paradoxicdly, the experience of fhgmentation as a Iife process is rhe

basis of both of these visions of wboleness.

"Twenty Years Mer"charts the fiagxnented lives and selves of the Withen

children while yet mmifesting, through tangage, their connectedness in back-to-back chapters.

Pamck Evans argues that the Family represents a single "'seif", "acomposite experience ranging

fiom the prosaic and nervousIy unimaginative Bab to the intensely spbolical experience of

Jeanne that the

characters are d l projections of Daphne's personality:

in al1 of the family the narrating Daphne makes her Orphrc

presence felt, invuhg the pnvacy of each and turning them into
various expressions o f her own experience. It is a process that
occurs in the Iatcr novels too, where the "dismemberment"of
Daphne... produces narrators and subsidiary characters dke.
(Evans67)

.As an assessrnent of Owls Do Crv the araurnent has merits, but is more relevant to the

succeeding novek, particularly Faces in the Water and Edee of the Aiphabet, and Scented

Gardens for the Blind, which quesnon the reievance of seif-identity at all. This question

overreaches the prirnary concern of Frame's first novel, which assumes,in Daphne. that one c m

know oncself and achîeve a sense of wholeness despite natural and social intrusions.
 Evans's teference to "the narrating Daphne" avoids cornmenring on the distinct

role of the third person narrator. Daphne's italicized sections are almosr aIways mediated by this

narrator. In Frame's Iater noveis. E d ~ of

e the Alohabet for one. it is very difficuit to distinguish

separate namrive voices. Daphne's vision of a wholeness of beiag incorpontes her family. since

common eqxriences exist among the farnily members. Still, her vision does not btur or take

away fiom the individual identities the characters develop eisewhere in the nanative. The

passages nanated in the fim person by Toby and Chicks stand out panicularly.'6

Daphne's identity is attacked with ECT and, ultimately, with brain surgery. But

despite the attacks and cheu effect on her memorv, Daphne assens her psychic wholeness.

contrasUng it with the inability of her brother and sister to attain self-knowledge and, therefore,

wholeness of being. Toby dreams of Daphne saying to him:

...We have dug the pit and he who diggeth the pit s hall fall into it;

but that is only Francie, the witch who dug fire; and Chicks,Teresa
now, has filled the pit wi& silver and copper and gold and three
children and Timothy Harlow, and builds a house over the pit, to
live there: and L, Daphne, live unburned in the centre, brought to
the confusion of the dream: and yoy Toby, are there and not there,
journeyng haif-way which is al1 torment... (ODCIO 1f)

The imagery of being halved pertains not only to Toby, to whom Daphne sings in

the poem that opens his chapter: "...and when vou die l.... I will sav vou lived in a half-world...."

(ODC 67) Teresa entes a passage of italicized verse in her diary, and says of herself: "1 am half

Daphne in writing this. it is not my mual way; as if a spell had corne over me." (ODC1-12)

Daphne's chapter ends with Daphne sensing her imminent leucotomy: "...andI die tomorrow
when the snow falls cnss-cross criss-cross to dam the believed crevice of my world" (ODC

Both Toby and Teresa experience reveries in which words that they attribute to

Daphne point to and resound within the spaces of their fkgmented selves. But the words have

no healing power, because "...thehollow house wiIl never 5e fiIled." i ODC 1 16) Daphne's

poem at the beginning of "Toby"expresses geat [oveand the wish for wholeness in her fami1y.

but, at the same time, it accepts this wish a s an impossr'biIity.

The great beauty of Daphe's poerry here, and in the opening of "Chicks".is chat

it is a @fi of Iove-words. gtanting provisional wholeness of being. The words are reminiscent of

Amy Withers's "way of love":

Tobv. I will give vou a loaf of blue air from wheat that qro:vs/
in the skv. and trawl the wastins seas for paradisal shoal of7
m... (ODC67)
And now Daphne in the dead room has taken the small stone cuw
of nui mured hroueh the hi&-up wîndow- and d i t the colci/
mass to whear and feeds the white fowis..,.
*********************************************
-What finesse of tastine todav. sina Daohne, lauohine toàav.!
But c r v i n ~too, for the liaiest chicken, Iike wattle. under/
the bie dark box. unable to se... (ODC 1 17)

The second poem quoted is From the opening of "Chicks".Along with the poem

that innoduces "Toby",rhis is the only other extended passage of Daphne's verse in "Twenty

Years Afier." The narrator intmdes increasingly from the one jmem to the ne- until Daphne

does not speak in the fim person at al1 in her own subsection. Her poetq is vircually silenced.

Two unartributed itaiicized lines of verse reflect Daphne's ravased condition and appear to
prophesy the vision of whokness for which she stands: "And the u e v Crater of the longdead

mad lies emm enoudu to be filled with manv rnrths together." (ODC 166j

The process of silencing both Daphne and poem in "TwentyYears Mer"

ovemdes her hope for a state of wholeness that wodd grow tiom her e.xperience of

displacement, hgmentation and damage. The siIence finally speaks the "melody of bfindness".

Tholtgh her pipe has been removecf, that quietened urr connotes what has been done to Daphne's

perspective and her ability to express it. Daphne's silenced narrarive reveals, in negative. the

paradoxical divisiveness of social tenets that mean to telescope the wants of al1 people.

îoby's and Teresa's grand obsessions, money and social status tbrough material

wealth, resdt fiom a lack of imagination, the dtimate blindness for Daphne. Her silenced

poeq speaks through the blinding prose, assemng a ghostly presence wliile still making the

reader aware of its absence. Daphne's vision of wholeness. then, is gained M l y just when it is

lost. The novel reaches its close without Daphne's poetry, and yet the interplay of p o e l and

prose esrabiished frorn the outset of Owis Do Crv resonates, challenging the generic exclusivity

of the terms "novel", "prose" and "poeay".

By the end of OwIs Do Crv, Daphne's Ieucotomy makes it fn'ghteningly apparent

that identiry,just like other f o m s of categonzation, is relative and mutable according to the wilI

of others. Social and linguistic practices exist prim to individual lives and they create identity

even before an individual inhabits her own self Daphne's defiluice of the n o m s of her society

results in a surgcal answer to the ' problem'. Chcks's desire to be called by her ' reai' narne,

Teresa, is a Iess alarming e.uample of the relativity of one's identity, but it is no Iess pointed.
 The epilogue to Owts Do Crv, "AnyoneWe Know?", pokes fun at the notion of

one persornone idenaty by reversing the standard writef s disctaïmer, "Any resemblance to

pesons living or dead is purely coincidentai... etc."" Two suburban Kiwis (theman. literdly:

"...likea chinese gooseberry grown arms and legs ...O [ODC2091) are readrng sensationaiimc
newspaper reports. After each accouat, the narrator reveals that the peopIe involved are

chmcters of the novel we have just finished, including Teresa (murderd by husband), Tobias

(convictedof vagrancy), and Daphne (prornoted and given diamond wotch): "thoueh the

newssaper said another narne."

NOTES
1
€ m e , The Envov From Minor City An Autobiom~hv:Voiume 3 (Women's Press: London,
1985) 60.
'Patrick Evans, Janet Frame (Bonon: Twayne, 1977).
3
Gina Mercer, "'E.qloring the Secret Caves of hguage': Janet Frame's Poeny," Meanlin 44
(1 985): 384-90.
Robin Hyde, The G o d ~ i t Flv
s (London: Hunt and Blackett, 1938). The other pets Hyde
quotes in this novel include: Byron; Verlaine; Kipling; Tennyson; Rupert Brooke; Fu Hsfian;
and Rilke.
5
For studies of Hyde's influence, particuiady in relation tu Godwits, on Frame's attitudes and
writing, see: Evans, Janet Frame 4649; Chem, Hahn. "New Zealand Women Noverists: Tbeir
Attinide Toward Life in a Developing Society" WLWE 13, 1 (1975)158; Heather Roberts, Where
Did She Corne From? (Weilington. NZ.:Allen & Un- 1989) passim.
Hyde was, in addition to being a p e t and novelist, a newspapr journalin and editor, and the
biographer of ninteenth cennuy New Ztaiand coloniser Baron Charles de Thierry (inCheck to
Your Kine, 1936).
7
For a surnmary of Saussurean serniotic theory see: Roland Barthes, Elements of Semioloev.
tram Amette Lavers and Colin Smith (New York: Hill and Wang, 1968). Also relevant is
Saussure's conception of the diachronie and synchronie dimensio& of lmguage,
- - i.a,die
evolutionary view of lingistic feanirrs and lanwge seen as a complete %stem operating at a
specified time. Approaches to these aspects of Frarne's vision of language in ODC indude:
Margaret Dalziel, Janet Fnme (Auclciand: Oxford U.P., 1M O ) : 28-32; Hankin, p88ff; Carol
MacLeman, LsDichotornousValues in the Novels of Janet Frame," Journal of Commonwealth
Literatwe 22.1 (1987): 1814; Mercer, 386-7;Peter Alcock, "Frame's Binomial Fall, or Fire and
Four in Waimaru," Landfat129 (1975): 179-87.
 Frame. Owis Do C y (New York: George Braziller, 1960: 1982) 1 1.
9
The natudism of Thomas Hardy's novcis Iikely plays a part here as well. Fnme cites Hardy,
among other writers who figwed in her m i y reading, in "Memory and a Pocketfid of Words,"
&T 3240 (Jn 4 '44): 487.
10
William Blake, "Introductîo~"Sones of hocence in Eighteenth Cennirv Endish Literature,
ed,Geofftey Tiilotson et ((New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanouich, 1969) 1494.
Il
William Shakespeare,The Tanoest V,i: 88-92. See: Lainence Jones "No Cowslip's Bell in
Waimani: The Personai Vision of Owls Do Cy," Landfa1195 ( 1970).
" Dapbne. a nymph was the f h t love of Apollo. god of music and poetry. Apollo insulted
Cupid, so ~ u $ dkit Apollo with an arrow that r o i e d passion and Daphne widi one that repelled
if. Apollo pmued Daphne relentiessly. FinalIy, her farher changed her into a laure1 nee.
Apollo p n t e d her etemal youth, like his own, saying she would be ever-green, and that her
leaves would be lus crown, Rilke dedicates The Sonnets to Orpheus "for Daphne" and closes
with a poem about the classical figure.
13
Sce Jones: "...(-Owls Do Crv's) openhg Iyic with its overtones of Dylan Thomas' ' Fem Hill'..."
283.
12
Frame, " M e m o ~and a Pocketfd of Words," Times Litcram Suo~lernent4 June 1964: 487.
-
l5 '&Lyricpoetry is the most extensive category of verse, especiaily afkr the deche since the 19th
-
cennrry in the West of the ottier principal kinds: * m t i v e and ciramatic verse." Chns Baidick.
The Concise Oxford Dictionarv of Literam Terrns (Oxford. Oxford University Press, 1990) 1?SE
'"eny &&n, '"guage as Theme in Owls Do Crv," Landfall110 (Jn 74): 106.
!' Anna Rutherford, "JanetFrame's Divided and Disinguished Worlds." WLWE 14 (1975) 62.
'' "AS if was kcoming impossible for me COreîoncile 'this'world and 'W world, I decided to
choose 'th& worid, and one day when the lnspector w a s visiting my class at school I said - Excuse
me, and waiked fiom the room and the schooi, h m 'tbis'wodd to ' bt'world where I have stayed
and where 1live now." Frame, 'Beginnuigs,"Landfidl 19 ( L 965)45.
19
Examples of italicùed passages with an indeterminare voice occur in OûC on pp. l?,J4. With a
voice other than Daphne's, see: Tobfs italicized thowts and speech (prose) on pp. 79, 196, 197;
and Chicks' itaiicized poetry pp. 14 I -2.
10
The fh-stsentence is made up of four independent ciauses and contains 1O 6rst person pronouns.
six of which are "I". The first person does not appear again &er the h a h y point of this chapter.
'' the fim sentence. and the longes sentence which begins: "Upnorth in the winter-the...."
ODC 33 ---
- This trait is, of course, common to much British and New Zealand poetq of the period
i .)

W.D. AshcrofS "Beyondthe Aiphabet Janet FrarnelsOwls Do Crv." B i d Hawk Boee: Essavs
on Janet Frame, ed Jeanne Delbaere-Garant (Aarhus, Denmark: Dangaroo Press, 1979)40.
'' Chapter six depicts different kùids of t h e and theu effem on the Withers's lives.
" Jeanne Delbaere-Garant "Daphne's Metamorphoses in Janet Frame's Early Novels" Me16 ( 1975):
23-37.
' 6 See: T o b y " : Toby's italicized thou&&, 79; "Chicks": Teresa's diaiy entries, passim.
'' Faces in the Water, Frame's next published work, begins with the disciaimer ".4)though diis book
is wrinen in documentary form it is a work of fiction None of the charactefi, including Estha (sic)
Mavet, pomays a living penon"
 Faces in the Warer
"...a tiny poetic essence...-

The self-reflexive qualities of Owls Do Crv foreground the ide3 char diere are

discursive ' n o m ' just as rherc are generally accepted behaviourai -standards'. Frame uses

Daphne's lyics to penetrate the novel's prose narrative. Thus, she explores the difficultia of

anaining a sense of selfhood @vensocial and linguistic pressures agim prrceived devimce.

Faces in the Water !196 1) continues this expiorauon and brosdeos the scope of discoune types

Frame midies. Autobiogaphy: documentary, and fictive prose predorninate in Faces. it also

quotes hymns. popular sons and brief matches of verse Eiom various sources. These hgments

of poems appear sporadically as quotations in dialogue or in the narrator's recollzctions,

contrasting poetry's obvious formai h c t i o n in the narrative structure and the differentiation of

characten in Owls Do Crv. Is rhere a non-propositioiial pattern at work here. one disconnmed

tiom surface structures and therefore palpable, if not immediately visible? Such undersmicnires

in Frame's wriring occw non-propositionally because her fictive worlds are intensety affective. I

shall look to see if Faces uses a pattern that contraas vene and prose on a level other than

apparent formal construction.

-
Faces does not employ any of Frame's own poetry. Conjecture why this absence

occun wodd be specious. To determine the çeneral ' sryLe' of Frame's use of poetry in this

novel. then, I 4i
l work toward ' uncovering' recursive figurations mong the prose. quoted

poew and brief, italicized pieces. Ofien the v e n e fraements in Faces colour the t e s with an
irony u\at emphasizes the protagonist's responsive disrance both fiom the narrative point of vitw

and fiom the social contex of the quotanom. Frame uses the eiernenr of irony ro play with the

idea of saying the opposire of what one believes. h i l e ail1 ailowing the decepaon to be found

out. Thus, she articulates the concepts and effects of perceived similarity and difference.

In Owls Do Crv, itaiics and the poetic line sigrue difference and othemess. h
Faces, however, Frame looks to find ciifference where things appew to be simiiar: differences

within certain groups of people: or, differences among things that share a common basis. e.(...

different discourse forms M n e n in the same language. Owls Do C m shows that visible

difference cm easiIy become ui agent of enforced separation, a process that divides and delinuts

groups based on their apparent interna1 homogeneity. Both Faces and the noveI that follows it,

The Edee of the Alohabet, invert the perspective of difference preceding classification. These

novels, rhrough a range of social and literary references, foregound conforrnity to conre.unialize

the margimiization and erase traces of difference.

I begn this chapter by addressing the predominanrly autobiographicai focus w y

criticsl adopr with Frame's first novels, especially Faces in the Water, since it bean on the issues

of sirni1ant-yand difference in her wririog. Faces is based looseiy on Frame's stays in New

Zeaiand psychiatrie hospitals. She discusses the semi-aurobio=raphica1 aspect of Faces, but

emphasizes the w - n e s s of it in Envov, she recalls "recording taitfifully every happenine and

the patients and the staff1 had hown..." Funher on in this description, her meùiod shifu to the

creation of fiction. She tells of "borrowing" fiom observation. ?et uses the Ieicis of fictional

construction: ".JO buiId a more credibiy ' m a 6 cenuai character...":and "...planning a subdued

rather than a sensational record, I omitted much..."( 119)

 Autobiography is a srmzngpomnr with Frarne's wriang - she says as rnuch.

Unfomuiateiy, this focus seerns to encourage Iiterai-mindedness in the interpretanon of her tem.

ln An Ange1 at ,Mv Tabfe Frarne writes: ".A was alarmed to find that iOwis Do CNJ wa5

beiieved to be autobiographicai, with the ckmacters actual members of my h i l y , and rnyseif

the charamer Daphne..."(Ans1 148) With a sense of amusement,she says of the ilanchester

Guardian's review of Faces: "It was assurned that the character of ïstina *Vavet was a portrait of

myself." {Envov 123)

Not only do Frame's critics confuse her with her characters, the tendency to

overlap is also strong to regard some characters as renamed prototypes in later te.-. For

e m p l e , Jeanne Delbaere-Garant talks about the "metamorphoses"of Daphne Withers:

Daphne is the first version of a recurrent figure.... lstina Mavet in

Faces in the Water, Thora Pattern in ïhe Edze of the Alphabet and
Vera Glace in Scented Gardens for the B tind They fonn a
cornplex pattern of overlapping f e a m , cross-references and
recurrent motifs which gradually cornpietes itself and out of which
a more or less complete image of the character as a whole finalIy
7
erne:ges.-

Delbaere-Garant seeks to prove that an essentialist swnce is the foundation of Frame's writing:

she sees Frarne working with a fixed stock of chacters and storïes. which are -'more or less

complete" and "whole*. This ' ternplate' ct-iticism asseru a principle of similarity that vinually

ignores the differences inherent to transfomative processes. Delbaere-Garant thus emphasizes

the sameness of the versions of characters a d nories that Frame explores as much for their

differences as their similarities. '

 For example, Deibaere-Garant comects Mna tMavet's reading of Rilke's Sonnets

to Orsiheus: "'WoIle -
die Wandlung Choose to be Changed"' ( "DaphnefsMeramorhposes"34)

wi& Toby Withers as Orpheus in a game in The Edee of the Alohabet Thou& she sees that

change implies differencets), Delbaere-Garant looks more to the similarities retained: "Orpheus

is the cornmon denominator. Each of the different versions of Daphne possesses some of his

fanrres." ("Daphne's Metamorphoses" 35) This perspective excludes F m e ' s evolving vision of

self-idennty, and whether determinam of the processes of change are chosen or enforced. .As

well. it uses the insidious practice in Frarne's writing of grouping people by ' type,' irrespective of

the traces of individuai differences. Seif-identity, for Frame, is at once pnvate and public. fned

and changing, and it hinges on an ineffable core of king. Her sense of the paradoxical,

especially where self-identity is an issue, focuses on change as the meeting and the diver-nce of

sirnilarity and difference, and of past, present and hture.

Frame's sense of paradox profoundly affects ail Ievels of her wrïting. The concept

of difference iriforms pmdo;y whch brings together apparently irreconcilable opposites and, in

doing so. reveals an eiement o f ' tnith.' [rony, too, uses apparent self-contradiction. irnplying the

opposite meaning of what is said kony is so cIosely related to paradox that it can be seen as a

direct development of it. Paradox and irony are the pnmaq devices in Frame's dispute with

received opinion. which amches parricular value systems to the perception of sirnilarit- and

diRerence.

The italicized poeny, songs, and riddies in Faces corne from or are filtered

throu* Istina Mavet's past expenence of the 'reatfworfd outside t h e novet's two main settings.

Cliffhaven and Treecroft psycfùatric institutions. The italics illustrate the disjunction of
experience and expression visualty and metaphorical1y. They bring into relief and make mange

"'
the ordinariness of men the mon mundane quotations. like "On Top of Old ~mokey.

fronicaily, the strangeness of these dislocated reminders of life ' outside' matches that of the

unitalicized prose descriptions of ward Iife.

lstina t e k her story in the first person as a recollection. She uses a three-part

structure. naming each section after its institutional sening "Clifthaven" "Treecrok"

"Cliffhaven." The narrative is srraihtfonvard, and basically chronological. Drearns.

flashbacks, and present events are ail quite clearly disinguished as such. Istina States her intenr

to "...write about the season of peril" (Faces 10) and devefopsher gowing coafuçion and feelings

of fear cogently and with intensity. She presents the day-to-day routines and medicaI procedures

of institutional life with a mass of detail. The barrage of detail underscores the dificulty Istina

describes having had in keeping track of time, remembering the personalities and conditions of

other inmates, and the identities of hospital sraff and ber famiiy members. Because of the clariy

of the narrator's point of view, her copious descriptions exempIi@ fstina's 'double-vision': the

confusion and f a that corne fiom seeing too much too well.

Istina's narrative focuses on the uses of langnge, reflecting the disjunctions and

connadictions the institution teaches her to

i lost count of the months and years. I think there were one or
two Christmases when a rash of stars erupted on the wafl and
around the door and was allowed to take its course and spread its
contagion of anbcipated peace for twelve days before soap and
water was applied to remove it; ....Matron Borough, entering the
dayroorn.... cried "Happy Christmas Everyone" which she rneant to
sound ecstatic but which, because of o u past experience of her,
sounded unbappily 1ike a disguised version of "You're for
treatment."(Faces 122)
' Ourside' life cham time in many ways, the observance of holidays and orher occasions being

one. But these rinial observances are grotesque in Istina's siniauon, especiaity since they are

almost the oniy way of rnarking rime. and even then not reliably. Istina sees that the practice of'

transfer at work in the institutions attempts to hide the marginaiization ofparicnts behind a

façade ot'ordinary behaviour and Ianguage. The ordinary language betrays itself. fàiling to

si@@ the occasion and the relevance of the occasion to the patients - preciseiy because

relevance exisrs only insofar as rnanipuiation of the situation is possible bv the staffthrough theu

own linguistic empowerment

The characters in Faces who use langage with authoriry do so withour apparent

acknowledgement of ambiguity, yet, as the quote above shows, the power of polysemy is theirs.

lstina lacks a language of her own with which to fully articulate herseif and her experiences.

The faiiure of langage to signifj one iinear 'surfaçe' meaning reflects h a ' s dispossession, but

both this failure and her condition ultimately turn on her anogation of Ianguage: she uses

language against iaelf and against its self-appointed controilers. She co-opts the clichés of

ordinary language to reveal their euphemistic façades and to probe the stratagems that dich&

entail. b i n a thus discomects polyserny from the presumed exclusivity and val idity of

'authority,' anci, in doing so, she repossesses and reconstitutes her own voicc in opposition to

assumptions of author@ and transparent meaning in lanlguage.

Istina's italicized quotes fiom songs and poems throughout Faces convey 3n

additional perspective by means of contemal irony. Irony embraces polysemy the reader's

role in producing meaning: lstina dissipates centraiized aurhority by asserting a marginalized

voice. Marginaiization in language takes many forms, but relevant here is Easthope's discussion
(mSaussure and Lacan) ofh@tic meaning oceuring along muniaily dependent axes. a

horizon& "synragmaic"axis and a verricd "paradigmaüc"mis. The former operares within a

singfe sentence (i.e.,synnctically) and also, by extrapolation withm the inrerco~ectionsof ail

discoune f o m . Its essentid characteristic is its linearity. out of which "the subject is developed

as 'a single voice' sustaining meuiinp and itself sustained in this 'linmrity';..."' The

paradigrnatic axis operates as a range of possible substitusïons and associations "outside coherent

Al1 of these absences and dependencies which have to be baned in

order for rneaning to take place constitues what Lacan designates
as Other. The presence of rneaning along the sptagmatic chain
necessarily depends on the absence of the ûthei the rest of
language from the syntapatic c h a h (Easthope 36; 37)

Through irony, Inina engages the paradigrnatic axis in her narrative, asserring a dialogcal

perspective alongside the monologism of the syntagmatic chah of meaning

Hymns and pop songs stand out, in itaIics, as the most obvious examples of

situationa1 irony in Faces. The ward staffat CIiffhaven use songs to insist on confoonity. forcing

one voice tYom rnany. As wel1, the Song provide the staff with the chance to moraiize on the

patients' problems, and, thus, to undercut seIf-esteem by holding up an ideal no one could

maintain:

...Sister Honey...would take offher red cardigan, in a liberal

sesture...and sit d o m...dernmding in her sharp voice, "Corne on
sing up everyone."

When there's a rainbow on the river1

You pet the feeling/
Romance is stealinel
Ritzht out of the blue into vour kart./
 *******************************************
--.endhg with a hymn,

There is a .green hi II far awavi

Without the citv w a i U
Where our dear Lord was cmcafied/
Who died to Save us alI..,

At ths point Sistets expression would become severe...as if to say

Rernember you've got something to be graehrl for,...snap out of i~
everything is being done for p u r own good.... (Faces 48)

As with the celebration of Chrimas, the language, written in verse and italicized,

is grotesquely inappropriate. The Sister ignores the disjuoctio~just as the hospital chaplain

iguores, or cannot see, the contradiction of having mental patients pray "'for those sick in mind'"

(Faces 45) With this selective vision. authonty figuresreinforce confonniry by repeating images

and rituals of ' normality.' But attauung comant spiriruai comfon h m Christianity or finding

romance as in "Some Enchanted EveningJ' are tasks beyond the will or ability of many people.

even on the 'ouüide.' hina problematizes these images and ntuais by peninentiy foregrounding

the recurrent disjunctions and contradictions of the controls placed throueh lanmiaee upon the

patients' lives and selves.

A related problem Istina expresses through irontc incongmiry is Ianguage-s

entickg offer of che possibility of escape from the pain which difference seems to induce in

Isrinals world. Rule by fear. insulin treatment; ECT: lobotorny: each creates in the patient a

desire to avoid funher trearmenr. The language of idyllic poeuy with iu peaceful imagery and

supension of time initially gives lstina siight sanctuary:

...1 try not to rnifld when the matron whispers to one of the nurses,
in a hoarse voice like an assassin. "Have you got the gag?"
 And aver and over inside myself 1am saying a poem...,

At the top of the house the amles are [aid in rows/

And the sh~liehtlets the moonlieht in and those:
s deewsea apoles of oreen.1 (Faces 25)
A p ~ l e are

But she cornes to see poetic Ianguage as deceiving, roo. because the rernporary escape c m deny

or bemy oneseff instesid of giving protection. Istina l e m s how. wvirh double meaning, the

...I could no longer paci- myelf b y repeaung oumoded verses

about apples that, free from decay and codIin moth. were Iying, the
h i r of dreams, in a flatte- of rnooniight., (Faces 13 1 )

ï h e gaz placed on lstiaa is symbolic: it reflects the silence forced upon her. the

processes of linguistic control;and the distance Ianguage itself imposes benveen experience and

articulation. Isuna,in the very act of writing out her s t o l , defies the control and ent'orced

silence which she imputes to însnnitional authotity. Stilt,she must corne to terms with the issue

of distance in language.

At tirnes, the irony that she employs rnirrors her distance tiom ianguage. that is,

her inabilil to articulate and justifjr her seif withm an ail-powerfid institution. The basic

narrative, which looks back on Istina's expen'ences in hospital, uses direct discourse. This

reportoriai register quotes a speaker's exact words and indicates the identity of the speaker. Thrs

mode is fiequently mavailable to Istina whIe she is a patient, for exampie:

"What are you doing here'?"(Matron Glass) asked on my fim

day in bed.
Sister Honey told her, and smiled at me, and said, "We're
wheeling yoü out on the veranda in the sun." (Faces 223)
The representation that him. 3s fim person narrator, creates of herself at rhat time is
accretionary and derivative. The panent's own words, when revealed. are most ofien indirect.

The overail image of her gains form by way of oblique allusions to language and authority. In

turn, this ailusiveness 611s out the nuances that the narrator's irony lends to situations and toms

the b a i s of the text-sconsistent disjunction of conte.mal rneanings.

The irony of hamng to express oneseif cbrougfi the language of othen extends to

rhose quotations of poe- that Isina heneif has chosen as close- a r t h l a ~ n gher own way of

thinking. Thau@ this ironic appropriasion ofwords by way of quotation creates a doubied

dinancing efFéct. the consonance of [nina'svoice with that of another wrirer makes the l i n ~ i s t i c

and temporal distances relative. Istina quotes King Lear fiom memory because "in the shuttered

and locked room where I now slept..there was no li-t to read by." (Faces I 14) Shakespeare's

words focus sympathy on the outcast mad with a vimially unanswerable rhetorical question:

"How s h d l vour houseiess heads and unfed sides1 Yom looped and *ndowed ragqedness

defend vow' From seasons such as these." These words in parricular express for Isrina the

desperate c o ~ e c t i o nof loss of language and the loss of a sense of self

...1saw King Lear wandering on the moor and 1 remernbered the

oid men at Cliffhaven sitting ourside their d r a p ward and nobody
at home. not in themselves or anywtiere.

in contrast to Shakespeare's irnaging of Lear, Isrina fin& tàult with the mqonry

of fictional representations of madness. She finds that tbese romanticize the condition, and in

doing so deflect attention Rom the individuals:

There is an aspect of madness which is seldom mentioned in

fiction because it would damage the romantic popular ide3 of the
 insane as a person whose speech appeals as irnrnediately
poetic..,.Few of the people who roamed the dayroom wouid have
quaiified a s acceprabIe heroines....The mass provoked m o d y
imtarion (sic)hostiIity and impatience. Their behaviour monte&
crtused uneasiness;...It was fotgotten that they :oo possessed a
prized humariity which needed care and love, thar a tiny poetic
essence couid be distilled fiom their overflowing squaiid tmth.
( Faces 1 12 )

Because fictionai images of madness favour "Opheliana" they "seidom mention" the ' unpoe8c'

speech and behaviours of the insane. This selectiviq of representanon affects the treamient of

the insane as people, prefiguring staffattrtudes by having them "forget" the patients' humanity.

laina is hi&& conscious of the ways in which I a n p g e is an editor of

humanness, and she seeks to articuiate experiences for which words are inadequate or do not

exist. She eschews the "irnrnediatelypoetic" speech "...of Crazy Janes who provide in fiction. an

outlet for poetic abandon." Lnstead, she goes after the forgotten "tinypoetic essence," bredung

open the editorial gaps in order to expose ianguage itself as a means of silencing individuais and

distancing peopIe fiom themselves. By conn-dsùng two sorts of poetic language. one

"immcdiate" and spoken with "abandon," the other silenced and all but "forgotten," istinii

rememben for us and fin& a way to bespeak prefiguratios thus distancing the apparently

immediate expression and txpenence of 'madness' whiie foregrounding the for,~otten.

The importance of conuast - of similarity and difference - is expiicir in the

c0nte.a of the very firn quotation Istina makes. The source of the verse fragment is from an

elegy in Shakespeare's Cvmbeline (Fi,ii, 358-9:276-9):

"...teII me, what is the differencc between seography, electn'city,

cold feet, a child bom without wits and simng drooling inside a red
wooden enejne in a concrete yard, and the lament of Guiderius and
Aviragus,
 Fear no more the hem O' the sun,
Nor the Mous wïnter's m e s...

No exorciser harrn thee

Nor no witchcraft chann thee.
Ghost unlaid forbeare thee.
Nothine ill corne near thee." (Faces 13)

....I never answered LM. Kogg to tell her the difference for I knew
only the shilarity thar grew with it: the difference dispersed in
the air and withered, Iaving the fruit of similarïty... t Faces 113)

This passase concems Istina's Me before her hospitalization. In it she describes her "steepof

good work and conduct excellent"(Faces 12) becoming a nightmare, in which, as a chiid, she is

confronted by M. Hogg, a local eccenaic. Mrs. Hogg describes her own vision of insanity,

ECT ( "electricity"),and insulin ueatment and fear ( "cold feet")in New Z d a n d ( "geography").
She connasts this vision with the elegy for h o g e n whom, disguised as a boy calted Fidele,

Guiderius and Aviragus presurne to be dead.

The difference benveen Mrs. Hogg's vision and the Lament relates directly to
language used for artimc creativity versus that used for the purposes of classification. Mrs.

Hogg's words reflect the pragnatic capacity of language to categorize people and their

experiences, thus creating distance through subjectivity. Nevertheless, by personifyng the

abstraction of the tecknical terms, iMrs. Hogg draws her addressees (Issinct&a oursehesj

paradoxically close to her fearsorne subject: "a chld bom without wits." As well, the

rnetaphorical and symbolic cornponents of her speech underscore that it too is creative.

k.
Hogg, like Isuna, subverts certain lin+istic processes of distancing and

subjectivity because her insight evolves out of and in opposition to the language that she adopts.
Shakespeare's tamen5 in contrast, is expiicitly poetic and benedictory, and the main differences

between these two uses of langage are generic, formai, temporal and simational. Yet with

[sina's inclusion of the lament in her narrative, the interpiay tvith proxirnitv eniivens and

comects several Ievels of the te.xt as a whole, for example: the use of iraiics setting genres apart:

Renaissance verse incorporated into a contemporary prose work: the fact that Guiderius and

.%viragus.themseives incognito, moum a disguised character who 1s no1 actually dead

Distancing is as much an eEect of jargon and euphemism ris it is an element of fiction and poeny

- here with particutar sitgificance in d a t i o n to the function of the obsequy.

hfrs. Hoeg asserts the difference benveen her words and Shakespeare's, but Istina

in her reverie. can only see their sirniiarity: a Ianguge base that disallows her own voice. Only

at the narrative level do we see how, in tbe bringing together of the two seerningly divergent

language forms, lsrina finds her own voice and articulates her experiences during the times when

she teeis virnra1Iy de-voiced by dominant discourse forms. Thus, isrina reveals problematic gags

in both creative' and funcrional' [inguisuc maragems; she exposes naces of ber self out of the
'

intene.ynia1 cracks, and seethes with a voice that paradoxicalIy gains srrengrh in opposition to the

verbal suface of its own utterances.' The interplay is synthetic, and it specificaily manifests

Istlna's own "tiny poetic essence"

Late in rhe narrative Istina reveals her contemplation of suicide. She imbues this

revelation with her despair oiever successfidly connecring language and meaning:

Death 1 said; but it is like t m h and from continent to continent wci

fly within the two words, fim-class in the cornfort of them. but
when it is time for us to leave the words themselves and parachute
to their meaning in the dark earth and seas below us. the parachute
hils to open. tve are snanded or drifi wide of our target or, peering
 over into the ciadmess and stricken with fright, we retirse to l a v e
the comfort of the words. (Faces 202)

ineffabitity paraines hina: she is "overcome by tfie htility of saying anyshing to anyone".

1 Faces 160) The pressure of making henelf hown. of getting that buil's-eye. is overwhelrnin~;.

Yet the poetry of other witers speaks to her. showing that to Ieave the cold "comfon" ot"'death"

and "tmrh" is to corne ro life. Besides her volume of Shakespeare, another of Istina's "tresures"

is Rilke's S O M ~to
~ SOmheus:

"Wolledie Wandluns" 1 read. "Choose to be Changed."

.lot only Rilke was giving that advice. ï h e doctors were hating
consuitacions... it was impossible for me to continue living as
myself, thar 1 m u s be changed

That which wouid stav what it is renounces existence;:

Does it feel safè in its shelter of lusterless m v ' ?

they might have whispered to me, but for them there was oniy one
way, the head shaved... ( Faces 16 1)

Istina l e m s that neither she nor her words need remain paralyted by fear of fadure. if charge is

a condition of living, she can change heneif and et'fect change in ianguage. She jumps, crearing

her own narrative wth the realization that witers ma? make their o\vn targets. or not. and that

even landing in uncharted terrirory. though terntiing has its owm retvards. Thus she connects

lan-mge and meaning on her o t n terrns. if not acntaI1y in her own terms.

In Faces in the Water. Janet Frarne examines the €ailure of Ian-mge to rnean in a

strictly linear. referential façhion. She also reveals the insidiousness of people and institutions

that perpetuate such e.upectations of Ianguage anci yet capitalize on arnbiguip and incon,mity to

incite fear and confuston. Ultirnatety. they invest themselves with seemin,oly unquestionriblt:
authority. Frame's murnph is that she does connat words and rneaning, and that her ways of

connecang them subvert linear, coherent &course and its daims to autboriry. By foregrounding

intertextuality with an emphasis on the situtional incongnilv of specific time periods, she

reveals Istrna's otherwise almon inaudible voice and ironic perspective. This irony illuminates

the usually seamless narrauve selectivity of coherent discourse. and it challenges the valorization

of coherence as fiindamental to cornmunicarion. Frame's connecrion of language and meaning

moves from Istina's trepidation and confusion to her joy and cles-sightedness in a ke-fdl tiom

words towards meaning. The processes of her making this connection uncover and decode

elements of how laogmse means because the vantage wide of the mark is clclter than the

privileged vantage of socidy prescribed ' accurate' meaning,

The conchsion to the book, a litetal & to the story, as it is in al1 of Frame's

novels, ends with Mina indicating that her voice can alter the status quo. even if only ro a --tiny"

degree:

I... repeated to rnyseif what one of the nurses had told me, "when
you leave the hospital you m u t forget ail you have ever seen, put
it out of your mind as if it never happeneci, and go and !ive a
normal life in the outside world"
And bu wbat 1 have written in thrs document !ou d l sec won't
!ou. that 1 have obeyed her? (Faces 1 5 3 4 )

h muiu-accentua1 [one of Faces. Frame

The irony or' the rhetoricd question resonates ~ l t the

presents the novel's surface as a straightforward chronolog. but it is a complex narrative

operating on several IeveIs and in different dimensions. dependin9 on which perspcictiuec s the

reader takes. And the i n t e r t e d i r y and tiiorough irony of this novel provide focai points for
Frame's vision of identityr h i l e idenri- is ultimately a product of language. it remains ineffable

exceut through the fleeting glimpses rhat ailusions, CO-te=, and socid context provide.

The social context of Faces asserts the homogeneity of both language and its users

a t the expense of inherent disparïties. This assertion ovemides individual differences and the
processes of change by inscribing discourse foms with an ideology that pnvileges "an absolute

position for the subject" (Easrhope 29), & one that estabtishes an individual as 3 single- unified

ego transcending linguistic infiuence. But Frame casts conteoutwithin Istina's ironic perspecrive,

thereby reveaiing language-baseci gaps throua which an individual's shfûng voice c h b i t s

differences in contrast to the voice of the dominant culture, and through which the individual's

voice fin& expression wherever contextua1 assimilation can be opposed

NOTES

' See: Evans, 79- 100: Lawrence Jones. '%O CowiiptsEh211 in Waimanc The Penond Vision of
ûwIs Do Cm,''Lrurdfhil75 ( 1970): 280-296; Donaid W. H m & "Faces in the Water: Case
Histoq or Work of Fiction?" Bird Hawk Botzie, ed Jeanne Delbaere-Garant (Aarhus. Den.:
Dangaroo, 1978) 45-52; Robert T.Robertson, "Bird, Hawk Bogie: Janet Frarne, 1952-62." Bir&
Hawk Boeie 30-1E and H Winston Rhodes. 'TreIudes and Parables: A Reading of Janet Fnme's
Yovels," Landfidl 26 ( 1972): 135- 1-16.
- Jeanne Delbaere-Garant, "Daphne's Metamorphoses in Janet Frrime's Eariy Novels," Xriel 6
( 1975): 23 .
' Jeanne Delbaere-Garant %femory as Survival in the Globai Village: Janet Frame's The
Cmtiuam," A Sha~ineot'Connectioris: Commonwealth L i t e w Studies - Then and Sow. td
Hena ,Maes-JeIinek, & Sydney. NSW: Dangaroo Press. 1989) 313-125. Deibaere-Gamntts
cnticism of F m e ' s most m e n t novel fin& the narrafor to be mother incarnation of Daphne: '.b L
nventieth c e n q version of the Maori kgend, uthich itself recntls the Daphne mtth of the .4ncient
Greeks. Martina Brecon is cleariy another of these memorphoses." (220)
' Frame, Faces in the Water (New York: Bmiller, 1962)200.
j Anrony Easthope, Poenv as Discourse (London, New York Methuen. 1 983) 37.

.'ln Owls Do Cm, bodies. especialiy the gaps and hollows of female bodies, are living and
powerful. They have the potenliai for both creative (Daphne) and destructive ( Francie) poïser. Sut
either way are potent. In Faces in the Water t h s potcinual is -çtemacicalIy ctosed off. stitchcd up
and denied nie effect of this denid is that the bodies, again especidly fernde bodies. be@nto rot,
tèster and dtunately die." Gina Mercer. "The Edoe of the Alphabet Journe-: Destination Death."
Austraiian and New Zedand Studies in Canada (Spring '91 ): JO. This muement relates accurateiy to
the d a c e level of rqesentaîion in Faces. Et does not apply, however, to the narrative level, where
the pfay between te- and voices operares to reved and open lingustic, if not physioloi$x1, saps
rather than to close them. See the Iast two pagraphs of Faces.
 The Edge of the AI~habei:
--TheAcid of Memory"

Faces in the Water explores the roles assimilation and dienation play in social

orgmization. wirh particular reference to institutionalued rnanipdations of popular and

interpersonal discourses. Frame expancis the scope of this vision in The E d ~ of

e the Alphabet

( 1962) by increasing the number of central characters fiom one. lstina in Faces, to four. Setting,

too, expands. with a voyage From New Z d a n d to England. While advancine mmy of the same

ideas that Faces proposes. The Ed= goes into greater depth. with Frame holding that

assimilation and alienatian are inescapable conditions of modern Western life.' Fnme focuses

on manifestations of humart detenoration - over time. in discourse toms, and wïthin social

insnmions and inrerpersonal reiationships. The E&e also asserts that principles of social and

linguistic 'ordef paradoxicalIy engender disorder and in the conren of this proposition. Frarne

iooks closeiy at Western paradigms of creativiry and deatIi.

In this chapter, 1 consider the e1ernent.sof traditional fiction in The Edge of the

Al~habetand how Frame subverts them toward untraditional and anti-traditional ends. I pay

particdar attention to the ways in which Frame's fictive md lingustic strate@es. in prose and in

verse, weave toçether the narrative structure and plot, voice and characterization. As in Faces in

the Water, concepts of similarity and difference bear directly on the structures that rhese

strateçies shap. therefore, the C O - t e d meeting points of different genres, by their shifting

forma1 si-gificances, denote Frame's concepnial concerns. The poetic line. for example, still

distinguishes verse tiom prose, but Frame's use of roman type in verse &
a prose passases
denotes the commonality of a shared p g r a p h y . As well, rhe represented speaker in both

genres is the same. The poetic line plus roman type and a common 'voice'.&en tosether,

express this aesthetic of connecfedness which works wirhin and against dominant discounes -

e.a. the novel and poerry as exclusive genres. By extensioq Frame applies aesthetic to the

ideologies of aiienation and hornogneity inherent to human expression in generai.

The Edee uses ri good d d of Frame's orignal poetry in addition to some verse

quomions. 1 will examine Frame's poetic w l e furrher ro the malpis of the a i y pooms, again

with specific reference to syntav and rhetoric- 1 begin by looking at the t e s ' s thematic bais,

communication, through a study of Thora Pattern the putative author,' first person narrator and

poet of The Edge. This study will show that Thora's pessimistic view that *ail foms of

communicationktween the living are useless" (& 302), does not so much reflect Frame's own

despair at linguistic apria' as it illumates paradoxes which we, in Western culture, spzak. live,

and often unknowingiy or uncritically perpetuate.

The E&e of the Aiuhabet delineates a cornplex of interrelated themes that are

staples in Frame's writing: death, language, and concepts of selfhood. 'More so than in the

previous novels, The E d ~ emphasizes

e thematic development over fully realized realz~rplot.

narrative. characterization, and setting. And stock fictive events. such as the death of the

mother, the joumey, and the kiss, are less n source of simple story action than of synbolic

sipification. Frame does not discard the elements of traditional Western fiction; rather. she

questions their contemporary relevance and usefulness as means of communication,especially

since communication itself is in doubt in this tes.

 Thora Panern beiieves that human communication is at the verge ofexrinction.

She atternprs to Mt ttus atrophy by becoming goci's phage collecter, in oiher words. by k i n g a

writer

The creator of the world did not empioy a duman to coIIect the
peelings of his creation.
XOW1, Thora Pattern... now 1 nipht and &y among the
Ieavings of people, places and moments. (a 3)

Thora's w"ting, her "walk"into creativirv, is a fonn of waste management. She retn'eves traces

of the pst with the hope that what she collects will somehow t rekomect "peopIe. places and

moments." Her actions and speech seem decisive because of the anaphoric figuring of the words

'Wow 1". Thora has ody "now" and words to stave off the extinction of communication. but as

always with Frame, words may heal or threaten.

A frequently quoted parenthetical remark which encapsuiates Thora's ( and

Frame's) vïew of the double nature of words foI1ows Thora's seif*nunciation:

Now 1, Thora Pattern (who [ive at the edge of the alphabet where
words Iike plants either grow poisonous ta11 and hollow...about
mearilng, or, like people e.uposed to a deathiy weather, shed their
fleshy confusion show luminous. knitted with force and
permanence), now i. ...

Critics quoting this remark never note or include the parentheses (1 have never seen the

parentheses copied),' to show that it is subordinate to Thora's self~nunci2tior1,and that it

intemps her explanation of what she is doing as a narrator. Disjunction, like polysemy, recurs

throughout Fraine's witings, and here it not o d y points to a dialectic interplay between
presurned auhorial controi and the undercumng of such power b q also, to narrative subtem

that firntier Frame's challenge of monologism.

Despite Thora's iniuai expression of self-conIldence. throughout The E d s she is

never quite sure whether the words she uses are d e d y and empty or if they are peremials whch

wodd retlect "forceand permanence", as welI as showing the hand of the shaper through their

being "kmed" together.j The symbolic allusion to seasonal change reflects that such "force

and permanence"of words figured as perenniais si@@ many paradoxes, beginning with the

continuous coexistence of life and death.

Thora understands that when one self-consciously works with words. or other

means of cornmunication, one embarks on "ajourney of discovery..." (& 4) Her discoveq is

basicalIy twofold: cornm~cationisolates more than it connects people; al1 creativiv that

attempts to subvert isolation in modern cornmunication is dangerous because one's efforts

-
require the help of others instigaton, ,guides, an audience, Hire-Purchase Salesmen - but

enduring help, Thora fin&, is unavailable.

Thora's vision of languagc is 1ike Daphne's and Im'na's in chat they ail fear a

homogeniting proccss in speech because of its aiienating effects:

...our iives are s o l i w ; we are captives....We are like those yeilow

birds which are kept apart corn their kînd.,. othenvise they would
never Ieam the Ianguage of their captors. (a 302)

The pun on "kind" foregrounds that the dynamics of langage both assimilate and alicnate its

users. Thora describes humans as born into a world preconstnicted by rigid Iangmge forms

which do not adapt to the communication ne& of al1 people. For her, langage is like a case:
it separates people. yet creates a similar life cxperience for al1 its users. 'Moreover, she feek that

langage dispiaces kindness. the compassion dia1 wouid connea and unifi people by dispelling

malevolence.

Thora Pattern comes to see the condition of human life as a crowded solitary

coniïnerneat: death 1s the ody escape she envisions. Gina Mercer look at death as the novei's

central theme in "The Edee of the Al~tiabetJourney: Destination Death." ,Mercer exmines

Thora's narrative in c o ~ e c t i o nwith its presentarion of "contemponry life as a specm...

of

death." (Mercer43) She argues that Thora emphasizes *nurnerousaspects of d& and decay,

especiaily decay of bodies"(Mercer 39)as a means to ".-.Mt the culturaI body's drive toward

suicide by nuclear holocaus~"(Mercer 56) Thora views death as a fact which shapes human

consciousness as well as Me. and cornes, thereforr. to regard de& as conceptually i n t e p l to

communication in general, and langage specifically. For Thom because mistic creativi?

-
seeks an audience, it is a form of communication which necessitates the apprehension of death

in al1 forms, in fi,ourative and literal terms. At the figurative Ievel, Thom god's "dusanan",

wanders over a battleground:

Beaten with the wand the mernories weep, and cities run Iike
sparkling tears fiom their eyes; houses of sait spring from the
earth. The inhabitants of the ci- and the fores fight to kdl one
another in order to become one. They fight to eliminate
themselves, their shadows, their speech. (a 302)

This parable reflects in miniature Thora's honor of human and linguistic annihilation. Her

bision conveys sadness and despair through the detached perspective of one who feels no hope of

conveying a vision or m o t i o n at all. The threatened destruction of both humanity and Ianguaae
is the source of her finai sense of rhe fûtiliry of attempts at communication. Thora depicts the

' bartle' in tenns of the separauon of idenne and langwge, and concludes that, as an author,' she
'

herseif is unable to ensure connectedness througfi heaiing words.

Unlike the protagonists of Frame's eariier novels. Thora does not corne to believe

in the potential for redemption tiom 'culrurai suicide' through seif-discovery and self~xpression.

She describes the end of her journe? as the relinquishing of self-idennty. Daphne loses her

identity to leucotomy, an elmerne manifestation of her sociews communication of normaky':

'

lnina survives the fail from words to meanine, but her identity remains covert. a buried rreasure

one must expose. Thora cornes to see the connection ofwords and meaning as destructive:

Imust stop somewhere and bcgn my own life..A it tme that

selfdiscovery ends in death?
***********************************************
So it is the end of self-discovery. Ihave arriveci at the dead (a
300;30 1)

Thora envisions the connection of words and meaning in rhe shartering of norions of a subie

identity. Time and space, and al1 srares of being set along that continuum are relative at this

point - bere, the iiterai merges with the figurative. Lfone interprets these starements literalty, the

speaking lirst person expires. But Thora's nanative continues. "{T)hedead" metaphoncally

expresses another stage of life by means of mors's previous cornparison of life with death, z,

her character's "deathqles".

Literal interpretations of rnetaphorical meaning are possible because the selection

of li kely analogues is restricted. But Frarne vioiates the resmctions in order to connect different

states of being and, thus, transfomi perspective and understanding. She e?ctends Istina's
objections to the alienation caused by both pfagmatic and creative uses of Ianguage, because, in

comprehending the linguistic deJtabiiizarion of identity, one then becomes Free ro explore rhe

"tiny poetic essence"of humanity not as a deiimired core of being, but as an ever-shifting,

loosely comected range of human hilings and potentialities.

Thora d e r joumeying througfi her characters' and her own Mates of lik-as-death.

starts on a journey of death-as-life. We see the creation of Thora's own death in fiarative. if

aiso literal, rerms. Thora's verse suicide note ("Toni&t 1devise my tirne. I make a lirtle k i t e to

foIlow the tides of death in the sky" 2791) elaborates the perspective of death as Qumive

ad,therefore, potentidly creaave. At the same time, Thora is now most obviously the fictive

persona of another writer, Frarne herseif.

Gina Mercer focuses on the novel's prefatory note as the only de ftnite indicator of

Thora's death. tMercer compares an early ms. ("Ms[sic] A") of The Edoe, in which the note is

ith a later one ("Ms [srcl 8")which "corresponds almost exactly" to the pubiished
absent, w

version (Mercer 52ff). Mercer argues tbat the note's announcement of Thora's death as definite

not only reduces Thora's expressed uncertainty "about her identitv, her creativity, and hsr controi

over the events she is constructing", it also undercuts much of the novel's "ambiguity and

conceptual suggesriveness"by crearing a "rnuch Iess open-ended" conclusion Still, cven without

Thora's implicit statement that she is dead and without the suicide note, Thora's "uncerrainty"

and general unreliabili'y are not necessarily undercut by the prefatos note. The note is

mattributeci, and ma? well be Thora's own ironic epitaph to her ' former' uncreative.

uncommunicative li fe.
 Whatever else the prefatory note is and/or means, it remains Frarne's own

addition, whether the resuit of her publisher's coercion or not' Frame has a propensity for

writing initiai and teminai ' keys' to her noveis. -4sa key, then, this note reveals after one

finishes the book, that one of Thora's otvn ctiatacters, former painter f eter Heroa found
"

E.dee of the Alphabet " d e r her death" and as "Hire-PurchaseSalesman"for the publishers, he

submitted it for posthumous publication. Frame creates a circuiar reading with this preface

because the novei's be@nnine;,& the note, only makes sense Mly if it is read la% and the

conclusion, then, only makes sense if it is read as a new begnning. Mer all, Thora speaks as

one who is rnfact dead, but whose transformed "tiny poetic essence" continues to live through

the words of the text. This is her monument to the dead and the living, and to human

communication.

Thora'sawareness of the Ioss of individual identil to the vagarïes of language

brings her to a metaphoncal state of deah an4 paradoxicaily, to the b e g i ~ i n gof her "own iife".

This rebirth e n g e s a metaleptic practice of transfer the fictive world of Thora's characters

uitirnately mices over the world in which she ostensibly exists.' Thon's fiction - p a s s e s the

constructs of authorial and monologkat control that Ianguage tends to make its usen presume.

The narrative so enmeshes the thme-world of its narrator that, whiIe dispararies behveen tact''

and ' fiction' remain apparent, the dialogcal interconnectedness of such opposites becomes

transcendent, and monology is dismissed. Frame kills the "deathsryles"of Thora and her

characters with an apocalyptic, regenerative vision that refutes the alienating language and Me

patterns of Western culture.

 ï h e circularity Frame builds into The E&e enhances the tex's ambiguïties and

openendedness; irs movement is of meaning unfoiding. Each reading reveals different

discursive dimensions and thus, the structuring refiects the simuitaneous continuity and change

of cycles. Underscoring the cyciical pattern of beginnings and endings. and death and rebirth.

are references to winter." which engage ïts traditional henry associations with isolation and

death: "Winter or Death; the old cornparison..." 160) This pattern is not a formalist device

rnerely reflectingsubjecr maner. Seasonai references are often loaded in pst-colonial

literatures since the seasons of the former colonies are quite uniike En@and's. which the Iitewy

canon posits as the nom. As a pst-colonial writer, Frame uses the seasons, winter in partxular,

to contrast imperid 5 colonial thought patterns.

The second ofThe Edee's three parts, "thel o s traveler's dream of speech". tells of

rhree characters, Toby Withers. Zoe Bryce, and Pat Keenan, who are travelling by ship fiom

New Zeaiand to England Toby is from New Zealand; Zoe is tiom the Midlands; and Pat is

Irish "'... from the real part of I r e i d " ' (EA 199) The seasonai movement of the t e s during

this section goes "fiom Winter to Winter" 173), stalling the nanative in a ' wintef

perspective. The section ctoses with the ship docking. Toby, upoa seeing England for the first

tirne. rejects it out of disappointment.

Thora uses seasonal allusions to indicate the levels of despair that her characters

experience: ' "No. ' When daffodils begin to peer.' Ir is a pnmrose memory that h a roned in the

darkness." (m173) References to Shakespeare's poem,'Owith its mange. unknown flower,

abound in diverse post-cotonial literanires. As part of the core curriculum of a coloniai

education, it has corne to symbolize the cultural and geo-gaphical distances and dispanties
between England and its former colonies. Framersemphasis on the discrepant seasonal cycles

balances Thora-s profound sense of dislocation and deniai of hope wirh the impiication diat the

The colour geen pmves paradoxicaily emblernatic of winrer and deatk just a s winter and death

ue inverse emblems of spnng and life.''

Toby, Pat and Zoe's travel fiom colony to centre acrs out a mode1 of thought

propagated by coloniaiism:

...anmicrion of dream cailed overseas, a suffering of deep

endured by...the living who wiil not admit it is easier and cheaper
to die, die once and forever and travel as duit (a49f)

Thora Pattern breaks fiom this thought pattern when she views her life and death figuratively,

deciding to die "once and forever" and yet continuing her journey ot'discovery. Whether in

language, identity, or social and political alignments, centrisrn does not finalIy exist for Thora

because she joumeys instead where she dready ' [ives', at "the edge of the aiphaber ( where ) al1

stremers are tom or trail into m g e n e s s " and "wherewords cnimble and ail forms of

communication becween the living are useless." 44; 302)

"Theedge" is a phrase that may be interpreted in several ways, including: a bnnk:

a border area; a transitional point in ùme4place:a cutting side: and. an advantage. This

polysemic "edge''and Thora's refutation of the censr&margin paradian signai that The E d ~ of
e

the Al~habetcannot be read as "appropriatingmarginaliQW

according to the arguments made in

The Empire Wntes Back. ''These arpents €ad to regard Frame's "ed~e"as ciiffernit fiom "the
margrn". The former is neutral in the sense that it is not necessarily. as rnarginality is.
"...constnicted by the posited relation to a privileged centre..."( A s h o f i ct1104). This

distinction is important because ic points to Frame's perception of pst-cotonid cuiture net as

"theembracing of that rnarginality as the fabric of social e.xperience", but rattier as a culture and

"socla1 e.xperience" that exists beyond, and f i d l y without, the presumption of its penpheral

starus.

Creativity has the potential, in this expression of Fme's post-coIoniaIism. to face

and transcend the displacernent and dienation brou& about by imperidism. Xshcroti et al.

comprehend Frame's methodolog in The E d ~ e ,but confise her vision:

...through d e c o m c t i n g the centre. seing the reality of the

alphabet and rneaning itself as residing in a slippage of language
cather than a distinction of centre and margin, ThoraiZouJanet
PatternlBryce/Frarne has deferreci reatity itself into a continuously
expanding horizon of marginal realities. Within this horizon there
is no longer any centre, but a fabric of perpetuaily intersecting
discourses of rnarginaliW...(Ashcroft et al, 209)

If Frame decoastnicts "the centre", it is a logcal failacy to continue discussing The Edge in

t e m of an ultimate "appropriation"of margndity. Frame refùtes the centre-margin paradigm

as a whole, and looks instead for aitemativeparrerml' of communication an& hence, alternative

thought structures. Her exploratory w-itings evolve out of and retlect narurefs cycIes of Iife and

-
death litemlly and figuratively, of course. since expressions of creative imaenation are. for

Frame,the ultimate connection and accommodation of shifring human identities.

Alternative 'patterns' include Thora's entire narrative and a siiver-paper sculpture

which Zoe makes from an empty cigarette pack: "20ewondered ...1s this the only word [ shaIl

ever speak and do I now retreat into silence?" (a

273) The s c u l p m is of "silver trees and
people with hats like siiver planets. like priests, IOSI in the forest" r& 272 j It becomes Zoe's

suicide note: " M y need one write a nore if one c m communicare with a lefi-over wqping..''

(EA 374) Like Thom's narrative. Zoe's creation cornes From scrap materiai, afluding to rhe past
to bcomplete or haif-forgotten mernories.'* As well. both creations are self-consciously o r w c

in shape and content. Thora and Zoe tee1 that. with their m s of cornmunication. they have

rwched the apex of their own creativi-. Thora despairs at her inabilip to do more, while Zoe,

who has Iived without hope of ever communicating profoundly with others. is satistkd with the

"'detiberateri@messll' 271) of her creation. its eRect on those admiring i t and with the

subsequent arrival o f her moment of death

Frame quotes Rilke here to illustrate an ideal of suspended rime and childhood

innocence in a , m e which reflects, rnetaphorically, a moment of peilèction and absolute

inclusion:

Was anvthing real at alI? Yottiin~.onlv the bah. their/

dorious c u ~ n o
Thou& one would ever pss. ah! fleetinrrfv under the fallinw
. .
- (u
ball. 273) l5

Zoe, thinking of Peter Heron, understands the sense of personal loss that comes with fivsmted

hopes of creative expression: "Peter, the artist. drevning of the painting which he wiIl never

cornpiete (he also longing to m d for one moment of his life beneath the brilliance of the

perfect circle)..." (m373) Peter longs for a halo. a symbol of his superiority over others. But
hz fails to see nature's rhythms, as Thora and Zoe do, arcing over and shaping the traitsitory

lives, and deaths, of ail people. Instead, he sees that the worki, as it is. encourages his vague

drearn of difference and individuality, but will not allow it to be. He is unable to change hs way
of thinking because he. like many others, does not have the means with which to arrive at, let

atone communicate, a vision&

p different h m the one tiis language and cdture provides.

Frame quotes Rilke etsewhere, g.v. EA 273, and ais0 Yeats's "'The Fascination of

What's Difficuit" (a98) and Denis Glover's "The Mgpies" (a157). A rnifdiy ironic tone

cornes with quotaions fiom song, as when Toby identifi-eshimseff as "the lad that's born to be

upon hearing the Pipe Band's song as his shîp leaves New Ze;iIand.'6 Frame's quotanons

are usually italicized. but do not cany the continuous ironic disjuncrion of the materiai quoted in

-
Faces. Their conneaion with, rather ttian their disjunction &om. the surface and undersmcmres

of the text is sigificant here. They fit ciosely with Framerskaleidescopic matment of the

novel's cornplex, transfomative themes, narration, structurai movements, and characterization.

As the represented author, Thora uses quoced verse frapments to rnake her

characters do as she wants, as weiI as to iltuminate their thought processes and memories. She

describes Toby, about to land in England, ' rehearsing' his Waimaru homecoming:

Now Toby is at the gate. nere 1s the paddock, tfie pond Hear
the magopies? Remember Tom and Elizabeth?

When Tom and Elizabeth kept the fimm

The bracken made their bed/
And quardle-oodle-ard1e-wardledoodle,:
The mamies said.

This passage asserts an antipodean perspective: "paddock " has a special sense in New Sealand

, " the verse Fragment cornes hom "The Magies" by New Zeaiand p e t Denis
~ n ~ l i s h and

-
Glover. The poem deals with dispossession a ruptured relationship between people and the

land because of financial agencies. The magies, cfosing each of six stanzas. speak a language
fhrergn to human ean. Still, these birds are powefilly insistent. as ifthey are the voice of that

place since their own relationship with it remains undkmbed

Thora does not have Toby remember the poem by hirnsdt effonlessly.

realisticallv. She orden h m to remember. and uses rhat process to foregroound Toby's

tictiveness. This foregrounding examines how langage preYranses the sympathetic responses

of 3 represented reader or auditor. Toby 1s a figure whose responses are elearly directed for the

benefit of Thora's audience. By means of imperarives. ' you' the reader are included olliptically.

The rhetorical questions. thus predicateb coax one into remembering an event o u may not
'

have experienced, or may have forgorien und this reminder. And the verse fragnent bolsten

the vividness of imaeining the memory. Embedding, therefore, is the chief feanire of this

passage. It draws one in From the simple begtnning. Thora's spartan prose points to time.

-New". and place, There". and rhrough her words not one, noc nvo, not three, but four srories
unfurl: the nanaror's: Toby's; Tom and Elizabeth's; and yours.... And where do you place

Frame as teller.? And Glover as teller'? A11 these narrative levels are present, really, and all are

reinforced by Glover-s iovely, left-branched cornplex sentence. whch ends on the note not of

what is said but on the act of having "said". Frame thus elucidates language and its Fullest

conte.xt in that word.

Thon's/Frame's use of quoted material illustrates language's inherent ability, in

the acc(s)of cornmunicntion, simultaneowly to connect, distance, assimilate and differentiare

subjectivity. Toby's mernories are not his own. A novel creates a character's mernories and

draws the reader inro sharing the sense of remembering. At rhis level of expenence, through

cornmon human denominaton like sight, sound. and distance tiom the rime and places of
chiidhood, the texts self-reflexiveness connects telcniai voices (discursive, narrative, cfiaracter-

based) with the readeis voice. or ear. The Edge reveds alternarive i y s of comrnunica~ing,and

therefore ofmerining. It defies naive realism'sconstnrcts because Frame's temal mirror is not

retlecting ' red life' situations. peopIe, places, and so on. in the usuaf sense. It is too self-

retlexive for that and too immediate in irs efféct on the reader. [ts affect. too, is immediate,

based ris it is in sensation and how one responds emotîonally to the suggestion of physical

responses. The Edge reflects the reader reading. And because identities shifi tiuoughout the

book the reader's is no more fixed than my other. Everyone rading now creates the meanin-

of a previousiy dormant, uncompleted act of communication.

Though quantitively srnaIl, the poerns in The E d ~ eof the Al~habetM e r

Frame's muiti-levelled search for aiternative patterns of communication, &us rnakrng them

integral to the whole both as a group and individually. Thora's role as nanator, the themes of

&ah, life, and Ianguage, the te'ct's cyclical srnicrues, and so on, ail these predicate the poetry,

which is then more than cross-genre ornamentaiion. It is copra remm and copia verborum,

through which Frame ii.xplores a range of Ianguage and thought often limited by the traditions

and conventions of the reaiistic novel.

As proleptic chomes to Owls Do CnJs main sections, Daphne's verse passages

have a definite structura1 function. No apparent underiying structural prïnciple govems the

diverse distribution of Thora's poerns. .4 pattern of attrition simiiar ro that in OwIs Do C N does

emerge in The Edoe, however: pan one. "a home there", contains three verse passages: part two.

"the lost traveIler's dream of speech", contains B O ; pm three' "the silver forest", contains one.

This pattern signifies Daphne's increasing silence throughout Owls Do Crv. The final poem in
The Edge is Thora's suicide note; thus, the pattern relates to silence here, coo. Specifically, it is

the silence of an elcnnct means of human communication and with i~ the emnction of

humanipi.

Tbe six poems in ï h e E d ~ translate

c the major themes, images. and metaphon of

the prose in ternis of poetic structures. diction, and techniques. Because the poems are not

particuiarly long," their compression of rhetorical figures and density of absrracrions conrrast

with the prose. in addition Frame shapes the poems riccording to particular. recursive syntacnc

patterns. In al1 but the second poem, she writes opening stanzas in which there is an abundance

of subjects, but predicators, if useci, are ambiguous. The spta,, moves toward -gammaticai

completeness across sentence and sranzaic boundaries; the poems close with at leas one

independent clause in their last stan7as. And like the novel itself, the end of each poem makes

one go back to its beginning, in order to recreate the meanings) that the initial fragmented

images and ç y n w evoke.

The poems mosriy resemb le interior monologues, focusing on Thora's teriy

difficulties and the larger themes of The E d ~ e .They connect oniy ioosefy with the narrative, at

tirnes ailuding to ctiaracters or situations. but these allusions are contemal, and not specific

withm the poems thernselves. The first poem e.upresses tùtiiity through an alIegory of exiinction:

This monster in the rnudfla=/

deceived and dying
while other creatures willed their change of way
******************************************
this monster with so little purposei
.............................................
who was pushed off the band wagon of Survival,'
who never knew the secret caves of langage,
rhe cornparison and blind sight.
that mrnoured cities of man/
 that prornised the cradIe-cornforts of intelligence/
-a big heaw brain to play witb'
a bomb to suck in the lonely dark-f

This monster ruouses our love and p1v.i Im 16- 17)

Thora observes the monster, descnbing some of irs traits and the process of its death. She

discloses "ouf sympathetic identification with the monster by means of a cuiminanny penod.

after we have worked our way through 2 1 lines of embedded clauses, schemes of repetition

(anapbora and paraitelism), apposition, and three parenthicai sides.

The clirnactic use of the fim person pluraI is mesting because it diverges ftom

Thora's 'distanced' perspective at the poem's outset and in its prose preface: "1 waiked one

evening... and 1considered the creams who are beyond the range of words." (a
16) The

monster loses distance as an object observed when Thora nuns it inro a metaphor of human

destiny. The last stanza explicitly connects the allegoricai "us" with the allegorical monster:

Will time publish us too as grotesque, purposeless,~

beyond the range of human lan-me, between the pages of7
icei
turned and tom uncuriously by the ilIiterate yeaw
till our story is sealed at laW
ti11 no human rnind remains ro tracei
the cornpelIing reasonj
the marginal dream?/

The question is a searching one. not assening, as a rhetorical question would, that "time a
publish us....etc.", but rather, m l y wondering if people and their means of communication will

become completely disconnecteci, "purposeiess" except for their inevitable deaths. Frame

images humans as books, symbolizing her understanding of the bilatenl influences at work
benveen language and its ' users.' She does not forget nature's powers in the equarion when she

puns: "...human language, benveen the pages oj? tee" imy emphasis).

initiates the that death.

specifically bound to language and it sets out, for the t i r s time in The E d ~ and
e in poenc terrns,

Thon's uncertainty of why she wishes to write and how she witl best be able to do so. The

second poem furthers the same thernes but eschews the extended metaphor and panicuiar

synractical arrangements of the fim Just before it begins, Thora joins the second poem with the

prose namtive and Toby: "It is difficult to Iive here on the edge of the alphabet, Toby.... how

can I qve y u advice when no one wiIl advise me?" (EJi 46) in answering this question Thora

considers the comection of seIf-identity with language and death:

...but no one will give me advice. Friendss?/

The antiseptic whites of rheir eye show fm.1

It is nothing, it is not in any bond Only the dead/

at the center of our lives are thus detached enou&
to write and dimibute pamphlets/
faiiing ripe and sad where we parade our loves
autumna!.. ..i

With Western culture, in Thora's view, emphasizing death more than Iife, life is then "the

compelling reasonr the marginal dream"of dying humanie. She asserts that "(t)he deadi at the

center of our lives" fix "our lives" and thus, "our"identities. "(A)urumnai"suggests her intuition

of an alternative perspective on Iife, death, Ianguage and identity. But at this point. Thora has

not yet dismantled the centre-margin paradi-m in favour of the cyclical model, which would

subven dominance throu& a continua1 balancing of power throu_gh death Me.

 The third poem concludes "a home there" with a reworking of the effëcts of

temporal cycles on human existence. expression, and perception The syntacrical format of the

opening swnn resernbles mat of the fim p e m with its hypotaxis and senes of unpredicated

subjecn. Where ncir-exacr repeütion o c c m the slight Marion mates a specific focus. =:
'.hOctober" becornes "thOnoberJ'. (a
5 1 ) The comection of words with meanings cornes

h m the m p m e n t of words lefi-to-ri&r and downward, a s u s d , but also from right-10-lefi

and u p W making words polysemic and shifting their intial muctural andior functional

identities. For example:

...the hamster his cheek lined with fat, wordless.,

Conferencev
the rusting resorts...

Not only is the hamster wordless, but reading upward and over the full stop. so are conferences.

Thus, unused resorrs nist M e r e.xamples are: "...bis October birched with mernory rhet

switch, from die green trees...";and "...ampiernoming shadowsi the day served for die li&t 10

feed orv". in the former, *birchedtfmay be active or passive, sigificantly altering the

pesonification of its subject, "this October". in the latter, ellipsis makes the reading ambiguous:

"shadows" may be a predicator. suggestinp the influence morning mens over "the day [whch isj

served2.or it may be a noun, "shadowu [that] the day served...etc."

Through references ro seasonal change, "An October warned by fiost".and to old

newspaper headlines about E m t Offspring of Privilesed, and, lady, with a tale of Who." this

poem studies the "affliction...called oveneas"and irs sympromatic thoughr panems. The

concluding tale undemines linguistic authoriry and monology, as Thom approaches Istina
Mavet's vision of the suicida1 connection of words and meaning, The focus on the dative

pronoun "who"explores ths connecrion in terms of ambiguity, self-idenriry, and linguistic

influences on the unconscious:

...who brought fo-orth no Young;!

who cut throu& cables of hate with a moonstone, one:
springnme
whose hibernation is patient and nomau
whose larder is fûll.:.
Despite the terror of the relative pronoun rnarchng ummed/
even in sleepi
we have gone back to the gap and the birth. the edge..... (a
52)

This s t a u a begins: "Who bided his time forever in the human brairu". The sentence can be read

as l a c ~ n ga subject, i.e.that "Who"begns a string of wall-eyed (ref'rentless) relative ciauses.

Or,it can be read with the first "Who", as a propet name, being die subject of an independent
clause. which ends at "full". The successive relative pronouns and their possessives then refer

back to "Wtio". A sense of reIational arnbiguity arises fiom the combination of the inirial,

predicaave positions of the words "who"and "whose"and the semblace oftbeir anaphoric

construction, whch the poetic lines emphasize.

If the reader m u s have absolute referents, these may be seen in the noun phrases

preceding parcicuiar pronouns, beginning with a reading b a c h a r d ricross sranzaic and sentence

boundaries, and allowing poetic licence for any logicai absurdities: "...RelativePronoun.,

(stanzajf Who bided..!";"...a nesu who brought..."; "...noyoung who cut...";"...one!springtime,'

whose hibernation is patient": and '%ornai/whosé larder is full."

"Tenor of Relative Pronom" exists because "Who" is "unnamed and perhaps

unnameable - its identity is a matcer of grammatical interpretation and cultural'personal

preference or aversion .4s Thora sees it, the word t\as no particuiar meaning with which it can

connect ft is "marctiing.... even in sieep", but is the sieep its own or 'oursr'? h d does the

marchng imply direction'? .\gain linguistic. formal. and grammatical ambiguities tiustrate and

enIiven Thora's attempts to communicate throt& poetic constnicts.

"(E)ven in sieep" can also modie "we have gone back...", the independent ctause

which follows it. Smtegically centred on the page t like "spnngtïme"which hibernates), this

adverb phrase is a visu& gammarical. and concepnial bridge in rhe stanza. Tt connects

conscious effort ("Despite terrer...") with sieep and dream. resulting in the surfacine of

unconscious recognition of the boundafies of language and rneaning. Our various stances in

relation to Ianpge and meaning activate these boundaries. The ways that we envision and use

language therefore characterize our mutable identities:

...the gap and the binh, the edge, wherd

some leap inf
others camp on the edge, incomptete with foiding
funiiture plastic cutlery tea...!
..........................................
some shout or coo-ee God Godi

of identity, but cannot express the outcome for those

Thora sees language as ''the birthW-place

who return to reconsider, and possibly reconstnict, language and selfhood. Is it suicide or

rebirth*?Thora does not resolve her uncertainty and the t e d ambiguity here. She goes on to

dismiss outrig!!t those who "campon the edge". They die spintdly, not having sought

lançuage's healing powers or having tried to hinder its eventual extinction. Finally, she looks at

those who stand shouting or beckoning for divine intervention whatrver their resons. This

stance completes the range of relationships with language that Thon examines, concluding the
poem and part one with the depicrion of thorou@ human uncenainry and linguistic

ineifectiveness.

,4sthe reader moves between parts one and two. the teanbecomes rt "wordless"

coderence. reflecting a reading of the fiost that warns of winter - and extinction? - and recdling

the begïnning of the poem. Frame thus mserts the symbotism of nanue's cydes, which adjusts

the focus on Ianguage and its boundanes: ''the running stitch of mow in the sky ta mendi

birthsprour/". The image of "snow" mending "oirthsprout" connects with that of the edge of üie

alphabet as "the binti". The words of the poem nm across the page, each a singe. assembted

expression of potentid heaiing power and perhaps, survivd.

in part two, "the lost traveler's dream of speech", Thom must advance hcr

narracive. She uses Toby to introduce Par and Zoe. Again, the te,= is self-reflexive.

foregrounding how ianguage prescribes identity: "Am I fiction then, Toby wondered. Why

should 1share a cabin with an Irishan'?" (EA 57) The fourth poem is only twelve lines long, a

divergence From the Ienghy abstractions of the previous poems. It connects with the prose

narrative through the characters, inirialiy reflecting the responses of ''the soIitary ones" (u
80),

whose fantasies of romance and adventure give way to the monotony of the journey: "Entertain

me: land land/ another shipf a geat white whaleda tleshless mariner! the daily chart! the quoits.

the country dancing...."

The only independent clause in this poem occurs in the frrst line. It consists of

only hvo words in two trochaic feet: an irnperative predicator and the final unaccented object

''me". As if the first line ended with a colon, a frapented iist of hopes, literary legends, and

organized time-passing activities folIow. The list grows increasin& unimaginative and
 91

quantifiable, traits reflected in the shift fiorn no articles (1-2) to indefinite articles (Il.4-5) to

definite arricies (11.6-9). -r 1.2, a spondaic monomerer which suggests regret for taking the

sea voyage, the a c c e n d pattern fails into regular iambic rneter. A break in this pattern occurs

at 1.7, which ends with the word "with".the initial unaccented syilable of the foot The fint

word of1.8 completes the foot, bur it too is an unaccented monosyIIable: "the".A spondee

followç this pyrrhic foot, after which the iambic meter mumes. These breaks in iambic accent

and rneter reflect the power of natural forces to threaten and even break in upon presurned

human sec*: "...the c o u ( w danc f ing on 1 the vil1 1 age gréen 1 witW the 1 séa 160k 1 in%

on 1 in dér 1 ision; 11' " (11. 7-8).

The semi-colon ending 1.8 indicates a stop and coincides with a completed foot

Lines 9-1 1 al1 end with half feer lowever, and each is marked by accenh 11 patterns which Vary

the iambic meter:

and the 1 pihted wooden 1 horses 1 k i n g ( moved fiom squaird

to 1 littie 1 square,/
groomed 1 and féd 1 and stabied ( at night 1 to,'
fiIl 1 the émp ( ty cor 1 ners of 1 our sléep. ( t'

Line 9 begins with a complete phyrric foot, "and the". The next five feet are trochaic,

ernphasizing the root and content of wch word. Thus, the chess pieces, the "horses".become a

metaphor for human alienation fiom nature, fUr human domestication. Both are "painted( false-

face) and "wooden"(lifeless), and the passive verbs enhance this process by signit'ying an

unlaiown, unnarned agent. The frontal accentua1 mess that Thora places mice in successive

parailel arrangement on the words " ( Little ( squire" underscores her vision that human life is

circumscribed in its direction and placement. This vision cames despair with ir, as Thora
suggests by compieting the accented haif foot of 1. 10 in trochaic meter. * / square, groomed 1 "

The mess on the passive verb "groomed" slip with the verbs following it and serves to re-

esablish the iambic merer " 1 and féd 1 and fibled". The poem doses with the reçular r f i ~ h r n

of üie iamb brmiung words in moving toward " [ the emp 1 ty cor 1 ners of1 our sleep. 1 "

Whde this poem begins with an expikit connecrion to the characters. it ends with

a greater focus on rhe overail narrative perspective. hirially then, it diverges fiom Thora's

eariier introspective poems. One rnay think language is Iess an issue here. But the IeveIs of

abstraction curnulate with the poem's close. increasing images and metaphors that centre on

unseen or unknotvn forces which guide and shape human desany. By emension, then, language

is concepnially integrai to this poem. And to the extent that the poem so foregrounds its metrical

variations, s~ecificallvpoetic constructs, it also examines the ways in which humans gude and

shape language. Thora's recognitionof this relationship ailows her enou& authority in writing

that she may continue her "journey of discovery",but she continues with the knowledge that

linguistic control also lies elsewhere.

The penultimate poem in The Edge occurs mid-way througrh part n o . It is the

oniy poem in rhis work to constitue an entire chapter. It is three stanzas long taking pages.

It breaks off the previous chapter's n m u v e of the shipboard voyage with a poeuc discome on

Thora's existence in an urban indusm'al centre:

And i, Thora Pattern, living - no!/

in a death-free zone
screarn of diesel and stem
people walking breathing neighborhood smoke;
in the market oranges, white gapes splimng'
under the supervision of tvasps/
............................................
.4 West lndian on the top flood
 at the window. atone, lmking down.;
Fires of life in the sh~.:((a1 18)

Thora's perspective on figurume 1i fe and dath provides the imrnediate thematic focus ofthe

poem: she lives. yet does not, in a deadening zone which denies literal and tigurative visions of

death. . \ g i n Thora draws out aspects of her paradoxical perspecnve rhrough ambiguous

grammatical and syntactic arrangements. "1" is stmcturaily and functionally a subjecr. but the

sentence lacks a predicator if "screamnis nominal rather than verbal. This ambigtiity dlows

Thora to reflect both cairn meditation and a tenor of anger. The former quali- surfaces in the

observations thar she detaiis through sequenees of noun and prepositionai phrases, which

fiequently appear in seriated or appositionai arrangements. ïhe latter, anger, underlies the calm.

It is apparent in the singIe word "scream", and dso in the subtle, sarcastic humour of Thora's wry

pun on the supewising "wasps"whichwho contrast with the solitary West Indian who has

reached the top only Iiterally, and avem hiçther ,we fiom the "Fires of life in the sky."

The entire first nanza l i s characteristics of the "deah-freezone". hence it does

not require grammatical completeness. This format complernents Thora's perception and

description of her own world, since both the eenre and the zone oprate From simdtaneous

principles of assimilation. hgmentation, aiienation, and ordered disorder. In contras. the

second stanza contains five independent clauses in the fint four lines. And the first word is

"Now", which gives focus to Thora's seemingiy random observauons and empbasizes the end of

her listing. Here, she begïns to dissect the images of the "death-freezone'' and to reveal her

sense of their sigrufications: -‘New h e s rise; no one cornes nuining;' forests are eaten away,

mincis are ragged with new patterns of decay;' ..." (a1 19)
 ïhora sees the worid decaying because of the demctiveness of historicalIy

ment indusnialiranon She despak thac nor only wili human "minds" be unable to survive in

this damaged and darnagxng world but that already poisoned f a n m e will be lethai to itself

with the road tom up and no hope of repair~

there is no escape ;iay more to where. they Say;
waves of oblivion rise and falV
in p c e trearies with the pole and the rnoon!
and the sewge with its shagy golden mane
is adnft siIently on the tidew
that cushion the drowned/
against al1 sound/
that saturate the raom and lace draperies of my eu..

The movements of language, silent sewage, follow the new panems of doubiespeak, what "they

say". These are the "tides" ungovemed by "pole" and "moon" which place tilth and utter silence

in "eu" and mind.

The left-branching sentence that ends stanza nvo reaches grammatical

completeness eariy on, but uses expansion to connasr the issue of silenr/siIencing language- The

oratorical nature of this device takes the words tiom eye to ear. subveting Thora's despair by

foregrounding the tenacity that certain linguistic comtmcts e.xhibit, even when their own

e.m'nction Iooms. Hope extends from this level into the thrd and final s t a n z a where Thora

cxplicitly ties ianguage to memon, with images of creation and survival:

People sape at the hole in the r0ad.i

A bomb crater? Lighming? Whirlwind?,'
Men build a little house, with brazier, and make tea.,
But secret spiders are at work weaving mil- resilient webs;
From pipe to msty pipe. A rat's black
full-stop nose conchdes the sentence of destruction.;
The trafic is at a standstiil. Tales are told/
of how many million y e m agol
 the acid was first spilled
out of sleep,' into &ng light 1'
the acid of rnemory.

Again. Thora places the people of Wesern culture at the edse of the aiphabet The abyss may be

man-made or the result of an acr of God NevertheIess, it is a source of fascination, and neither

horrifies nor repels the gawkers, presumabty because they " g p e g the hole" (myçmphasis), not

-
into it. Thora envisions the interior, seeing that, afier the destniction, "secret spiders" repair and

connect the ancient understnic~esof "the road", the path of communication.

Thora's imagery rem on recognïzable eiernenrs of hurnan existence both seen and

unseen, like the road and the rat But she figures these images as rnuiti-levelled metaphors to

retlect the range and depth of her ideas. Even single words reveal the cornplex thematic

interconnections of the poem itself and in relanon to the te.a as a whole, The word "sentence",

for example, connotes judgement, a period of punisfunent, and, of course, a grammatical unit.

And in linking it with "demctionn in the genitive, Thora indicates some sources of her despair

i communication. She wites of a time { 'Xow", as we read) when the "sentence

for the s u ~ v aof

ofdestniction" and the "îraffic" of modem life stops. The moment makes stories active: "Tales

are told", replacing what "they say".

Thora assem the importance of primordiat mernories to crativity and survival.

Integral to present memory is "the acid of mernory", DNA, but "acid" aIso alludes to the

continuum of decay and death, without which human life is not possible. This "acid" indelibly

marks al1 aspects of our existence and, thus, it provides Thora with a paradox that Icaves her

neither fuIly despairing, nor firlly hopefuI. The romantic moment which elicited the story of the

creation of hurnanity ends with a bitîersweet look tonvard fiom the first age. The hole ("bornb
crater?") in the road of the "dead-Free zone" wiIl have no one to set it and the buçy spiders ir

conmins if war were to create nuclear winter. So Thora conrinues to write, concentracing on

"Now" and "rnernory"and her vision o f the cycles of life and deah inremneci.

When the time to end the narrative approaches, Thora marks it with a 17 line

suicide that proc Iaims her life. The poem's

sentence comprises 8 lines, with no independent clause. M e r an ambiguous opening line, the

poem centres on the anti-industrial theme:

Thou& Iife offers machines for the purpose-!'

rnonotonously &ng wheeis that sweat theu a i n e d per-0
plexities and despais+'
,~uardedon the assernbly-line by creatures with coverecü
heads, gloved mincis and sealed mernories;
-
with canned music playing n windfall of cherries!
gashed in the blackhe& &hile rhey dance&
hammocking the worm to sleep.! (B379)

The first line is an adverbial clause, creating the expectation of an independent clause that will

folIow and cornpiete the grammaticai strucrure and the rneaning of the semence. The Iack of an

[Csubverts the grammatical nom, but not so the g i s t because, through apposition, 11.2-5 outiine
"the purpose"of dying. That is what life ultimateIy offers. and machines are one way of dying.

The reification of people as "crearures" working to "canned music" contrasrs witfi the pathos of

"a wïndfall of cherries", personified by rheir dance. Centrd to the lines concerning the cheries.

in content and because it is bracketed by lyrical images, is the allusion ro violence and evil:

"gashed in the black hem''. The nanirai process of death is comrpted; the indusaid age has

made man no more thm a dormant "worm".

 Our wait for the gammaticai cornpietion of the poem's fim sentence finally ends
with 1.9, the firn line of the second sentence: "Tonight i devise my own simple time for

dying ..." This delayed cornpietion retlects and underscores the imminence of both Thora's

denth and the conclusion of the narrative. Thon assers the present tirne as ber own fiom this

point. Her urge to die is paradoxicrtlly creative, and its irnmediacy sheds the past and memory.

thus making her time "simple":

...not anchored any more,

ro earth habits, houses, trees, people. or thorned wishes/
where nations prick Sieir finger and cry.:
Tonipbt 1devise my tirne. 1make a M e krw'
to follow the tides of death in the sky.

Unlike the polluted oceanic tides, "the tides of death in the sky" suggest to Thora freedom from

"sarth, habits" and "thomed wishes", i.e., memory and the constructs, like language, &ou&

which memory survives or is exthguished.

Throughout The Edee, the daiiy routines of human existence narrow the a b m c t

thematic, narrative, and poetic leveis of the tes, Foilowing the l a s poem. the prose narrarive

shows how tbe dead, and death as XIongoing state, confiont Thora in her daiiy movernents:

Each night, 1 Say, they creep between my sheets. They share my

hot-wter bottle....
In the morniny it is the dead who seek fint the warmth of my
slippers and my clothes siung over the chair... (a 302)

It seems to Thora that the fieedom which she envisions will not zxin for her even in death. She

concludes her narrative e.xpressing faim hope, but yet sensing thar ' now' is lost to her: "One day

we who Iive at the edge of the alphabet will end ow speech." nie destructive aspect of death.
for Thota, overcomes her creativity. As she moves towards her own death, she captures her

seme of fiitility in an image of autumn Ieaves:"...as if in flying fiom their lives they reached to

grasp at a dream and had their han& stmped on, to teach them a lesson.. No meddling." (EA

30 1)

the narrative works toward a

As indicated by the repeated phrase "Now In,

conceptualization of the present as a fluid, cyclical overlay of d l time, which then integrates the

linguitic destabilizationof notions of self-identity. Frame redefines the tems, together and

individuaily, as Thora'sperception of time and of herself as authorlnarrator change throughout

The Edne. The transformation of Thora's own 'deathstyle' existence into a figurative,
regenerating death parallels Framelscreative method. Frame writes in The Envov From Mirror

of the role of the imagination ("my playhouse, Mirror City") in the creative process: "...I

had abducted treasures tiom their homeland, placed them in suange settings, changed their

purpose, a d in some cases desâroyed them to make my own treasures." (Frame, Minor City

175) Frame's "transformation of ordinary facts and ideas into a shining palace of minors" plays

up the contrasts between the two conclusions of The E d ~ e :the one that Thora authors and the

one by Frame, in which Thora is the authorialpersona. Thora, as a posthumous persona, re-

enacts the daity routines of the living, not out of habit or necessity as the living do, but as

Frame's means of discovering now the hidden and forgotten "tiny poetic essence(S)" of life and

of the living.

The anti-war and anti-industrial themes in The Edae, dong with Frame's evident

admiration of the language of Shakespeare (ie pre-industriai,renaissance) here and in Faces,

underscore her concern that English now is almost cornpkteiy alienated from individual
imagination Daphne, [sina,and Thora, in simiIar different ways, muggie with various

linguisic c o m c r s and therefore, with preftgured hence. alienated perceptions of culture.

identity. power, time and nam. Vincenr O'SulIivan descnbes the linguistic difficulties with

wbich these characters grapple:

These mistresses of the word.. are incapabie. within the fictions

they inhabit, of conveying what they know. 1s not the final
assurnprion chat langage lets them down, that in various ways it
nins out? ....
We are not considering a paradox here so much as the aporia of
the deconstructionists, ...a gap p a s which narrative cannot
-
progress treasure and entightenment on this side, the mass of
hum- on that, and the bridges of communication almost
gleefully brought down, ( 185)

The rehtions OC Frame's personae to the boundaries of Lanpge influence how she depicts

potential "bridges of communication." in Faces and The Edee, Frarne exposes tangmge forrns

that, because their p n m q h c t i o n s are contral and deception, thwart healing acts of

communication At the rime, Frarne discovers alternive "bridges" t h r o u a generic cornparison

and contrasr - benveen verse and prose, anci the formats of poeuy and the nove t.

In Faces, Istina's voice issues fiorn structural-genenc gaps, thus comecting

divisive and divided speech forms in an expression of her imaginative vision. The Edee exposes

the eutremes of linguistic divisiveness as a dire consequence of the modern age. Thora Pattern

fails. in the end, to see the leveIs of connectedness and survivd that her story purs fonh against

the extinction of communication. Frarne asserts that creativity is, like life itself. a reworking of

death and decay . Language, for Frame. deconstructs itself. Faces in the Water and The Edge af

the Alphabet represent Frame's reconstniction of langage. As such, they fonn suons subtexts
and inclusive patterns of communication that are aitematives to the exclusivity o f traditional

Iiterary techniques and genres. Frarne's patterns trace an aesttieric of Iinguisric connectedness in

a vision that celebrates and seeks to preserve both the ordinq and the exceptionai in humanity.

Language has not let down Janet Frame, nor has it run out Her paradoxicai figurations use

aporia to begn again to find new speech and changng essences at the edges of langage.

I
See: Gina Mercer, ''The E&e of the ~ l ~ h a bJourney:
et Destination ûeath," _ A d i a nand New
Zealmd Studies in Canada 5 (1991). Mercer comects Ftamek "acutecritique of the dominant
cuiture" throqhout the novel with the setting, "theWestern world during the Cold War years". (39)
' The prefatory note to The Edce describes the text as a "manuscript... found among the papes
of Thora Pattern after her &th, and submitred to the publishers by Peter Heron, Hire-Purchase
Salesman" Frame, The Edee of the Alphabet np.
' a: -
Vincent O'Suliivan, "Exiles c f the Mind The Fictions of Janet Frame." A Sense of Exile:
Essavs in the Literature of the Asia-Pacific R+on (University of Western Austraiia, Nediands,
Westem A u d i a : Cenue for Studies in Australian Literature, 1988) 18 1- 1 87.
' i&: Margaret Dalnel Janet Frame (Auckland: Oxford U.P., 1980) 33f; Patrick Evans, Janet
-
Frame Wsron: Twayne, 1977) 92;-, "AI the Edge of the Alphabet," Bird Ha* B o ~ eEssavs :
on Janet Frame, ed Jeanne Delbaere-Garant (Aarhus, Denmark- Dangaroo, 1978) 56; Robert T.
Robertson '%id, Ha* Bogie: Janet Frame 1952-62"Bird Hawk, Bogie: b v s on Janet F m e
33.
5
As the represented author of The E c k , Thora Pattern appropriatesJanet Frame's c h c t e r s Toby,
Bob, and Amy Withers fiom Owls Do Crv. Toby is a favourite confidante of Thora's. Aimost
incredibly, she eaupressesconfidence in & knowledge - but is it acnialty his knowiedge, her
subconscious knowledge, or Frame's in which she beiieves? Thora tells Toby of her selfdoubts:
9-,for e.uample. 30:46; 49. niera intrudes into the narrative. making - herseif a character, to

express ber confirçion and uneasy narrative control: 14X 214.

n b.: Frarne. The Envov From Mirror Ciw 124 and Mercer T h e E&e of the Al~habet''5 1-53.
'8 K.e . ~ :The Edee 49;1QR
In addition to the imaging of words as perennials (vide supra), the narrativdseasonai movement
dis in winter. The tbree main chamcters of Thora's story, Toby, Zoe Bryce and Pat Kwnan, traveI
by ship &om New Zeaiand to England "from Winter to Winter."( 1 73) See aiso, s: 203: 295;
199R 301.
9
For discussion of these characters with respect to their "colonialdienation"vîs-a-vis "the
distinction of centre and margin", see Bill Ashcrofl, et al., "AppropriatingMarginality: Janet Frame's
The Edoe of the Ai~habet,"The Empire Writes Back: Theon/ and Practice in mst-Coloniai
Literatures (London/New York Routledge, 1989) 105.
10
Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale IV, iii, 11. 1-12. The Song marks a transition in the play from
winter to spring scenes.
11
Colleen J. Cowman, "The Wounded Spectnun: Colour-coding and the Value of H m in Owls Do
Crv," JN2L (forthcoming). This study, based on a randorn representative selection of lexical
collocations of the node word "green," reveals a clear, non-propositional Link in.ODC between Frarne's
use of the word "green"and de& as a state and as a proce&. Also, q- "Collapshg the distinctions
ktween here and there, between past, present, and fiiture - or at least because of the way the mind
works and because of the antipodean perspective, asserting the sirndtaneity rather than the duaiities of
-
seasons, of tirne, of place Fer] novels bring Frame to a conffontation with the distinction between life
and dath." W.H.New, "The Frame Story Worid of Janet Frame," Essavs on Canadian Writing 29
(1984): 185E
l2 Bill AshcroR, G. Griffths and H Tin, "AppropriatingMarginality: Janet Frame's The Edae of the
Abhabet,"The Emoire Writes Back: Theow and P4ce in Post-Colonial L i t e r a ~ e (London/ s New
York-Routiedge, 1989) 104-109.
13
Thora is, in -kmy ways, anti-panem. More specifidy, she is a g a .the prdptive and, as she
II

sees them, d a d y patterns imposed by social norms. She is fighting for the individuai's need, and right,
to create meanin@ patterns of identity, to communiate positive and independent pattern of
othemess without fear of punishment or exclusion The oniy problem is that Thora hdamentaily
betieves that the forces ofdeath in Western culture are so Gong diat her case for creatMty is one of
despair rather than hope." Mercer 'The Edge of the Al~habet"4%
' "It reminds mq'Lawrence began. But he could not identify his memory." (-272)
1s
The source of the quote is: Rainer Maria me, Sonnets to b h e u s , trans. M. D. Herter Norton
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1942) n.p. The original offers a slightly diEerent, though relevant, sense:

-
....Was war wirkIich irn Ali?/

Nichts. Nur die Balle Ihre heniichen I3ogen.l

Auch nicht die Kinder...Aber manchmal trat eines/
ach ein vergehendes, unter den menden Bali./

R M. Riike, Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. A. Poulin, Jr. (Boston: ffoughton
Mifaui, 1977) 152.
16
'The lad that's born to be king? Why, Toby said to himselfS and was suddenly basW...Why that's
me! As ifwords had aniveci (over-coated and demi-veiled) to embrace the wordless." & A 46)
17 cf: u*
- ...And where have al1 the creeks gone, and the paddocks?"' * * * * "' They now say
s m m s . And fief&.+..'" Frame, The Carpathians (New York: Braziller, 1988) 30K
At 48 hes, the penultimate poem (EA 1 18-9) is the longest. It consitutes ail of Ch. 16.
 Scented Gardens for the Blind:
A Colonial Education

Scented Gardens for the Blind ( 1963)is Janet Frame's fourth novel, and like its

predecessors it too intertwines poetxy with prose. A s in Faces in the Water ( 196 1 1, quoted verse

h p e n t s make up the entire poetic content. But. whereas the source of the quotations in that
previous novel is most often popular culture, in Scented Gardens, the source is the education

sysem of New Zealand fiom the early 1930's through the first years of WWII. Frame's focus is

spificaliy literary. She draws on the te- and primen from which she was taught' how British

imperiai cennicity enforces the study of its own literature. The curriculum excluded colonial
7

works, m e r i n g in the colonies a woridview directed by and fiom the imperiai c,entre.'

This chapter iooks at Frame's intensive ueamient of coloniaiisr processes, of

being a colonial ' heii and at the same tirne k i n g consûucted and positioned as a colonial

subject. British imperial influence in generai is one aspect of the historical continuum that

Frame examines in The Edge of the Ahhabet In Scented Gardens, she directIy opposes one of

its deliberate effects: the aim of making an individual "'a mere cultural precipitate'....(who hâs)

internalized the official version of cultural authon'. - convinced into téeling their own guilt.
cooperating in their own conviction."' Frame focuses on the primary role of texts in the

advancement of an "internaiized" imperialism because colonial subjects become cornplicitous

with their colonizers through the canonical te- of the educationai -stem and ancillary

institutions, such as libraries. Stephen Slemon deems this "the essentially te-1 function of

imperialism's power":
 Viswanathan's argument - specific to tndia but retevant. t think to
-
other colonised sites is that it is the Engiish -book" which
becomes the forernosr macfunel for forging diat f o m of
obedience in colonial subjects which Gramsci cails cultural
domination by consent.. ..*

For Frame. soch t e . w I power is relevant to her dud position both as a member of New

Zsaland's white settler cuiture and as ri colonial subject. She writes in Scented Gardens out of

simultaneous alienation fiom and ambivdent appreciarion for the British l i t e nadirion.
~

"Colonialalienation"' through the imposition of Engiish as the dominant

lançuaçe of culture and education profoundly concems pst-coIonial wrïters. tMost ofien it 1s

those whose rnother-tongue has been dispiaced by EngIish who critique the British colonial

education system. In Decolonising:the iMind, N g g i wa Thiongo describes how, for Kenyans of

his generanon, the imposition of Engiish fiacwed "the sensibility of (the coloniai child) %om

his naturai and social enviroment" (Ngugi 17) and how "Engiish becarne main determinant

of a child's progress up the ladder of formai education" (Np@ 13). Frame examines a similar

seme of fracture in Scented Gardens, bur here, the mother-tongue & English and a the coionial
education both creates and alienates its colonial subject:

From the point of view of alienation, thût is of seeing oneself frorn

outside, oneself as if one \vas another self, it does not matter that
the irnported literature canied the geat humanist tradition of the
best in Shakespeare, Goethe, Balzac, ToIstoy,... The location of
this geat rnirror of'imagiination was necessarily Europe...and the
rest of the universe was seen From that centre. (Ngugï 18.)

F m e disrnantles this centre-rnargn paradign by revealing the dislocative and

siiencing effects of the colonial education of Erlene Glace, one of the three main chancten in
Scented Gardens. To this end. Frame's key technique is an intenemuality that operates counrer-

d i s ~ s r v e i y This
, is to say thar as a whole, the tem she incorporates work against the

authorirative tradition in wtiich she r a d them. This effect is notable among the pems quoted

-
and beween the poems and their parergom. that is. the diegetic and namtive frames.' Looiung

at the multi-layered structures in Frame's The Carpathians f 1988)- Susan &b describes their

t'unction as being "...to disnirb the binan, opposition berween the inmnsic and the exmnsic:' to
'

demonsuate how a patergon, or M e , can dismantle the most reassuring conceptual

oppositions." (Ash 3)

Frame concIudes Scented Gardens with the nuckar annihilation of Britain,

assemng a regeneration and reorientation of human communication through the pst-atomic

an ancestral voice, the voice of the beW...the tme sound rising at

1st ftom ice and marsManci, ancient rock and none, the ultimate
denial of ciries and people and nch stores of language skirnmed
cenhiry afier century from the settied civiI~tionsof human
being~'

Far kom denying h u m a community or creativitv, Frame aims at working through and beyond
the ambivalence of the English-speaking colonial subject and the West's cultural and

Wilson Harris'sterni is appropriate here. for his vision. as

technologcal "cam~ufla~es".~

e'tpressed in "AdversarialContexts and Creativity",parailels F m e ' s in Scented Gardens. Both

look at the "savage artefacts in human culture" as "the vent foundations upon which a capacity

for ~enuinechange rests in our visuaiising the conversion of adversarial contexts."(Harris 126:

my ernphasis) Colonialism, undoubtedly an adversanal contefi*gives Frame, like Harris. a

material, discursive impetus with which "to descend..into camouflages and maski as flexible

hunes within the mystery of genuine change." (Hams 138) The result in Scented Gardens is
"...ticnon that seeks tfirough complex rehearsal to consume irs own bises." (Harris 127)

An overview of the novelwi21 outiine the immediate contexts (of characters,

storylines, etc.) in which the numerous interteamai levels operate, and it will provide a

begïnning for this examination of Frame's use of poetry in Scented Gardens. The novei's

smicrure is schematic, with the firsr fifieen chapters failing into five unmarked ' sections'oithree

chapes, each chapter focusing, in tum, on Vera Glace, Edward Glace, and their mute dau&ter,

Erlene. Chapter siuteen conciudes the novel, ending the pattern with the revelation that Vera

Glace is a spinster and former librarian, who, k i n g unabte to care for herseif, has lived in a

mental institution since the age of thirty and has been "without speech for thirty years..." (s
247)

Vera narrates 'her own' five chapten in the F m penon, and argguably,' she is the

third person narrator of Erlene's and Edward's chapters. At rimes,elements of &ee indirect

close gaps benveen the charactent points of view and Ve&

disco~rse'~ own. The Wllowinp
passage is from chapter eighî, Erlene's fourth chapter:

...she (Vera)had been sitting in the room across the passage

writing in her notebook, Erlene knew, for sometimes she had heard
a nrstling like mice and straw and secrets, and it had been her
mother rurning the pages of her notebook, or witinç letters to
people who had vanished or died; or j u s simng touchng and
folding sheets of paper. (s 85. j

In reuospect, Frametsuse of narrative metalepsis1lparadoxicaily underlines that the texmai

divisions within the whole of Vera's interna1 mono t o p e have no absolute foundation. The g p s
are there. and yet no1 there. Erlene's intimation of her o m finiveness!' reflects the novel's

shifiing gounds of representauon, which j napo pose ssumptions of concrete, linex reference

wirh disjunctive points of view and information.

With the ernergence of anotber Vem, the conchsion of Scented Gardens

reorients the story, making it new, again. Vera has divided herseIf into a farnily, a tnnity 5rst

read in t e n s of the separareness ofthose within the farnily unit and later, in terms of their

intercomectedness withn the mind of one person. Considered together, these readings give a

unique depth of field both to Frame's examination of particular individds in their private, social

and culturai lives, and to her continuing exploration of similariw and difference as the

conceptual bases of standards of valuation.

The overall view, then, is of Vera, Edwani, and Erfene, as they, individually and

as a group, relate to Vera GIace, the mental patient and ostensible author. For cIarity and sense,

the rwo Veras obviously must be distinguished Rom one another. The Vera GIace of the first

fifieenchapters, I wiil cd\the charactcr Vera. I emphasize her statu as an alter eeo, since she

1s one of the projected fragments of self through which the novel investigates tfie underpinnings

of experience and consciousness. The persona of the concIuding chapter wiI1 be referred to as

the essential ven. The term "essential" retlects Wilson Harris's sense of a ritually

"camouflaged" genuineness, which is not fixed in itself, but is flexible and deepIy creative.

Thus, in the sense used heie? "essential" also reflects Vera's ultimate cornmitment to "the new

lan-page" (s
35 1) of pst-atomic humaniry and appears specifically for purposes of this

discussion. Its usage implies an equitabIe contrast between the represented author and her

eponymous character, playing as the term does on the polysernic name they share: m e glass
( suggesting isolation);tntth rnirror ( Ianguage without distonionj; and true ice ( flux held

momentady; tirne pas, the "[ce Age" 1391).

Post-colonial tfieory heips conte;uriializethe farniiy romance embedded in Scenred

Gardens. It provides political breadth to the convoluted account of the essential Vera's personal

hstory, for Erlene not only represents Vera's growth from cMdhood to addthood she also

represents resistance to inherited language forms. Vera, as Erlene, Iearns at school to love

poetq, but she senses that the languqe tau* is an aiienated one.

Frame manifests connections between the charactes as parallei conditions within

an crxlstenria.1continuum, thereby e-upandingthe concepts which concern the novel. Eriene's

refusal to speak the language of dienation pamlleis the thirty year silence o f the essential Vera.

And on a separate but related level, the padlels between Vera's fathefs death and Edward's

eleven year sojoum in Engiand illustrate the familid and wider politicai significances of an

absentee father-figure in New Zealand's patnarchal colonial society. The symbolic 'death of the

father' especially links the two Veras through ensui= silence and fear of death: but this Link

extends aiso to Erlene and Edward Jeanne Delbaere-Garant argues that

...her farher's death is the 1st episode wtuch (the charmer Vera)
conjures up from her p a s and which mus have taken pIace at
about the time when the red Vera Glace is said to have becorne
mute and insane. After her W e f s death there is only silence:
silence in Erlene's room...."
Erlene's silence reveals the roots of the silence of the essential Vera Glace, whose

silence did not just appear the instant her father die& tts source is in the langage forrns to

which she fint icas exposed: cveryday speech, "...saying nothing, the tattered bargain-priced
words,..."(s
12); and the speech of school, with tayers of "Verbs, Adjectives, Conjuncrions.

Adverbs, Nouns"covering the shamefil, chiIdish terms, " D o i Words.

~ Describing Words,

Joining WordS..." (SG 3 1 ) Vera. as Erlene. perceives that "t t )eachingpeople was cheating and

disfionest" And she also leanis ar school about censored tangtiage: %om bowdlerized

Shakespeare to al1 the words which she cannot in the "mosttnghtening book"(SG 58). the

dictionary.

Fear of authority fim appem in Scented Gardens in connecrion with langage:

the character Vera feus that Erlene will speak and pronounce her ,gsiky of accepting the

boundaries and perspectives of conventional language and Iife ISG 12). In a speech physiology

text Vera reads how she herseIf represses speech:

...1 moved my finger, walked dong the corridor, trylng to find the
door into speech but the diagram did not show it, somewhere in
the brain, the book said, an impuise in the brain tetting the words
go fiee, sympathetic movernent of larynx lips tongue, the shaping
of breath, and even then, it may not bc speech which emerges... but
the mîering of a new language which.... m u s be desûoyed or
dnven back to its birthplace in silence and darkness. (s 1OR )

The character Vera wills her own blindness in addition to repressing her speech. She concedes

the bounds of her life to patnarchal control. She says that, despite Edward's absence: "...I
could

feel the layers lefi by him; I couid even separate than, shuffle and sift them, wirh a touc h of rny

fingers; but I couid never quite remove hem or dench the invisïile hinge which heid them..."

(s
19). Sound becomes enhanced with Vera's blindness, and she says: ...Lleamed to igiore
"

the telltaie demands of my blood, and began to listen to sounds which came h m bcyond

rnyseif..." (E21). Thus, disconnecting her selffrorn her living body, Vera acknowledses yet
does not resist the personai atienarion brou& on by the aiienared language of her society.

Obedientiy, she will nor envision dternative w y s of communication even if the accepted way is

silencinp and damaging, pertiaps even deadly."

Erlene's tim chapter picks up the general question of the cmbedding of

pamarchal authority in language. Wornen's passiviry in the face of uruecognized or

unchallenged Iinguistic 'authority'angers Erlene, for it has crea~edthe silence which she chooses

to endure as her only alternative to using the langnge of women'scoionid alienarion. Erlene

says to herçeif of her passive mother '1 wish she were deai, and 1 could speak..."(SG 33)

Lam, Erlene satirizes one ofber "(s)harp and lonely" (SG 54) female titerature teachers for

blindly dismissing Arnold's expression of despair in "Douer Beach": "'Why the worid is îüil of

hope and joy! You m u s remember, girls, that when poets write in this way it is usuaily because

they are iI1 or overstrained.."(SG 55). The message irnpIicit in the teachefs words is that al1

' normal' and ' heatthy' language users ( men and women j wil t see and express only "hope and

jof .

The quote From Amoid is representative of al1 the verse Fragments but one in

Scented Gardens: the novel is an ironic showcase o f fragmented poerns by dead whte European

male pets. The one exception is Ed,w Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee." only because its author is

Amencan. For the most part, the pets belong to or are ciustered chronolotjcally and

concepnially around the Romantic-Victorian tradition, in this Shakespeare and MiIton are the

odd men out

Conceptually, al1 the pocms interco~ectthrough common images of water (or.

S ~ O W ) ,with which Frame suggests the isolation of an island, and images of war or fame after
de&. which bnng out the backdmp of W W il and defiate the traditional gory ofa soldier's

death in war. The notion of farne also alludes to rhe pwac tradinon in which a writer hopes that

his words wiIl have lasting value. This allusion preh'gures the novei's conclusion in thar the

essential Vera. like other wnters. sets fonh words but cannot oversce their fùture shapes.

The verse fragments take on entirely new shapes in Scented Gardens. Bnef cento

poems appear in the first and l a s of Ertent's chapters, foming an internai narrative h m e . an

-
ironic because dislocated - imperid. pamarchal bracketing of Erlene's silence. The cento.

Latin for "patchwork," is an ancient genre that dates tYom "thedecadent period of Greece and

Rome",and is defmed by William Rose Benet as: "Poetq made up of lines borrowed from

established authon."" He notes modem examples, citing the cento as a device in Ezra Pound's

Cmtos md in T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland By means of the cento, the latter poem "juxtaposes

quotations kom geat works of the pst with taww modem poputar Song in order to show the

contrast between nvo civihtions-" (Benét 193)

Frame's use of the cento echoes Erlene's ciassroom readings from the Iiterary

canon and foregrounds con- between imperial male and colonial fernale wnting. The

fiagmenfation which both characterizes and govems this genre is ideal for Scented Gardens. It

distom. dislocares. and obscures the poetic lines wtuch Frame draws fiom works valorized by

the naditiondly Eurocenmc. male-orienred academy. In the conrexr of a novel by a colonial

woman writer, ths is sweet revenge. Not only does Frame mm the canon in on itself by filtering

it throui$ Erlene's experience and consciousness, she makes it work for herself. Frarne

integates lines quoted tiom the 'geat' pets so closely into her own work's structures and
symboIic images that their orignal sources and meanings become virtuaily insignificant next to

thzir discursive Functîons within Scented Gardens.

The first cento occurs wirhin a paragraph reading Like a spiintered piece of prose

poetry because F m e does not observe the poetic line here:

Lt \vas many and man? a year ago in a kingdom by the sea..'

'

When men were a11 asleep the snow came flying, round the cape
'

o f a sudden came the sea. !bey moved in trackç of white, and thar
is why I sojourn here done and palely loiterin%though the sedge
is withered from the lake and no birds sing....' Sedge? The rushes
and flag Mies.
No birds sing? A bush wren, a biackbird, a seagull following the
piow. (S34.)

F m e quotes h m five different poems, which in order, are: Poe's "Annabel Le",Robert

Bridges's "London Snow," Browning's "Partine a? ~Moming",Coleridge's "TheRime of the

hcient Mariner",and Keats's "LaBelle Dame Sans Merci". CoIonial correctives answer

ErIene's quesrions at the end of the cento. Where there is no experience of sedge, ErIene

supplies "rushes and flag Mies". Where birds & sing, she names them.

The images from these fragments corne together to form a miniature of Scented

Gardens through F m e ' s assertion of her own symbolism. Thus. ErIene (mis)takes Poe's

"kingdom by the sea", cornpiete with Browning's cape. as her own city.I6 The "snow"and

"tracksof white"become "peopleash" (z8 X ) , the fdlout of nudear winrer. And is why

Erlene (Vera)sits aione and break the authority of the 'great' pets by unnarning and then re-

namins her world. But she always does this in silence.

Throughout the r e n of her chapters, Erlene waits to receive words, lîke a s i 9

gven by God or the gods. Words: "Lik a feather fiom the breast of a bird?" ISG 181 ) she asks
Uncie B l a c k h l e , a creanue un her windowsill whom she has mide her contidant and cducator

in maers of d e a h Erfene quotes the [as two samas of Browning's 'Memorabitia":

'1crossed a moor with a name of its own, and a certain use in the
worid no doubt, yet a band's breadth of it shines alone, mid the
blank miIes round about For there 1 picked up on the heather,
and there 1 put inside my b r q a moulted feacher. an a g i e
feather.. .

' WeII, I forget the e s t . . . '

She begins to cry, suddedy rediang that the words of authority cannot be hers to utter, and will

not be gven to her by Go4 because they are alien words that belone to elsewhere. She says: "'1

know that poem Uncle Blackbeetle, though 1do not know moors and e@es and heather. only

paddocks, manukas, matagouris, bncken, hawks ... hawks....'"

The cento that appears in ErIenersfinal chapter marks the fast r e m to the

classroom, with Erlene sining

side by side with the other girls in schod listening to Miss

Merchant reading poetry,

' A v e n s O Saint thy slaughtered bones. men are we and musr

weep....' Thou hast lefl behind powers that will work for thec, thou
hast great allies.... (SG 230.)

Frame quotes three poems in this cento: ~MiIton's"On the Late Massacre in Piedmont".

Wordsworth's "On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic" and "Toussaint L'Ouverture". The

first nvo quotations are inaccurate. This technique again recalls Eliot, this time because of his

use of "distortedquotation" with the aim of developing or redirecting the implications of the

te,m to rvhich he refen." The line 'Men we are and m u t weep" cornes from "TheVenerian
 and shouid read "grieve", rather than weep. At fim ;lance. the words seem M e
Repub[icM

different, but Frame's cftoice points to the watery eyes aad cMng speils that afflict the Glace

fmily througbout the novel. Each member of the fàmiiy, in his or her own tashion mourns the

passing of the language of the empire and yearns to be the one who d l speak ''the new

!angage". Frame laves this to the essential Vera.

Frame &les the fragment from Milton more thorouçhly than that from

Wordsworth. It should read "Avenge O Lord thy slaughtered saints,' whose bones [lie scattered

on the Aipine mountains cold]", rather than "Avenge O Saint thy slaughtered bones.. "

Exchanging the sinceular "Saint" for "Lordnagain foregounds Erlene's solopsistic desire chat the

words of poetry speak to and for henelf. It also fills the voici that Erlene perceives that the

absence of God creates for those weaned on patnarchal discourse. Admitting that she herseIf

resists using conventional language, and nor that God denies her, Erlene thinks:

...no, there had not been an accident, there had j u s been a time
when the human race g e w up suddenly and panicked at the si&
of the empty sky which tfiey had once fille& for cornfort, with old
fat men wearing beards... [s 235.)

The other major distortion of the kgment shifts away from iMi1ton's depiction of

martyrdom, "thyslau@tered saints" to Fnme's focus on the physical rernnanrs of human life

after it is over "thyslaughtered bones." She explicitly connects the images of bones tirith the

eqerience of Menins to petry in the classroom. Approaching the conclusion of Erlene's last

chapter, Frame buries the literary canon at sea, weli aware that it may corne back to haunt

students fascinated Iike Erlene. by its confidence in its own power and glory:
 ...did not Eriene and her cIassmates use to sit in Miss Merchant's
classroom, in imagination approaching the historiai ocean,... and
creeping down, ashamed and secret, to meet the waves and remeve
one or two bona fiom the nore of the drowned? t 230. )

The scene is aptly image4 for it reflects Frame's counteraiscursive activities as a pst-coionid
-
writer. Without her teacher's permission "in imagination' - ErIene illicitiy daims tiagments of

the canon that are of her choosing. Clearly,she acts in opposition to the implicit authority of the

' gardian' of the te= and to the sacred aspect h e metaphor of the bones signifies. She is a

grave-robber. The canon is a corpse whose flesh has been disconnected by natuml processes.

llus state of decomposifiondispels the power of the literary canon, a selected and relatively

homogenous cultural representationand legacy. Frame uncovers the texhtal transformations of

exportation and of ' theP by colonial subjects who, like Vera 3s author, re-emine and re-

figure what they will, in their own terrns.

Frarne's equation of the canon with yioiabie death removes ftom impenalism's

influenceits previous dominance and exciusivity of temai power. She allows rhat traces o f that

influence will resurface, and that they are necessa- in the cornpiiation of one's "inventory",in

"' kowing thyself as a product of the historical process to date. which has deposited in o u an

infini- of traces. without leaving an inventory..."" She shih texnÿil power to the living writets

creative potenrial and nascent ways of knowing that present alternatives ro inhen'red. empire-

based knowledge.

The iiving witer rnay simply throw away the bone, or, like Wilson Hams's C a i b

carmibal, transfonn it with one's own han& and brearh:

The Canbs consumed a morse1 of fiesh frorn an enemy. Then they

holIowed a bone from tvhch they had plucked that morsel and
 made a flute....The origins of music for them lay in that flute..A lt)
S v e them access..-to the very embryo of adversarial regime
instinctive to themselves. One catches a hint therefore as one
gropes back in inner space and inner tirne of iiiuminated bone-
tlute....a spider's web, revolving bridge, upon which the ghost of
music mm,rnoves betwezn the living and the dead, the living and
the living, the living and the unborn. (HarrisI26j

in reworking the poerns that she lemed at school, Fnme discovers that "the ghost of music"

endures where the camouflage of flesh does not: hence Verafs"new Imguage" is bom of ancient

and enduring human experiences. Frame nevertheless ernphmicdly places the "new langage"

as emergmg fiom and into a particuiar now' of hme. place, and tes, recognizing that the
'

specifics of time-bound experiences coexin in mutual spaces with ancient "artefacts". such as

growth through each of life's stages; adolescence, rniddle age, and old age being peninent here.

In a lengthy intemal monologue closing the chapter, Erlene imagines her own

death as a Iiterary drowning, and envisions herself suppianring the rragic, cloistered heroine of

Shelley's Epi~mckidion(1. 408): "Emily, no, Erlene, ..." (s

232.) Eriene thus abandons New

Zsaiand lingusticaliy and imagnauvely, $Mng in to the pull of Eurocenmcity: "...she would be

drowned not in any of the bays there - Waipapa, Moeraki, the Picton Sounds - but sornewhere in

the Meditenanean, off the coast of Florence..." For Erlene, New Zealand is no longer "here" but

"there". She expresses hope for the 'discoveq' of "the new language" (z
337), but the

authoritarian langage of imperial, patrïarchai discourse remains too entrenched in her

consciousness. Ernily's cloister symbolizes Erlene's condition of imprisonment, physically

within her bedroom, and ideologcally within the consnaints of imperial modets of expenence

and expression. The replacement of "Emily" wich "Erlene" does not gesture imaginative
k d o m , rather it embeds ErIene funher within the dominant discourse. Her only means of

resistance are silence and feigning death tintil death fin& her OUI.

Like Eriene, Edward a s of 3 "new Ianguage." He envisions himseif rerurning

to New Zeaiand and prompting Erlene as soon as she sees him "to regain her power of speech

and utter prophecies" (s

200): "...she would break her siIence not wirh cries or moans but with

new articulate langage..." (s202) Edwrd designates Eriene as the one to cease the sniggle

against silence and rnemingiess words, as the one to spedc for "us", for "mankind"(SG 216).

His universalist desires and unwillinguess or inability to utter the farqmrage hmseif go against the

bases tbat Frame has mablished for the new languge: it will grow out of the panicutarities of

pIace; it will be an ancient, uncamouflaged lever by which to attain an ami-violent society: it

will speak. at the deepen levels, of the conditions of being g human, tncompassing the

similarities and diversities that overtap between a speaker's individuality and ber humanip.

Throughout Scented Gardens,ttie character Vera moves towards her uItimate

transformation into the sssenud Vera, the speaker of rhe new tangage. Within this circuit, the

tiactured familial figurations begin to cohere as their various understxuctures become ciear. Tite

character Vera must assirnilate her colonized p a s represented by Erlene, before her essemal

self can be realized and spoken. Additionally, the absentee mariage of Edward and Vera

retlects the trauma of Vera's father's d e a h Vera blames herself for his deah, associating it with

kïttens that she drowned: -7 was the culprit." (s

76; see atso, 78). Erlene associates her books

with his death: "Her books were on three shelves which her grandfather built a year before he

died. She had been afraid of him because neither he nor the houe seemed to fit with her or her

mother's li fe." ( SG 5 5) Through the convolutions of Frame's ncrinned fictive representations,

Vera is not only manied to Ertene's father but to a version of her own B o a however, are

madess in a culture tfiat proscnbes rhrs condition: the essentiai Vera is a spimer while die

characrer Vera and her husband Iead separate [ives.

Fnme closely links the character Vera with New Zeafand's land- and s a c a p e .

especially in opposioon to Britain's geography. Ven describes her sure sense of place as ...my "

ritual sranding not upon hearhs or rnoors but upon this antipodean k c h ..." is 1 1 ) in her last
chapter, the character Vera sees the silencing erfect of "decaying"(SG 2 16) English spreading

around her, the silence itself a "newsecret language" wbich excludes her. She begins to see

herseIf as "responsibie for the language of speech if the worid is smck durnb": "Tt is the new

Eden: the growth of articulate speech from the silence that fel1 like a shroud upon the language."
By taking responsibility for the îüture as she would have it and by envisioning a new.

unalienated langage, Vera hopes to e?micate herseIf from her complicity in rhe siiences of

pamarchy and colonization, to "convince the world that I am innocent.." (s

1.1 8)

Frame repeats this Edenic image- in Erlene's last chapter. Erlene wondzn "...if

it were true rhat her father was Adam ... cowering beneath the s
e for fear of being addressed by
*ancesrdvoices prophesying rvar.'" (z224):'' Jus as Erlene is giving shape to her l i l e r ~
death. the propbesied apocalypse begins: "...the world \vas seized by... a stiirk lethal frost

originaang in human bone and fiesh, created by man himself." (SG 232) T-hs narrator notes

that the moment of nuclear wïnter "was also the tirne when dreams refused to be drowned. but

floated accusingiy within sight and sound of the dreamer:..." (s

233) Erlene and Edward

accept their dreams as kiIkd by the atomic blast. But the character Vera, in becoming a

'uardian of the new Eden and the new lan-gage ofhumanity. is saved by her drearn ofrenewai.
 [n the final chapter, she h a i s her alienarion fiom her fami- of selves, aansforrning into the

essentiai Vemjiwmer librarian (z2473, by breaking through the colonial silence that
irnperiaiism has imposed and burtressed by means of a temai power which its wture hein hardly

dared quesion.

For the Ven, the "new [an-ruage"voices opposition to the notion rhat. within the

bounds of its empire, the Brinsh tradition is the only site of real power. Begiming with k r in

New Zdand, it promises a langage of decoionitlition with which to question the dominance of

Eurocenuic culture. industrializanon and warfare. Scented Gardens ends inth Vera ~ m t i n g ,

&er years of silence, yet the narrator descnbes it as "the language of humanity." (SG 25 1 )

Vera's utterance is richiy paradoxical. It signifies a beginning at the stop's e n d to take the

reader back into the text again, to examine again the interteas F m e reworks - including her

own.

Frarne's projecr in Scented Gardens, then, is largely recuperative. She makes her

inventory o f the imperid naces within her own histop, aiters hese to her own ends and marks

them with her own distincrïve stamp. And, a s in the eariier noveis. she is also "seekinga new

begnning through remeving traces of alternatives excluded from the dorninator;dorninated

r e ~ a t i o n . " ' ~excluded

e alternative that Frame asserts here is the ambivalent. atienated

position o f rnembers of the white sesler population for they straddle that relation, in theov.

being neither wholly dominant nor ivholl'; dominated. In Scented Gardens, the process of

reworking irnperial traces, combined with the assertion of an excluded alternative perspective,

leads Frame to a posr-colonial vision. In it, the historical, present selves of individual,

cornrnunity, and ' former' colony have the potential to be uncamouflaged, vocal. and genuineiy
 creative. A nuclear bomb annihiiares Bntain, which is presumabIy the victim of irs own

tmperiaiism- Vera's gunts uitimateiy m into a narrative. but it took oniy the idea of no Bntain

for Frarne to pick up stray bones, fiom here and there, and tum !hem into her version of

literature.

To the 1s-Land is named for one of Frame's earliest school primers. This volume of her
autobiopphy is full of references to the stories and poerns that engaged Frame. and often her
famiiy, too, from elernentary througb secondary school. E.o,: Frame, To the 1s-Land 59-6 1.
- "...none of our English mdies even supposed that a New Zeaiand witer or New Zeaiand sxised"
Frame, To the is-land 330.
Morse Peckham. Explimation and Power: The Conrrol of Human Behaviour (New York S d u y
Press, 1979): d i ; qtd. in Edward Pechter, "OfA m and Grasshoppers: Two Ways or More to Link
T s m and Power," Poetics Todav 9.2 ( 1988): 295.
' Stephen Skrnon, "Radhg for Resisruice in PonColoniai Literam," A Shapine of Connections:
Commonwealth Literature Studies Then and Now, ed Hena Meas-Jelinek, et al. (Sydney:
Dangamo,1989) 103.
j N g g i wa Thiongo, "The Language of Afkican Literature," Decolonising the b h d (London: James
C m y Heinemann,
~ 1986) 17.
a
Parergon, an "extra ornament in an" (OED), generalIy refen to a painting's h c . S e :
Susan Ash, "The Narrative Frame: 'Unieashing ~Im)possibiiities,"'Xustralia and New Zcaland
Studies in Canada 5 ( 199 1): 1-1 S. Ash describes '-three possible parergonal relationships:
ornamentarion. addendum. or supplement" (3) and discusses these in comection with Fnme's
The Cimathians ( 1988). Diegesis -'designates narrated events or *story... as a 'ievel' distinct
fiom that ofthe *narration." Chns Baldick, The Concise O'rtord Dictionam of Litenrv Tems
t Odord: Oxford U. P.. 1990)57.
Frame,Scented Gardens for the Blind (New York: Brriziller, 1964) 227.
" Wilson Harris, "Adversarial Conte-m and Creatik1.i-," New Left Review IF4 ( 1985) 124-8.
Considerable overlap cxists benveen the cxperiences and motions of Ven. Erlene and Edwmd.
TRLs indicates, for e?tample,rhat V e n mode15 Eriene afrer herself as a gui and rhar Edwrd's
"ovenvhelming love" (Sb 1 11) for a Clara S m g interconneco. in the concluding chapter. with
Vera's love for her are-taker and only companioi another patient named Clara ~ m n gParnck
Evans implies that Vtm is nor ùie only narracor, but does not discuss d i s (Janet Frame 101 j. See
also. William New who states that Dr. Clapper, Erlene's psychiatris~tells the story "but we make t h s
discovery only to be taken f i e r out of the story by yet Lother m t o r... ''TheFrame Sroe
"

World of Janet Frame," ECW 39 ( 1984): 182; and Wilson Harris, who descnbes "the book as
a( n )...inversenewspaper report written.. by one Vera Glace.... **** (who herself is reponed by ... is
 - - - - - -- - - - - --

it UncIe BIackbeetie or the half-mad psychiatrist Dr. Clappefl)..." in "Scented Garderis for the Blind,"
Bird. Hawk, Bogie 64; 66.
10
Narrative discourse in prose may be of three types: direct ("1 get it," she said); indirect (1 get it,
she thought); and fi-ee indirect (She tfiought shc got it).
" "...a breaking of the boundaries that separate distinct 'levels' of (the) narrative..." Bddick 134.
l2 N.B ., in Edenelsh d chapter: "No one had told her but when her mother began taking...then
Eslene knew...that her Wer was a myth and a dream,...and that neither she herself nor her rnother was
real." (S6 228)
l3 Jeanne Delbaere-Garant, "Beyond the Word: Scented Ganlens for the Blin<l"Bird Hawk Bogie:
Essavs on Janet Frame 69.
l4 "Perhaps the only way that understanding may travel fiom one being to another is for it to
travel the conventional thread in the mate that lies between people, and Rsk the attack of the
monster who lies at the end of the thread." (SG 29)
'' William Rose Benét, ed., The Reader's Encvclopedia: An Encyclo~ediaof World Literature
and Arts (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1948) 193.
16
N.B.:"A kingdom by the sea! Oarnaru, without a doubt.... What marvelous knowledge of the
poets who could see through my own life, who couid be appearing to write poems of people in
Oamani, which everyone knew was halfivay between the equator and the South Pole, forty-five
degrees south, and which were not nearly so well known as Auckland o r Wellington or Sydney or
Paris, [sic] any cities in the Northem Hernisphere..." Frame, To the 1s-Land 160.
17
M. H.Abrarns, gen. ed., "T. S. Eliot; Introductioq" The Norton Antholow of En~lish
Literature, rev. (New York: Norton, 1968) 257 1.
l8 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Random HouseNintape, 1979) 25.
19
Quotation source: Samuel Coleridge, "Kubla Khan," 1.30, The Norton Antholow of Endish
Literature 140 1.
20
Diana Brydon, "New Approaches to the New Literatures in English: Are We in Danger of
Incorporating Disparity?"A Shaping of Connections: Commonwealth Literature Studies Then
and Now, ed., Hena Maes-Jelinek et al. (Sydney: Dangaroo, 1989) 97.
 6

The A d a d l e Man: Adapting the i

In The Adautable Man ( 19651, f anet Fsame continues to examine the rexeived
hwaanist l i t e q traditions that she e-xplores in Scented Gardens by incorporating and refi,aun'ng

the works of other wrirers. Nurnerous derails of place, time and characterization make realism

ouhuc1td2y die principal mode of The .4da~table an. ' Yet fiom these details. Frarne creates a

tension between the novei's generïc 'shell'and a subte.xt of "the destruction of old traditions of

thought and behaviour .. (and) of old traditions of fiction-'(Frame 140) The works Frame

quotes, in parîicdar the poetry, point to traditions in Engiish literature that sîrive to e.upress

apprehensions of human existence unavaiiable through redism.

For me, the nibtexrual processes mark The Adamble bian as prolegomenous to

A Stare of Siege (1966),wtiich focuses intenseiy on New Zeaiand settings and society. Patrick

Evans notes that The Adamble Man is Frame's oniy novel "setentireiy in Engiand" and he

considers it to bear no relationship to New Zealand (Frame 126). 1argue that The Adamble

-
Man reflects Frame's sense of exile duxing the time it was wrinen, while State is a text about

repam-ation. Throughout both, Frame e.xplores magic realism and non-reaiist eiements, such as

the fantastic, Carrollian nonsense verse, and dream sequences. Evans praises The Ada~tabIe

-
iMan for its thorough combination of realism and anti-redism, and contrasts the two novefs

succeeding it LState and YeIiow Fiowers in the himodean Room (1969)l as having "a

diminished scale"and as "resembl(ing)stories h t t e n at lengh rather than fui1 novefs"( € m e

144). Yet it is Frame's p r i m q techcal aim in A State of Sie=, an4 arguably, Yellow Fiowen,
to mi@&and revoice the literary ternis ofWaNew Zealand ' idemit)/" !Williams 56). Because

he believes tbat Frame achieves ttiis aim, Mark Williams conuadicts Evans's opinion and caik A

State of Sieee 'Trame's major noue[ of the 1960's". (Williams 38). Talcîng The A d a d l e Man

as a çtarbng point,and contiming with State in the next chapter, 1 will trace the s h i b and

refhements in Frame's expressions of New Zealand-based perspecnves and conditions, Overiaps

in the source materid of these two novek record Frame's deveioping sense of how English

achieves meaning as an historical system and how individual lanipige users, writers especially,

give language distinctive, relatiod meanings.

The Adaptable Man is set in Linle Burgelstathani (''bur~eI~..a

burial piace of the

heatheaw 12), a nuai village in East Suffolk. Populated since Viking times, the community

is isolated, but an imminent suburban "overspill"threcitens. The Iarge cas of ctiaracters ranges

from youths to ancients, with a mix of IocaIs and outsiders, and wealthy and poor. As the title

suggests, the main thernes are: çurvival and loss; Iinks and discontinuities between p a s present

and future;and conformity and resistance to so-cailed 'shared'vatues.

The text is in four parts and has a brief prologue which innoduces the implied

author of the story to corne. She is a space-age "witch-novetist" 3), who fatuons "a

prophecy" out of twentieth century conditions and "the old mixture" of stock literary figures. .4

confluence of space and time thus wells up in the Prologue's ironic tone; in its numerous points

of view; in its senated style; in the roman and italic typogaphies; and in its interweaving of

genres and symbols. This confluence reflects a paradox of &shed wholeness: a vast

inchsiveness, which is nevertheless an incomplete, perhaps impossible, attempt to compose the

'adaptable man' who tries "tofly through the unlit centuries." (^M 4)
 'Ihe witch-novelist foollows a recipe for rhe production of her principal character,

and fin& thar individuality defies uniform methods of replicarion:

The idea was to have a basin inverted on his head and his haïr cut
to the shape of i t ... Then the idea grex. Stray thoughts were
aimmed.. Then in the interests of hman economy, the
head.. became a basin of uniforni shape.... Yet.... Therefore h s
mind again took individuai shape." (&f 3 4 )

Her suirabiy omniscient creation srory t'rames an italicized poern, begiming after the word "Yet".

The poem is voiced by the adaptable man, a modem J c m . He is supplicatory to beg'n with, but

chafes against lus cloistering solitude at birth He wants to overcome isolation's 'safety' with

violent movement away from passive subjectivity, toward autonomy and a god-view of the

labyrinthine human mind:

Oh whv do 1get that enclosed f e e l i n ~

Oh Whv Oh Whvi
I want to break out/
fiom m y crash helmet, mv crash helmek'
to see it fiom the sh./

rve a loneIv uncut thou&t/

m y crash helmet mau becorne/
a lieht-fiIied tombi
a cathedrai dome/
of sparkIine p.ass and wrous two-wav none.!

He knows he is not the master cutter who will make brilliant the "uncutthought". He s a e r s

fiom his powerlessness, fean that his gem-mind will be shaped to hold none of his own

thoughts, that it "maybecorne" a receptacle of light where the creator is wonhipped, unseen on

the other side of "two-waystone",but ever-watchfid of the adaptabie man.

 With the inciusion of this poern on the firn page of Adaptable Man, Frame

explicitly eqiores the compiex constructions of &f and reaiitv t h certain literary discourses

reflen and generate. The poem, ernbedded in the prose narrative, functions rnetaleptically,

generating diaiogue between the impiied author and her cbaracter, and between poetry and prose

as distinct ways of rneaning.

The first and closing Iines of the poem are perfect iambic pentameters. The lines
betweea are iambic w i h two, three, and even four complete feet But several lines contain

defective iambic feet; they end with an unstressed syllable. See 1.4, for e.e,: "fiom my crash

helmet, my crash helmet". And compare 1.8 with 1.9: "a light-filled tombi a cathedra1 dome?"'

These lines e.xhibit qmemcal parallelism of meter, phrase, and rhyme, which emphasize the

semantic connections and differences between "tomb"and "domen. Line 3. "1want to break

out", inverts the iambic rhythm by using a rrochaic measure. It is cataiectic, and immediately

pives way to the ovemding influence of the iamb. These irreguiar metricai patterns, framed as

they are with openîng and closing iines of pentameter, reûect the adaptable man's sense of

enclosure, of his being c o n s t î ~ e dby an e x t e d agent, and, thus, tiis anest over his own

autonomy.

The poem, therefore, foregrounds the of constructed and produced

individuaiity specifically in terms of the iambic pentameter. As a f o m of discourse, the

peotamerer (along with other accentuai-syllabic quantitative meters) has dominated English

poetry since the Renaissance. Its prominence is not due to ' pureIy' Iiterary developrnents, but to

historical and culmai factors: just as Medieval qualitative accentua1 meters express the
corporate individualism of dut epoch the qualitative meters in LModemEnglish poe- up to the

be-g of this cemuy express autonomous individualism.'

Antony Easthope argues in Poetrv as Discourse bat

...the abstract pattern ofpenmeter.... represents a systemic

totality,an explicit preconception legislating for every unit of
stress and syllable.... î h e oniy relief tiom this uniformity is the
intonation, which even so always implies the comprehensive gid
to which it appro'timates. (66)

Furthemore, he Ends that beause the iarnbic "pentarnetergives space to the ' naturai'

intonation" (73)-it attempts to "renderthe poetic discourse transparent"(75) and "it promotes the

' realist' effect of an individual voice ' actuaily' speakhg." (76) lambic pentarneter, thus,

backgrounds the construction and production of the words themscilves as signifiing suunds,

while foregounding the represented voice speaiung and "invit(ing)the reader into a position of

imaginaty identification with this single voice..." (75)

Within the adapdle man's poem itseff, then, thc iarnbic meters reflect two

distinct views of the subject's position in discourse: an "absoluteposition" that would deny the

production ofthe subject and figure it "as the aaascendental ego"; and a "reiativeposition"

-
which recognizes some degee of production "thatthe ego is detennined by forces beyond itseIf

on which it 1s dependent" C 8 f ) Opening and closing with iarnbic pentameters, the adaptable

man (as tfie poem's ' surface' level author) reveals his desire for a uanscendental position through

f o n d means. Yet the form also focuses attention on the lack of fiee qency which the Iines

between express.
 The pentameter ironically highlights the production of the subject, the adaptable

man, wbose represented voice points to the witch-noveiist, who, in turn,exim on another

metaiepac plane within Frame's novei. The presence of the adaptabIe man's narroting and

m t e d voice, then, undermines the absolute positions of and "distinctionbetwecn M e r .

h m 7fiamed.." And bis state of enclosure and dependency becornes ambiguous as the

framing devices dernonstrate their coniradictory functions:

The fiame...pus hes forward something whic h cannot stand up by

itself;,supports that which by itseif collapses.... the Frame borh
borders and boards; it both endoses and inhabits; hosts as well as
guests.... It makes us question the inside fiom the outside; the
outside fiom the inside. (Ash 5 )

The lines o f iambic pentameter are one example of the many fiaming devices

Frame uses here and elsewhere. They illusttate the functions described above, in which the

frame is visildy active. At the same rime ,they show it "characteristically effacing itseIf' either

by rnergmg into the context to foreground the te= or by merging into the text to foreground the

context (Ash 6). A fiame 'disappears'and charges the fields around and witfiin it wîth

supplementary meaning(s), enabling didogism between and within te- and contexts. The

intrïnsic and extrinsic pressures which the h u n e exerts, the rhetorical foregrounding of

-
metalepsis and discourse production in senerai - and the fluidity among levels of rneminç, d l

point to the subject position as relative. Tkïus, the M i n g lines of iambic pentameter

paradoxically and simultaneously evoke and eraçe the illusion of the transcendental ego.

The Proiogue as a whole the subject's reIative position through an

emphatic Focus on literary construction and the production of meaning. It is itself a significarit
 frame for a lengthy novei whose d a c e is dense with the markers of redism. ï h e witch-

novelist anakes striking shifts between her presence the pretence of her absence in the prose

sections of the Prologue. Never once does she speak as "In; the point of view is çaictiy

omniscient. Yet tfiese sections do not assert an 'objective'uarrative -ce. They are, instead,

meditative and metafictional. Still, the witch-novelist deflwrs attention fiom her own persona

effaces herseIf in the Prologue'sl a s two-and-a-half pages throuefi a series of twenty paragaph.

sentences and phrases each beghing with the pronoun "I", to which a qualifjhg name is added

This anaphoric ("carrying back") senes introduces the novet's main and minor

characters by briefly giving them voice. It even personifies a couple of non-human 'characters':

"1, NeIIy, an oid mongrel bitch with twisted back Iegs,.... I, the earth, fairly subrnissive, my

seasons arranged beforehand.."(rZM 6). The sheer length of the sequence ofrepeated anaphon

foregounds the signifier system and furthers the Prologue'sthernatization of the t. The subject,

1, rhetoricalty operates in a forward linear movernent along the syntagmatic chah to connect

with identical reference units. The smooth reiteration of this scheme reflects the mtactical

cohesion that it achieves.

The substantive coherence of the "I", however, is hgmented and dislocated The

rhetorical et'fect of "carryingbackn distinguishes the things signified through their qualikng

material. ïhis phoric process operates out of the physicai, temporal and semantic gaps that can

exkt between identical signifies in identicai syntactic slots. Utimately, it is a dualistic process

because, at the moment distinctions becorne clear, anaphora also asserts any nurnber of links

between different subjects within the texhial world, thereby consmicting a cohesive t e s and the

ontological presence of a community.

 The adaptabte man's poem points to the problematics of absnact seneric and
discursive pattern wtiich precede and restrict Iiterary creation and whch establish a very

particuiar, controlIed subject position for both the implied author and the reader. The witch-

novelisf in turn, expan& the scope of this probIernatic in tenns of narrative and rbetorical

devices, and sbifting points of view. Key concepts in the Prologue, then, are vision and the

comprehension of what is seen and read

Literary bistory piays no srnditl part in this novel's e.xpioration of the ways in

whicb a motley collection of nventieth century English villagers experience and know the world

The Prologue's opening paragaph sets up literature as an instrument through which a culture, in

this case British, sees and is s e n It explicitly refers to Shakespeare and Macbeth, afKrms a

tradition in which ''theold mixture remains" and adds "(a)contemporary ingrecfient.. a piIotls

thumb" (AhJ 3). The witch-noveiist is to be the reader's guide tbrough the narrative of

Adaptable Man and a range of embedded verse hgments, induding the AngIo-Saxon elegy

"The Wanderer", Wordsworth's "Resolutionand Independence", an entire poem £Yom Carroll's

Alice, Spendex's "1T 'Contiaually of Those"and Thom Gunn's "My Sad Captains".Set
together, the interleaved texts point to a haphazard continuum of human life and Iiterary history

that does not necessarilv progess in a linear chronoiogy. The continuum bnges mostly on the

mundane, and its internal motions often overiap and cm be startlingiy fluid:

Where were the clear divisions of time if the present could thus
reach out of the paq like the hand 'clothed in white samite,
mystic, wondedbi' emerging fiom the lake, to draw one's life, Iike
the sword Excaiibur, out of sight into the deep obscure past?
....Perhaps Russell...was rehearsing the time when the hero
emerges...as dentist...inthat future time the "traveller from an
antique [and"who brought news of how "two vast tnuikless legs of
 stonerStand in the deset" Who talked of nothing
remaining.+.wouid be referrulg not to the tomb of ''Ozpandias,
King of Kings,"but to the dental relics of the human race! (&l
153)

Additionally, the conjunction of prose and verse presents coincidentai, contrasting

ways of seeing and e.xpressing the worid. Realism is sirnpiy one ofmany man-made literary

visual aids. And not oniy does realism's inherenr assumption of irnmediate and transparent

communication of ' reaiiry' corne open for quetioa, but the clear contiguity of reaiism wth other

iiterary forms undermines the distinguishing of it based on a belief in its unique fictive

...Human beings....fix a rnakeshift sun in the sb,and...in its fierce

or fading light they make their iniention (sic)movements, retreats,
advances, trying to releaçe the buried memory of their destination
....Mass movements, migrations in time have been made by man
pmuing or fleeing from an idea He setties around the chosen
idea. He breeds there. This everiasting movement back and forth
in time without the stability and guidance of a visible worid,
recogaized seasons, shared SUU, is enough to make a man mad with
the thought that he is not a migratory bird ("AM"4)

AhficialIy produced substitutes for naturd objects and the processes of substitution interest the

witch-noveIist for what they say about human creativity, culture, life conditions, specificdly

within a European irnperial context Anstotelian mimesis and Platonic d i e p i s have each

claimed most closely to express empirical ' reality' or ' truth'. But mindset and the tools with

which the mind perceives and reasons mediate 'reality' and 'tnrîh'. The witch-novelist,

understanding this mediation, assumes a relativist stance towarcis ' tnith' in discourse production.
Ye&in setting realisrn against "theactive m m of language and of the writer's transforming

WO&''~ she siil Einds g o n d s upon which to address ' reaiity' and ' in& as vaiid issues.

An elctended metaphor of photogmphy bridges the Prologue and Part One of The

Adaptable %
1 which is subtitled. "These photographs are underexposed. PIease will you

uttemi@hem." These sentences are fiom a book of phrases that Borti Julio uses to leam

English. He is an itinerant Italian farmhand who, as the story opens, is murdered while entering

the village one riight. The event is soon forgonen by the villagers. His hisroty as a refisee and

former POW of the Fascists stands on the m a r e of narrative. He is ''aghost in o u story", a

faded emblem of "the distantly excreted so ciosely dropped resdts of the world's epidemic of

concern and kindness."(& 20) The subtitle thus alludes to realisrn'spictorial weaknesses and

the reader's active engagement with the t e s

Photography is an aiiegory of writing hete, hi@ighting issues to do with

representarional art and tnrth, isolated and fragmentary perspective, and the privileging of a

single viewing position:

...if your carnera is the old-fashioned type where you need the sun
powerfdiy behindy o ~ . y o u must stiii curi your paimjeaiously
around your tiny private view in order to reduce the obliterating
effect of the same s u ' s light. (AM 5 )

Each of the Prologue's paragraphs that begins with an anaphoric "IV' is Iike a snapshot. The

characters {photographie subjects) are isolated and frozen in t h e , yet interconnected - and so,

are not entirely static - by a comrnon author (photographer),'language'or medium (camera),tes

(photo album), and reader (developer/viewer).

 The Reverend Aidey Ma&, the first "I", discusses his loss offaith in

photographie terms thar belie rbe wnera's promise to capnire and hold ' reaiity' and to make it

monolithic and unchangeable:

...the picture \vas bl urred,... God had move&...the steadfast

landmark feature of ail my maps, routes, views, references, had
becorne an unidentifiable shadow- (a 5)

He uses a cartographe metaphor, foregrounding picrond realism's development of perspecrive

by means of Euclidean geometry. The idea of a pre-existent grid, i,e.. a discouse fom,

overiaying nature harks back to the adaptable man's poem and the issues that it raises of subject

position, construction, and conuol.

Arûstic creativil and the perspective of the artist clearly depend on many 2 priori

factors working in combination wirh individual propensities. The witch-noveiis grapples with

questions about literary creation, considenng God, as The Creator, and the fact that a writer

works within the bounds of many antecedent, delimitative conditions, like geography, cuiture-

bound behavioun, Ianguage and linguistic traditions. Even if pue freedom from restrictions

were possible, that &dom would itself give shape to huma life, one's view of the world and

the expression of that view

...my first feeling of shock was followed by an e.utraordinary sense

of lighmess, freedom; and..Iater, whea I perceived, as insects and
men may,the immensity of space and s l q uncovered, 1 felt a sense
of Ioneliness, of chansd destination,of confision in the face of so
mucb exposed time racing unexplaineci, unhaniessec!, as wind and
cloud; finally 1 was overcome by a desire to return beneath the
stooe. A
(&f 5)
 ï h e witc h-nove l i s and arguabty Frame, either cannot or will not relinquish the feeling that a

primai creative force, whether deemed God or somethiag else, does remain in tbis world

Therefore, because the (implied) author does not think of herseif as wholly originative, she does

not presume to create with words. Frame envisions herself transfonning "abductedtreasures"

and mherited words to express a vision of her own cxperience and imagination:

..here t was king trapped dso within one of the geat themes of
fiction - the giR the @ver,the receiver, the thing received, a theme
so basic it is embedded in the grammar and the v t a x of the
language where it lies like a trap or a shaft of light (Envov 433)

In îhe process of fashioning a work of art, randorn infiuences and events can
offset the systemic controIs that aim to reproduce, for example, a realist's idea of a true likeness

of reality. The Reverend Maude considers the responses of rdists who attempt to account for

flawed, non-reaiistzc pictures beyond his own eqlanation that the subjecr moved: the

photomher moved; used "an obsoIete insmunent";or misapprehended the subject to begin

with. The redist minciset, naîuraiized to its own so-cdled objective perspectival grid,

disapproves of noticeable authorid intrusions and seeks to exclude random happenings kom the

representation and perception of' realiîy'.

Frame emphasizes reaiism's principles of exclusion here in order to bnng into

relief the many knds of restrictions which shape human activities. 1 have already rnentioned

some that have to do with langage and literary production, and aiIuded to others that relate to

social and cultural organization. In Adaptable Man, al1 such restrictions exist in a general

context of rnoraiity - morality in the sense of conformityto a standard of what is good and righr

at a given place and t h e . This context is itself one more form of restriction that the text
examines; it is used aç a gauge by which to assess the effects within and beyond the narrative of

the breachmg of literary, social,cdtural and ethicai principles.

The verse fragments embedded in Tite Adautable Man reveal vestiges of "theold
tradition"of British Iiterary humanism and refIect histon~aichanges in social structures, values,

and the English language. The fragments mark graduations toward erasure and destruction in the

twentieth century: "an age in whch snocide is the basis of survivdn (AM 149). Twenty-year-

oid Alwyn Maude strives to be ''aChild of His Time, by mwdering...a man whose only

qualification for being murdered was that he belonged to the human race."

The s U M v a i of humanity is a key issue; it is the flipside of the theme of

extinction in The Edee of the Alphabet There Frame conûasts linear time with nature's seasonai

cycles, viewing mutability and death as inherent to al1 life. Frame reiterates these thernes in The

Adaptable Man, but M e r regards human survival in hktorical and philosophical terms which

encourage, without dictating, episternoiogical and moral deliberations. Aisley Maude associates

adaptation to the present age with etnotional, intellecrual and spirituai Ioss, and so he resists its

pull:

ïhe solution had been put to him that he mus adapt or be

threatened with extinction. But was that the oniy solution?
Somewhere in time and place there were fields where he could put
his third eye to profitable use without submitting to its k i n g
blinded by an unwanted growrh of tempord skin. A J 33)
(A

The Reverend Maude's readings of an Anglo-Saxon prose translation (m5 1 )

and "The Wanderer" (^M 5 1f; 78) and his cornparison of the King James and New English

Venions of the Bible (AhJ 56-7) appear to e.qress his own thoughts on mortality. He reads
aloud in old and modem Engiish the elegy's closinp;ubi sunt, a formuIa centred. like the prose

passage, on life's transience. Aidey's cornparison of the nvo venions of S t Paui's encomium on

Iove fiom 1 Corinthians: 7-12 underiines a concern with loss and isolation, A theme evident in

al1 the quotabons is that the essence of experience cannot be communicated: St.Paul's "Jfass",

or "mirror", yields an uncIear image; the prose piece asks, "...who will undertake to sift those

dusts again, to pronounce, This is the paûician, this is the noble flower..."; and the Wandereis

former happiness "has grown dark under the shadow of night as if it had never b e n " (A& 5 1 ).

All of these Gagments offer the same consolation for transience, for the faultiness of both

knowledge and its expression, and for the shattering of individual and common good through

isolation or hostility: spiritual love.

Even before Aisley Maude ponders Christian love, the witch-novelist, noting "the
apparent unhappiness" of Dot Unwin with her "Meof subjection and toil" (AM 390, questions

the existence of g form of love:

-
As for Iove was there ever such a state of mind or body? There's
intoiexable human need, the promise or threat of mortaiity. You
thrust Iove on the scales, and match it off again before you can
read its meaning - like the h i t seIIers in the market who tempt
you with chem'es and strawberries. 40)

Margaret Daiziel interprets this passage as "ilfuminat(ing)the shocking nature of Janet Frame's

view of what it is like to be human" and the emotional wasteland of "Frame'snovels up to and

including The ~ainbirds".~

Yet the witch-novelist's question is not absolutely rhetorical; its

answer is not clearly in the negative. She States a f f i t i v e l y : "You thmt love on the scales".

That there & love to weigh is thcrefore e.xplicit. Ptrhaps a period marked by the absence of love
ts as femping and fiIIed with secret meaning as when it is present. In either case, love's measure

remains unanalyzed The task ttiat the witch-novelin sets for "You",then, is to look on love and

its absence long enough to "read(their) rneaning".

Part Two of The Adaptable Man, subtitled "Maplestoue'sChart" d e r the plant

pest and disease chart hanging in Greta ~Msrude's,=den shed. operis with lovers Alwyn and

Jenny home done for the first time. Frame describes their passion with pathos and an eroticism

seldom seen in her earlier worlrrs:'

...and when they walked together they locked arms and hands, and
at every seventh s e p Alwyn would nun to Jenny, grasg the blond
hair..,pull her head back until her body arctied, turning towards
him; then they would kiss, the movernent of their tongues rising
deep from within their bodies, their mouths a porch-place of
sudden surprishg but looked- for shelter, with lighf gfowing fiom
the inner roorn. (& 71)

The warmth of Frame's homecoming imagery intimately reflects the joining of two people

emorionaily. The characterization of Aiwyn and JeMv as a couple sets them in close relation to

one another, bowever, "(t)onightthey made no attempt to touch."(AM 7 1 ) Thus, Frarne's gaze

shifts to look more intently at their separate identities, thereby illuminating the narrative play of

personal, social and intertextuai perspectives.

Jenny is an orphan with no siblings. She didikes being alone and seeks "the

reassuring advamages of fmily life" 73) with Alym. The witch-novelist underlines

s of that which cannot be categorized by descnbing it as general human response:

J ~ M ~fear

She was comforted to see a faint farnily resernblance, for the

uniqueness of Alwyn contained a sinister elernent which fightened
her,....whether a person's characteristics are sinister or endaring,
the multiplication of them casts a spell of submission and
 The narrator in Thomas's poem sees victirn and victimizers in a symbiotic

refationshp Jenny anempts a simiiar detachment Wou& her vision of assimilation and

homogeneity. She biinds henelf to the sinister aspect she senses in Aiwyn: "'...,'liIarry me and

write your novel,' fenny said suddedy, ,gdping the words as if she were swallowing a medicine

with acid base and a surface scarîered with rose petals. The tasre of the rose petals came at last."

(i\LM 76) Aiivyn15 inciifference is a function of his easy capacity for deniai. He neither

acknowiedges the wills of others nor respects anyone's need for weil-being. And having no

concept of transgression, he accepts no ,Glt:

i'm no Raskolnikov, he thought

There were no Raskolnikovs now, not in the space-age....There
was no question of the sweat of guil~no 'fngh$tl fiend' treading
the Linie Burgeistatham lanes...; there jus wasn't tirne to sink a
shaft of guilt into one's mind and bring up...the dregs of
conscience" 1 13).

The lovers' self-absorption, their failure to face evil and the absence in thernselves

of human compassion, indicate to Aisiey Made the psychological make-up of the pst-W. W.IT

generation. He inniits Aiiy's respoosibility for Juliofsmurder and sees the kiiling as an

- -
example of twentieth cenhiry man's wiwillingness f&t becoming inability to envision, affirm

and act out humane conduct, whether individually or collectiveIy.

The death o f his up-to-date "Model-Tm Wife" 2 1) underscores .4isIeyrs

doubts in the faitfi that hs religion sets out: "...il seemed, more often, that the shape of

Christianity which was to enclose the con$.egarion with love had adopted the t e , m e and

menace of those plastic bags fashionably used by intending suicides as a means of suffocation."

(& 96) This period of gnef and crisis of faith is typicai of the dislocanon of the unified ego in
reuewed equilibriwn is embedded within the redis narracive:

The d i s text.. deconstructs the ego of the reader by taking him

through a codict that resuits in a restabilization of the ego. The
whole prucess thus afffrmsthe existence of a unified ego.... the
whole cultural-ideologcal purpose of the reaiist text... keeps the
readets consciousness concenûated on particuiar conflicts
between chancters over value. But behind these surface
confiicts.... ( it) proceeds ro restructure and reproduce...the sense of
a unifïed "In. (Hughes 148)

Aidey States his position in te- that support this process of restabilkation of the ego. He

wants "to make dialectical promss toward God, who, though he may have moved or

disappeared fiom the pictue, is at this stage believed calmly, inevitabIy to e x i ~ (AM
" 101; rny

Aisley begins seeking an alternate vision of Iife because, in his view,

conternporary reIigion melds with other foms of "spaceage unity"(AM 100):

(He)resisted the pressure to unite, "uniteat al1 costs." is it not the

stray tIueads, he thought, the untidy sucker-mots that weave and
floun'sh in new places - not new in the illusory sense that
"tomorrow"is new, but very ofien with the kind of newness that
draws its food fiom the pst, reaching d o m &ou& outcrops,
voIcanic folcis of rock and soi1 to a former q e ? (AM 100)

This natural image- points towards Aidey's old-fashionedsense that dl life has an organic unip

that the conventions of modern faith obliterate. The New English Version of the Bible, for

instance,

is not meant to be a Stream flowing close to the btood, it is a

modem highwav, tar-sealed, hard-shouldered, comptete with lay-
itself lt9 She expands reaiism's generic code by setting "space-ageULI.@"
bys, which can transport..Christimiq swifily to the ignorant ones
in the outlying areas. (Ah/i 57-8)

Unseen and sometimes unimaginable parts of the world intimate themseives bu1

remain unknown, even unknowable:

(Greta)had never been able to uanslate the pattern of the stellar

system tiom paper to sky; there was a hemisphere unaccounted for
that one could not Ieave on papa while one gave the Bear, the
Hunter pride of place in the sky. The heavens whirled, but the
Southem Cross did not show. (& 94)

SirniIar metaphors that point to redism's perspectivai g i d recur as constant reminciers of the

uaified ego's resaicted sightiines. Thus, by indicating the existence of things absent fiom or on

the marpins of her characters' lifestories, the witch-novelist forms a subte.xt that decentres "the

social code of the metanamrive of linear progress which determines the realist generic code

and the progress of

human invention withrn, more so than agauist, the world's cycies and organic u n i y "I, the

earth,.. .myseasons m g e d beforehand; lifeiess but hopeful of the overflowing conceit and

concern of man which spi11 life and feehg into rny sheil."

The two concepts of uniry c o ~ e c when

t
(a
6f)

space-age man attains the god-view of

earth. -4lwyn thinks, "... there's no doubt the human mind has got rnoving somewhere under the

inflationary power of the go&; aiso it has been given a sood view fiom the heights." (AM 1 IZ)

Aiwyn equates technologicai progress with the possession of godlike powers, since dis progress

has led to man seeing the earth as if he were a god. Yet attaining this double vision, seeing the

world-maze frorn both within and above, yields no clear benefit: "(Alwyn's)dreams rose,
drifting From his gtasp, weiçhtiess. He fed himself with a tube. His monmous head, aching,

pivoted among the stars." (^M 76) lastead, the god-view repteserus man's dislocation. tus

separation from earth. And, because of its extreme fa-sightedness, evcn this perspective bas

restnclions.

Space-age uriity is hierarchical and asserts the pnmacy of hurnanity, whereas

Aisley's concept of organic unity anempts to understand the diEering but intepteci frrnctions of

humans, the world and a creative force deemed * G d nFragments fiom two sources reflect the

dialectics of Aisley's attempt to identiw and place Gad within an existentid paradrgm and

m e r indicate the influence of Frame's readings of other writeis works.

Auden and Ishetwood's play The Doe Beneath the Skin (1936), which uses

substantial amounts of verse itself, provides the first fhgment: "'Happy the hare rit morning who

caanot read the humer's waking thought'" (AM 102).1° The chorus of Act II, scene ii, be-

with a celebration of insensate nanue's transient beauty. In contras to the hue, leaf, jellyfish,

and "minerai stars disintegrating quietlyl into light", man knows "whendeath stiall cut him short"

-
but his actions whettier religous, sporting, romantic, arîistic - are seen by Auden nevertheless

to be a function of violent ignorance.

Wordsworth's "Resolution and independence" ( 1802) is the source of the second

fragment. Here, in "Part Two: fiplestone's Chart", Frame draws two lengthy quotes from

stanzas 2 and 3, and 12. Stanza 9, in its entirety, is the last f b p e n t quoted in the novel, in "Part

Four The Chandelier". "Resolution and Independence", Iike the chorus tÏom Dog, celebrates
nanue rI saw the hare that raced about with joy" (1.16)] and rnoves on to consider man's place in

the world Wordsworth's is a uarrative poem, however, and it fwuses on a fiw who is a
version of the archetypat Wanderer. He is an ancien1 Leech-Gatherer who. unlike Auden's

ernbIems of rnaakind is peaceably at one with nature: "he..i'...E~edlydid look/ Upon the muddy

water, wfuch he connedJ As if he had b e n r a d h g in a book"(Rgil11.79-8 1)

Aisley's comprison of the two works rests, in addition to the common image of

the h a , on their divergent treatments of man's place in the worid The theme of man's restncted

perspectiveremains key:

...he drew bis breath in suspense at the idea that hares do not need
eyes in the back of their head for their si@ to cincompass wheat
s@ bnar toad man gun road pigeon clod home b l d God in one
swifi giance. (AM 102)

The idea of an instinctual, dl-encompasshggaze thnlls Aisley, but then he recalls Auden's

description of the "happyn harr's lack of howledge, which Aidey h d s analogous to man's own.

Thinking next of Wordsworth,Aisley questions: "...why, merely because the poet

belongs to &e countryside, mus he assume tbat hares 'run races in their mirth'?"(AM 102) The

images of the bare represent opposing views of nature, insensate and atornistic vs.sensate and

whole, yet these views interconnect through the pets' siniilar emotional projections. From this

synthesis of opposed ideas, Aisley cornes to understand that codes of myn'ad existential

conditions impinge on perspective, becoming naruralized as unmediated, absolute knowledge'

'

through habitua1 acceptance. This 'laiowledge'equates word or gaze with whole rneaning in a

seemingiy fixed relationship, and thus exdudes and disarms the potential of the unknown to

assume its Dace in open relation to the provisional known.

In other words, Aisfey reflect. on the position of complete unknowingness and

that of full knowingness, and arrives at a stance that asserts a belief in an organic whoie. The
whoIe is known in part only, through the functional relations of its c o ~ n t e n t s .This belief

engages both unknowingness and knowingness, expanding perspeaival sightlines since it allows

tht b a h aspects modulate knowtedge:

i,who have Iived in the city, miking beside houses. parked cars,
railway lines,...and not thinking once, when a car passe4 dnven
emticdly, 'Ah, the Ford is happy, fidl of deiight.' Surely it is
curious...to argue that hares, roses, trees are alive while cars,
factories, television rierials are not? Does man kill e v e ~ h i n ghe
touches?
No one knew, not yer,... when not-life became Iife, or if there was
any not life; there were restless movements of patterns within the
speck stain drop of poison. Aisley wished he couid sleep again in
peace and cail the speck G d (AM 103)

The fissure of unknowingness presents an opening in Aisley's "dialecticai

progress" that Ieads him to a conc!usion that lacks closure and is an ironic inversion of linear

dialectics. Ultimately, the substance of Aisley's thoughts nurs corner to their methodolog.

Siace he envisions unknowingness as an ever-present other (not necessarily opposite) dongside

knowingness, the renewai of stability c m o t be absolutely resolved as dialectical synthesis aims

to do. This fdure to close results in a dimptioa of the metanarrative of progres and of rhe

affirmation of the unified ego.

The Adaptable Man thus plays with the anaiogous dialectics ernbedded in
realism's generic code and the social code of progress by sening up a range of apparent binaiy

opposites on virtuaily every level of the tes: time period against time period; realism against

metafiction; prose against poetry; verse against verse; individuai charmer asainst the collective,

another individuai, himselfl,thought against thought; and so on. The witch-novelist, however,

skews the process of thesis - antithesis = synthesis and its implicitIy hierarchical impulse toward
a new order, by jaxtaposing antithesis in comection with rather than in contradiction to thesis.

Syntfiesis then is not "definedby opposition to wfiat it s o w t to replace" (Hughes 146) since the

idea is not to replace but to re-envision, to see more Mly. And neither is this conception of

synthesis a monologicai encapsdation of "thebroad firamework of values which contain both

thesis and antithesis" (Hughes 146). It reflects a relationship among any numfxr of vanous

( i n t e r ) t e d elernenrs that is dialogicai, not necessarily or solely driven by hierarchy or lineariry

and, most significantly, it is incomplete because it is evolutionary.

The witch-novelist turus zhe text's realin hmework inside-out, revealing the

constnicted aspect of its inner worlangs. She dismisses sequences of ascendancy, denies

redism's absolute ' reality' and thus the unified ego's mual privileged position To drive home

these points, the final chapter of "Part Two"is made up entirely of a jumbled selection of lines

and çtanzas fiom the poem read at court by the White Rabbit in the conclucüng chapter of Nice's

Advenrures in Wonderland (1 865).11 Frarne quotes the fim LUie and three of six stanzas but

jumbIes the order 1.1; stanza 4; stanza 6 (Iast 3 11. of 4); stanza 2; 1.1, repeated The poem

reappears, fdly and correctly, in the fim chapter of "Part Three: Black Ink, Red W (AAJ 139),

the mid-point of the text. Reconstituted this way, the poem provides more a con- a minor

image in keeping with the CarroIIian emphasis, than it does a corrective lem.

y quotes the poem in full as she ais0 invents, with ge3t verçatiIiy,
It is . k ~ who

parodies of stories that may be of the type Alwyn wiIl use for his proposed nove1: ' kitchen-sink'

rebellion; meam-of-consciousness; expressionism; md reatism - "'a novet to end al1 novels, one

of the old style'" (ALM 139). Among these others, the poem is "'...j ust another pla-vful verse with

(&l 138). It inspires fear in Jenny because "'(i)t is full of mdvsteriously

sinister implications"' A
 -
anonymous enueaties, a terrible ffuidity of pronouns "me,""she," "him," "yoy" "we"...'" This

response contracücrs Jemy's earlier sense of Alwynrsperceived uniqueness, She sees in the

"terriblefluidity" the possibility of cornplete erasure through assimilation The dispiay of

Jenny's talents links her with difference mornentanly, but ber desire is for ail "..JO know that at

Iast, beneath ail sophisication, education, incomgibility, itaiictzed parodies and pormres, she

had got her m m " (AM 140)

Generically and typographicdly, the itaiicized Alice poem m d s out fiom Jenny's

other examples, ail of which are her own, in prose and appear in Roman type. It is important

t e m l l y because the poem points retrospectivelyto a nanative thead of previous disruprions in

the metanarrative of progress, disruptious which are al1 linked to Aiice and Alice ThrouPrh the

Lookin&Iass (1871). Looking back, the h t disruption is the witcb-novelist's version of the

poem, which immediately follows Alwyn and Greta Maude's incesmous liaison. Despite its

actuai referential nonsense, the jumbled lexis plays on Alwyn's and Grera's offence: "you had

been to her"(repeated);"invohed in this atTair"; "setthem k e " changed to "set him fiee"; "This

m u a ever be/ a secret kept From al1 the rest"(AM 134).

The connection of Alwyn and Greta in relation to Alice unfolds the allusion to

Lewis Carroll's Lookine-Glass. During the chapter in which Jenny recites "They told me...",she

and Aiwyn are playin? chess, the dominant motif in Lookin~-Glass.Nice is a patÿn in that book

and moves from the first square to the eighth, where she wil1 become a queen. Car~olIends

"ChapterTwonof Loolune-Glas with the Red Queen's instructions to Alice on how a pawn may

move and capture: "Speak in French when you ca'n't((sic) think of the English for a thirg..""

Aiwyn Erets about his pawn: "Enriassant I 3 1ahvays feel that a pawn en passant is makmg a
move against its own m e . I can't think whetber besrowing this right has proved a blessing or a

curse to the pawn." 137) Though Alwyn quesrions pawm taking pawns, he has no such

qualms about cornmitring murder.

A 1 m Iike Aiice, brings his pawn to its destination:

"Prornotioa" he said, moving his pawn to the final square.

"Anotherchoice tbnist upon him now. He spends hs life in
resmcted rnovement as a pawn, until victory cornes, and he must
choose what he will be. It's damned unfair!"(m1-4 1 )

As the narrative moves forward, the _eame is Ieft unfinished: " A l y n ' s pawn, aiter di. had had

no opportunity to pradce its new life of individuaiity." (AM 148)

At this point, several narrative eIements appear in a different aspect when one

regards the text backwards. It is as if the witch-novelist reverses cenain miror images from

Aiice's LookingGIass world. Alwyn's sexual intercourse with Grea paraiIels, in a backward

way, Nice's taking of the Red Queen. Alwyn approaches Grera, who is asleep in her garden

shed She dreams of him as a young boy; he thinks she is dead He ' revives' her and, during

intercourse, Greta imagrnes herself inhabiting the Red Queen's place and point of view

...at this moment she couid see nothing beyond him. He had set
hunself immovably in the door of somewhere - where? and was-
blocking the view - which view?.... She wïshed she had a view
tiom somewhere. Why wasn't she on a hilltop, why wasn't the
sunlight in the background? (^M 132-3)

The perspectïval theme here dovetails with those of habits of seeing and logcal

contradictions in strict forms of thought such as realism. Nice wants to get to a hiIl where she

may see the surroundhg area and speak with the Red Queen, but in walking fonvard, the hi11 and
Queen retreat, which, as Gardner notes is an allusion to mirror reversal: "Walktoward a mirror,

the image moves in the o p s i r e direction" ( ~ 4 , 205j Alice mus run away fiom the Red

Queen to gel to her. Then the Queen leads Alice to the hiIItop where they suddeniy begin to nrn

as East as they cari, but to Aiice's astonishment they make no propss. klice has a hard tirne

making sense of the Red Queen's daim that the hi11 is a valley compared with larger h11Is.

Gardner's note on this point bears on the penpectival motif in The Adamable Man which

suppom as sensible' the nonsense of a reaiity I'beyond the laws of physics"compared with "the
'

nonsense that there is no such reality." (n.6, 207)

The capture of the Red Queen signais the game's end because it "resultsin a

legitimate checkmate of the Red King,who bas slept throu&out the entire chess problern

without moving." (n. t 1, fi 336.) Tbis description of the King is not a bad one of A y m ' s

father, the neariy fossilized Russell Maude. Gardner goes on to note: "Alice'svictory gives a

faim moral to the story, for the white pieces are good and gentle characters in contras ta the

fierce vindictive temperaments of the red pieces." (n. 11, & 336)

The view in Ada~tableMan differs fiom that in Lookine;-Giass. .4iwyn is the

opposite sex to Alice. Kis colour as a chess piece is more likely to be red than white and hrs

actions invert Alice's "faint mord". Also, CanoH's ending of the Looking-Glas dream is used

by the witch-novelist to point toward her own tean's bepinning. This gesnire alludes to Alice's

initidforward approach to the Red Queen and indicares that embedded within Ada~tableMan is

a simultaneous nanative movement to and fio in which beginning and ending loop into an

infinite regression - whatever the linear pressures of the book's binding and pagination
 As the retrospecrive allusions to Carroll's Alice reach back towards the beginning

of Adaptable h h , they reveai that Frame & working fiom Gardneis Annotated Alice. Gardner

quotes Wordsworth's 'Xesolution and independence"in tùll in the Lookine-Giass section. The

quote appears in Gardnefs notes on the White Karght's song "TheAged Aged m man", which is

sung just before Aiice advances to the iast square. Gardner describes the White Kmght's Song as

"a tnvesty on the subject matter of Wordsworth's poem" and notes, sigmficmtly in t e m s of

Frame's technique, that the "songalso euhibits a kind of hierarchy, like a mirror reflection of a

mirror refletionof an object." (n.9, & 306) Carroll himself said in a letter that Wordsworth's

poem

has always crmused me a good d d (though it is by no mems a

comic poem) by the absurd way in which the p e t goes on
questioning the poor old leech-gatherer, making him tell his
history over and over again, and never attending to what he says.
Wordsworth ends with a moral - an example 1have followed "

The witch-novelist's inchsion of "Resolution and independence" in her text.

along with Aidey's "sadly oid-fashioned" sympathy for "thepet's descents into banality"(AiM

102), reverses Carroll's omission of a mord in the White Kriight's Song Wordsworth's poet-

narraror fears his old age will hotd "Solitude, pain of hem, distress, and poverty"(1.35) and

doubting God, like Aisley Maude, he wmts to know that life is not a furile exercise (N.B., 11.40-

42). The leech-gatherer, though an ancient and "decrepit Man", possesses "so firm a mirid". He

symbolizes the anima of the world, which, like the nurnber of leeches, has "dwindled long by

slow decay" (1.1 ZS), yet offers a sense of the overarching integrity of ail things.
 StiIl looking at the nanarive of Adaptable Man retrospectively,"Resoiution and

independence"is the Iast allusion to Looking-Glass. The poem is at once ' itseif the White

Knight's Song since, even though Frarne does not quote the son&the context of Adautable Man

refigures the poem as an ' unparody.' This interplay engages Carroll's use of minor retlection,

parucularty in tenns of "symmetriwl objects (abjects not superposable on their rnirror images f'

& 180) aad "thereversal of any aqmmemc relation"(n.4, & 18 1) - cg., the relation of
(n4,

"Resoluuonand independence"to the Looking-Glassong

The thread of allusions to the Nice books is not obvious by any means, nor is it

simply a display of Frame's authorial clevemess or obscurity. The web of human thou$ and

words holds for her a cornplex, diverse vision of existentid connectedness. îhus, she uses

Caroll's works. and others related to it, to cut across tirne and the ' normal'linear means of

establishing rneaning and congmity in order to reflect a potyvaient, organic vision of life and

language.

The Adautable Man'snarrative reasserts a forward mornenturn, j u s as the chess

game ends, with a discussion of a generationai emblem: "thebeautifid young pet"A

(A
J 145).

The oider characters recall tàvourite pets of thcir youth. Aisley quotes aloud the first and last 4

lines of Stephen Spendets "The Truly Great" ( 1929):

"1think continuallv of those who were trulv great. ....!

The names of those who in their hearts fou&t for life,'
_Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre./
Born of the su thev travelled a short while towards the s u d
And lefi the vivid air siened with their honour-/" A
(& 144)

Russell Maude, himseIf a soldier in W. W.iI, quotes "Exposure"( 19 17) by Wilfied Owen:
 "Far off. like the m o u r o f some other war: what are we doin3
-
here?/
The mimant rniserv of dam be8ns to growWWW!
W e o d v know war lm. min soaks..Jw (^M 145)

Alwyn, allied with Jenny ''agmst al1 that was 014tire4 vague, memotiaily rosy" (AM 1451,

quotes Thom Gunn's "My Sad Captains"( 1 96 1):

"Onebv one thev aDDear in/

the darkness: a few m'ends, and/
a few with historicaY
names. How late thev start to shine!/

but before thev fade thev stand/

the m...
! (AM 145-6)"

e the poeq as having a common

Aiwyn disparages the poets as an eternaf ~ p and

"There's today's 'beautifid pet,' still pwsuing the heroes...1s it ever

going to stop? In tbirty years we'il see his blurred telstar-
photographeci face as close to the stars as his own heroes who

tum with disinterestedl

hard enerev. like the srars./ (AM 146)

ï h e expiicit conceni wirh heroism is .4lwyn's own projection, aided by the witch-novelist's

editing of the poems and by the conte.- of Greta and Russell's specific, fearful memortes of tvar.

The witch-novelist believes that A i w y , being "aChiId o f his time," lacks the sense of duty and

honous heroism requires. He considers himself an appropriate @-hero.

 As A l w sûikes a pose of modern aiienation, he attacks pets and heroes, people

whose roles -a to differentiate and individualize them, but whose words and actions

afirm organic unity. A chse reading of the fragments shows that the poetic Iines the witch-

noveiist seiects foreground memphoricai and metaphpicai processes whch mmsform the dead

"heroes"into the four eiements: water, fir dI i ght. air. stone.

h ml, the poems focus less on individuais as "heroes"than on individuals who

f o m an ever-increasing group, whose d e a b the pets reved as losses which yet symbolize the

life-bonds al1 created things share. Spender praises those who afKrm an etemal legacy of the

"spirit": "...theessential delight of the blood drawn Liom agekss springsi Breaking through rocks

in worlds before our e&/" (II. 10- 1 1, Coilected Poems 30) Owen, in his "Preface", refùtes

Alwyn's claim: "Thisbook is not about h e r w . ...Nor is it about deeds or land, nor anything

about glory, houou., mi&& majesty, domulion, or power, except War....My subject is War, and

the pity of War." (Collected Poems 3 1) And Gunn's poem, also reflecting on the deaths of

"fnends"and historic persons, implies a reassessment of life and purpose: "...They were meni

who, 1thougtit, Iived oniy to/ renew the wastefid force &y/ spent with each hot convulsion.;'

Tàey remind me, disrant now./" (Mv Sad Ca~tains5 1)

Together these three p e t s de@ the modern alienation for which Al\.iwn stands.

Their vision is to link mankind across time, apinst a restricted conception of history. And,

through their interte- relation to "TheWanderer" or "Resolutionand Independence?"for

example, the witch-novelist reveals that personal and societal alienation is not a new condition.

Here, agam, she points out conjunction even where disjunction is most evident.
 Through interteml exploration, the witch-novelis mu1tipIies the narrative's

ways of seemg and expressing existence. it is a ' butterfly' approach to history and Iiterarure that

breaks up programmatic linear connections. It îkvours interwoven representaûons of life whkk

rather than king o d y or predorninantly directed by artificial restrictions, g o w out of a sense of

both naturai and artificiat conditions. hdividud and communal perspectives e.xpand in this

model, encounging introspection and interpersonal compassion:

One thing that prevented (man's)dead-weight dreams tiom king

recognized as flesh-and-blood victims was the neat way they had
been packaged; the label said Untouched bv Human Hand
....man could at last, fecding upon his burden of dreams, become
his dreams... wodd at iast be free of t h e , his jouniey would take a
new course in which he did not close his eyes and nini away 6om
any part of his history, whether through fear, shame, horror,
increddity, vanïty, hate, or love; beyond the imprisonment of time
man would learn to stare at himself, at the tmth of the strange
history of his life upon the eartb... if he does not Iearn to stare
soon, he will be destroyed forever. A (&l 158)

Alwyn embodies man's self-ciestniaiveprogress towards extinction. The essential individuaiist,

his perspective is distocated fiom other people's. He "is learning to stare....'Iike a god"', rather

than an earth-bound creature, that he may sit in judgement. The witch-novelist's bope for human

suvival rests in mankind's embracing a fluid perspective of time and space: "It's as hard to be

people-minded as it is to be worfd-minded to fin& say, two seasons "filling the rneaure"of a

man's environment and life, when Shakespeare has told us, and we have believed him, that there

are four." (^M 360)

As The Adaptable Man closes, then, the witch-novelist reassens her interest in

how langage circumscribes mindset and, therefore, one's manner of cxisting in and relating to
the worid The story reaches irs climax with the deaths of Greta, Aisley, and Muriei Bal*,

whose enormous chandelier crashes down upon them during a dinner party to celebrate the

arrivai of progress and eiectricity in Littie Burgetstatham. Pamck Evans is right in equating the

chandeiier and its destructiveness with "thegey circle of ctoud in a nuciear explosion'' (Evans

134). Frame describes the light in terms similar to those she used in Scented Gardens: "..A\vas

as if the glass in each bulb had b e n ground fiom dust and mud, also fiom the grey of winter and

its clouds, and the greyness that descended on human lives and their beliefs." (AJJ 371) Here is

the event the witch-novelist's "prophecy"(AM 3) foretells, and wfiich calls to rnind Scented

Gardens'ç use of Coleridge: "ancestralvoices prophesying war" (SG 224).

Only Muriel's busbar& Vic, suMves the crash, though he "(w)ouidneed

mirrors...to see what went on amund him, for he was completely paralyzed." (m273) The

finai emphasis on tnirror images aIIudes to Aisley's reading of St. Paul that "nowwe see through

a giass darkly" - glossed as "(n)owwe see ody puzziing reflections"(AM 55-56). The fadtiness

of knowledge and expression exîend chrough this ahsion to "prophecy": Tor we h o w in part,

and we prophesy in parti But when that which is perfect is corne, then that wtùch is in part shail

be done away." ( 1Cor 1 3 :9-t 0) Thus, the theme of human sumival through a "people-minded

-
and "world-minded"version of spiritual love plays out against the novel's apocalyptic ending and

is bolstered by Scripture. As Mark Williams explains, F m e ' s particular vision of the

apocalypse is infiuenced by her motheis Christadelphian faith, many of whose doctrines overlap

with the beliefs of literary heretics like "Milton,Blake, Lawrence"(Williams 34):

It is a tradition uncontaminated by Puntanism, springing not from

Methodism or Presbyterianisrnbut from the BIakean sense that
Chritianity is at heart a message about transforming,not
repudiating, physical existence. üitimately, iu roots are to be
 found in the seventeenth century miltenarian sects of the English
RevoIution which so@t to establish the b g d o m of God on earth.
Its deity is not the Calvinin God of repression and rem%utionwho
prises apart spirit and matter but the Love wbich Wait Whitman
fond in the mallest joinings of material d o n (Williams 33)

fhe AdaDtable Man begins, as Scented Gardens ends, witIi a rerurn to language's

primordial moment: "Say the names again and again, and won there's no tveetboic-colored

railway station... no village store.... Nothing but a dream of earliest praise, of sea-flooded inlets.

lakes, marshes, sedge..." (a

13) But, unlike Scented Gardens, this novel does not dismiss the

Engiish language as inadequate because of its sheer weight The Adamable Man grapples with

man's experknce of material language, a s it is now, in the production of meaning: "...the

language of God..wherethe words and phrases...-but they were not these, there was no name for

the components of God's language o

... fought like fish to get fhe;...then the nameless agents of

creation were lost, until man tried again" (AM 170) Man's stnrggie with l a n g q e indicates bis

humanity, and herein Frame h d s her way of answering the pressures of space age adaptation:

"Humanbeings will forever imagine there is but one entrance and exit, when the years are

-
perforand witb them rat hoies, escape holes, doors to wonderland" (AM56)

The final note of allusion stnick is AIice Throu- the LookineGlass, which

Frame distinguishes with her own Mrist:

Vie Baldry's view of the world was as perfect and smooth as any
view wodd ever be, although rhere was a star-shaped crack on the
right of the rnirror (Vic's left) where the caniers had damaged it. It
was agreed that the fiaw was too inconspicuous for the miror to
be returned ...and as Vic Baldry 1ay watching the world, everyone
who waiked in the road outside...had t u m at occupying the break
in the mirror... (& 276)
Frame figues Vic Baldry as a passive observer who 'inheritslnot one, but two views of the

and smooth", the other is an entrailce to the looking-glas world Al1

worid The firsr is "perfe~

passes-by unwittingiy garn entrance to this aiternate worid of imagination, which has been

declared "too inconspicuous"by h o w n authorities. The Adaombie iMan is an eaupressionof

how Ianguage, itse!f a mirror. h o l e and refiects both views. Frame's use of poetry syrnboIizes

this interconnection, yet the very multiplicity of onginaI and quoted masenal expIodes the

restrictions of a reading that would only in dualistic terms.

The witch-noveiist asks: "...who decided the seasons? Who was the fker and

decider?" (AM275) Ultirnately, she fin& determining the origns of influences futile. Insead.

she looks at language as primarily a reflection of human experience in an 'eternai present.' Even

as it hunes its users, it bears - caries forward - hîluences: "...imposingour own weather,

our own Iimits of reach and touch, o u own star-shaped irreparable flaw, dont we dl Iive in

mirrors, forever?" (AM 277) The Ianguage in which we communicate, direct and figure

ourselves need not be considered entirely pre-stnictured and static, or necessarily rnotiologicaI -

in Frame's fiequentiy reconfigured quotations, we see no reverence of the dully correct

Opposition to ortiiodoxy and conformity are keys to Frarne's fiction, even while she adheres

intentiy to the mundane "limitsof reach and touch". C. K Stead echoes Frame's approach to

realism in his statement that: "Onesocs beyond realism in order to get nearer to realitv, not to

dispense with it. " l6

Lanpge is adaptable: Frame constantly shows how quoted fragments and genre

boundaries gain new sigmficances and ways of meaning through shifthg contexts and

collocations. She look at the far-sighted vision of the modem age and finds it monological and
assimilarive. She opposes that vision by establishing a duality befween space age and organic

viewpoints. But duaiities are only ever a con- to other ways of seeing in Frame's oeuvre; they

do not fully indicate her way of thking By foregrounding the crimpIexities of interreiatedness,

which disrupt the restricted perspective of binary principles, stie subverts the notion of

achieveable synthesis. And through the witch-noveiist. Frame ' speaks before' the projected

desrtqv of space age unity. She sees in Imguage the potemial to reverse the movement towards

simultaneous human and linguistic extinction; she hopes that individuals can express and act

upon adaptable constructs of "our own" SUMval, before and afier the apocaiypse, whether divine

or of human cause, which so many stones continue to foretell.

NOTES

' For a midy of the realisr elementr of The Adaotable Man, sae: Pamck Evans, Janet Frame 121-
140.
'Mark Williams, Leavine the Hiehwav: Six Conternooram New Zealand Novelins (Auckland:
Auckland LI. P.,1990) 38.
' See: Antony Easthope, P m as Discoime 5 1-77.
4
Susan Ash, 'The Nanative Frame: 'Unieashg (lm)possibilities,"' AustraIia and New Zeaiand
Studies in Canada 5 (1991) 5.
Chris Baldick, The Concise Oxford Dictionaw of Literarv Terrns (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990)
186.
Margaret Dahei, Janet Frarne (Auckland: Oxford U.P..1980) 46.
7
C.f., Daiziel, oo. cit; Lawrence Jones. 'WoCowslip's Bell in Waùnani; The Persond Vision
of Owls Do Crv," Landfàil95 (1970): 295; H.Winston Rhodes. 'Reludes and Parables: h Reading
of Janet Frame's Novels,"M a I l 26 ( 1973): 145.
' Perrine, Laurence. "TheHunchback in the Park," The Poetrv CvcloDediar Volume One,ed Charles
ChiId Waicutt and J. Edwin W h i e l l (Chiwo: Quadrangle, 1966) 3 13.
K e ~ e t James
h Hughes, Siens of Literature: Lanwge. 1Ide010~and the Litenuv Te*
(:Vancouver:Talonbooks, 1986) 147.
10
Aisley Maude's quotation is s l i w y offthe actud lines: "Happy the hare at moming, for she
cannot readl The Hunteis waking thoughts." Auden and isherwood The Doe Beneath the S h n ~ r
Where is Francis? A Plav in Three Acts (London: Faber and Faber, 1936) Rii, Chorus.
11
They toId me you had been to her,
And mentioned me to bim:
She gave me a good character,
But said 1 wuld not s w i m

He sent them word 1had not gone

(Weknow it to be me):
Ifshe shouid push the matter on.
What wodd become of you?

1 gave her one, they gave him IWO,

You gave us îhree or more;
They dl returned fiom him to o u ,
Tho@ they werz mine before.

If1 or she shouid chance to be

h otved in this affàir,
He trusts in you to set them fi-ee.
Exactlyaswe~e~e~

My notion was that you had b e n

(Before she had this £3)
Aï1 obstacle that came between
Him, and ourselves, and i t

Dont let hUn h o w she Iiked thern best,

For this must ever be
A secre5 kept £tomail the
Between yourself and me.

Carroil. Lewis, Nice's Adventures in Wonderland in The Amotated Alice, intm. and notes, iblarün
Gardner (New York: C l a n N.Potter, 1960) 158.
" Carroll. Lewis, 'ïhroueh the Lookine Glaq in The Annotated Alice 2 12.
I3 .'en passant: The capture of a pawn as it makes a fkst move of wo squares by an enemy pawn in a
position to threaten the first ofthese squares." Webstex's Seventh New Colle~ateDictionarv
(Toronto: Thomas Men, 1967): 276.
1-4Carroll, Lewis, "n.5,- Thmueh the Lookin~Glass and What Alice F o n d There in More
Annotateci Alice, pref. and notes, Martin Gardner (New York Random H o w , 1990) 290.
15 The quotaîÏonscontain some minor typographical ermrs that uuluence the r e g of prticuIar

Iines sornewhat
The fim Line of Spender's poem ends Li a period, not a comma Cf.: Stephen Sjmder, Collected
Poems 1928-1985 (Landon: Faber, 1985) 30.
The £klinet of Russell Maude's quotation (1.9of the poem) shouid read "...likea dull rumour of
some other war." Thaî line cornpletes a sentence and ends in a paiod Line 10. then, ought to begin
with a capital, since it consinites a fidl intenogative sentence. In addition, Iine 10 is part of a
reguiar panern in which the nWi iine of o c h nama is indemed and hctions as a poimed chorus to
the precedng four lines, undeisco~gthe poem's major theme of the ninering Gd wane of m.
Lines 1 1 and 12 therefore open a new stanza Cf.: Wilçed Owen, The Collecteci Poems of W i l M
Owen. ed. and intro., Lewis, C.Day (London: Chatto and Windus, 1963) 4849.
Line 2 ofGunn's poem uses a coion, not a sd-coioe Cf.:Thom Gunn, Mv Sad Captains
(London: Faber, 196 t ) 51.
l6 C. K. S t d Answering to the h w e : Essavs on Modern h g w e (Auckland- Auckland
U.P., 1989)238.
 A State of Siege:
Touchstones and Sightlines

Scented Gardens for the Blind The Adamable man, A State of Sieee and Yellow

Flowers in the Antidean Roorn self-reilexively empIoy and examine particula literary sources

and influences. Scented Gardens and Adaptable Man emphasize 3 mode! of the extemal origin

ofsource and influence. These novek are about culturcil dimensions. State and Yellow FIowers

reflect a shift in Frame's emphasis to regard these factors in cultural impact prünarily in their

internaiized, active aspect - foregoundino the view that source and influence are as mucn a

t'unction of localized cross-fertilizatiotisas of goba1 interrelations. in this chapter, 1 will

examine in State the sigtificance of intedized intluences in relation to location. The text's

narrative arc, whic h interleaves quotations and allusions and concludes with Frame's own verse,

reveals structured juncnires of j o m e y and merno-. My airn is to discover and explicate the

"place' Frarne seeks to chart and the received te.- and ideas that shape her task.

GeneraIly speaking, postcolonial discourse invests the iconopphy of a tes's

Iocation witb a relationai depth, the renderings of which. whether conscious or inadvertent,

indicace a complex deictic code, iDcIuding historicai, international, social, md linguistic factors.

Setting,thus, is not just a backdrop for character or thematic developrnent but becomes

s t r u d L y i n t e p l IO a text's concepnial framework.

in State, Frarne look at the function of cemin sources and influences in

particular socio-lingisric situations. Beyond content, she bnngs to bear on this novel the visible

discursive markers of ancillacy texts, genre, terior and register. Especially important are
 marken affecting the deixis of locarion and relation, such as the consrininon of objects and the

mediation of the workis of tex& reader and *er. Sure's sense of Iocation, then hinges on

perspective and the production and reception of ways of rneaning.

My use of the terms "relation"and "location*draws on tint which lan Wedde

describes as

... the developing growth of the langage into its location, to the
point where Enplish as aa international language can be felt to be
origind where it is.
****
Location, then, not just in terrns of place, bu in the fullest cultwal
sense, is the consimimation of a sense of relation. l

Wedde's idea of "relation"is very broad: " ...beyond nationalism or cultural dienation.... snidying

geugraphy and anthroplogy as much as t iterary culture."(Wedde 28) He notes the appearance of

this concept of relation in Frame's poem The et ter,"' which was published the year afrcr Sme.

He compares that poem with mother New Zealand poem whose similar

sense of nanirai relation kevidence of Ianguage centred in a

cuinue whose dimensions are internally familiar. It is possible to
read infiuences here without doutting the origmality of the poetry.
The poem the subject, not jus about it - where ' about' implies
will, a philosophic determination (Wedde 28)j

Not the least aspect of Iocation'scentraiity to State is Frame's awareness of her

New Zealand readership, evident in the foregrounded details of place and local tenns Iike "bach"

!a seaside residence), "pakeha"(non-Maori), "Ladies a Plate" (a potluck tea) and the indigenous

names of flora and fauna Roger Horrocks envisions and defines "a 'New Zealand readin&

which dovetails with Wedde's ideas. He posits a genetic, in-the-know "'NewZealand reader'"
and sees particular tem working out of a dominant pakeha "New Zeaiand tradition" in the arts.

For Horrocks, the irnpiied reader will b o w that "Frame is working within a comrnon tradition

and iconography but intlecthg thrm in orignal ways." (Horrocks 133)' Language h a a pica al

tùnction in this literary tradition: "Thesuggestion that things c m be ' tasted in ttieir very names'

2381 provides a vivid sumrnary of how that tmdition iikes to think of langage."

The above quotation f?om Stase cornes fiom a passage where the "things"narned

are that are listed among numerous other landscape feansres. Language used to evoke ths

sort of apprehensionsiniates textual location between acnial setting and spbolic designation, in

a gap where sensin%traverses a prios circumscription of perception, the denotating gïven name.

Such usage engages the experiential and connotative leveIs of the process leading toward

naming. That wrne names "taste" of their object does indeed s u m up Frame's view of the

constitutional transformation as an object is sensed - perceived and made meanin- - into

utterance. Utterance at once signifies distance, between speaker and object especially, and

proximitv, as it is a shared cultural sign.

Frame's protagonist is Maified Signal, an unmanied retired school teacher, whose

mothefs death aifows her a chance for "fkedorn." Malfred travels fiom South Island to North on

a "pilgrimage"(SS 6 ) that binds the country into a symbolic whole6 and paradoxically takes in

the ' outside' world:

In relation to the rest of the country, Karernoana and the mainland

lying in its latitude were ' up north' in a foreign climate with
fore@ inhabitants whose speech and way of life were Amencan,
Australian, Polynesian, certainly f u fiom New Zealand (s 4)
 As in Scented Gardens, the educational system dîctates that the reatist tradition is

the correct way to apprehend and represent the world. Maifked has spent "yem...' teaching' art,

pouncing on the fauity 'shadowers,' trying to insril1 'a sense of proportion'..." (s10) This 'oid
vievt belongs to the human-cenued vision of material realism and is characterized by a

collective orthodoxy: "the inprained habit of dutifhl Iooking of seing what ivas there, and what

others agreed was there" (s20).

~Malfied'ssearch for 3 ''New View" (SS 2 1) Ieads her to abandon both t'amily and

community. Place becomes her creative partner and object of love:

Udike Lear, I have given the wind, the sea, the s e , the trees my
kingdom; 1 have called them, not children, perhaps lovers;.... Yet
i'm &id there may be a point teacheci in the chaos, a climax of
chaos that will emit life, like the fumes of a storrn; a hurnan
beginning thwt fiom the inbuman natural scene. (SS 6 3 )

The unidentified first person narraforsuggests, eatIy on, that the dialectical

relation of the old and new views encompasses a singie system of valuation: e.meme isolation,

Iike community, can also restnct one's point of uiew. "Tm fiee, i?m tiee at kt,Malfiedl

thought, as g e m n ~
bv. like al1 human beines. with the necessarv dece~tion,she entered the

prison nvo inches behind the eyes." (SS 40;my emphases)

The representations o f location and relation, values, perspectives and 'deceptions'

in State, and later in Yellow Fiowers and Intensive Car%reflect a shift fiom Frarne's previous

work. Each portraya1 of these concepts exhibits new strategies in Frarne's oeuvre for producing

sense. Her use of verse and her e.xpenrnentation wirh poetic techniques Iike portmanteau words

and anagrams foreground literal and figurative intertextuai ' sites' of language's syntagmatic and
paradigrnatic dimensions. Here, similitude and refracted apprehension cohere in verbal

arraugements which are simultaneously Iinear and [oosely associanonal. Frame's senation of

these sites' within the narratives creates stnictures whicb generate and highiight selected aspects
'

of setting and social and chancter psychology. Even as the text produces sense through semantic

appositions, it aiso inscnbes incursions upon and disruptions of the story's linear progress by the

introduction of W e n t s of other temal codes and vdue -stems.

State cmpioys hgments of verse by Keats. Amol4 Banett Browning and Auden

bits of pastoral and gothic balIack, a line fiom Charles Brasch (the only New Zealand poet

directly quoted), two ' chann' poems 'by' MaIfred Signal and a final poem by Frame - thou*

anonymous in the narrative - which resonates with Lewis Carroll's "Jabbecwochc." [ts curious

langmge is not the only curious thkg about it; its appearance on the scene is as welI. The poem

is "the news" (s
- 244) on the newspaper wrappirig of a stone that bums through Maifked's

window. Scrawled across the poem is the message, "Help Help."

Overail, the narrative syntagm of al1 these verse ' units' supports an increasing

weight of 'absent-but-present'paradimatic signs in a progressive rnovement towards the stone

poern's avDarent nonsense. "The production of sense is distubeci aot so much by a paucity of

meaning as by an untoward abundance of possible meanings."(Calder 93) Thts statement refers

to the nonsense techniques Frame develops in Yellow FIowers and elsewhere, but it is aiso

relevant to State's intermingling of literary sources.

-
State's storyline encourages a Iinear view of Malfied Signai's shifi fiom a

resaicted viewpoint to one that is much more open, sirnply because of the overall narrative

direction and organization as a jomey. Alongside Malfred's chanping perspective is a

rnovement embedded in the quotations: from Romantic pathetic lallacy' to a strong sense of
 nature's muitivalent, sui wteris bearing and 'voice.' The larter reaches its epitome in the

vioIentiy bestowed ' gc the stone wrapped in "the news thar was not in any Ianguage (Malfred)
i

had leaniedn(SS 244).

The word "Ieanied"is a good exampie of bow Frame uses the paradigrnatic axes

of spcçific wor& in rhis novel. Because it carries much ailusive weight, ht.s word is key.' It

calls up Allen Curnow's epigrammatic couplet: "Nor I, some chI& boni in a marveilous year,'

Will team the trick of standing upright here. "'Frame's choice and usage echoes Cumow's sense:
"...you can't leam without being tau&& which may not impiy teachers, but certainiy does irnply

process or developmen~"(Wedde 40) Her focus is on the process of gaining knowledge about

one's location, and intuitinq the full scope of relation is essential to the process. What Malfred

learns when she picks up the stone in the clirnactic epiphany is paradoxically an udeaming:

"she couid not name it" (SS 245). Even though she can recite a lin of New Zealand rock types,

the names do not apply. Malfred herself is unnamed after this; Frame refers to her only in

pronom. The stone "grewwarm, with the promise of sud (s246), while Malfieci, gasping it,
dies.

Malfi-edspends the last days of ber Me closed up in a bach isoiated on tfie island

of Karemoana, which "had once been the home of the fint moa-hunters." (s54K) She hopes to
be purged of the old view by ridding herself of those who shaped her life and perspective. If she

gains an unpeopled new view of the world, with it she ioses her narne: her human designation

and principal rnarker of her individual relation to location. The "natural scene" envelops her

anonymity; it continues to &. "Outside, the sun, enrichmg the &y, spilled its cleaned grains of

light, and the sea lay calm at last" (SS 246)

 Malfied's mediating presence gone, the narrator foregoun& "Outsi&." which the

epiphanic ending depias as 'purifie&and beyond human Ianguage. Still, tfie narrator's filter and

ai[ the codes of fictive language continue to colour the land as objecr, tex and sensation. Death

altows Mdt'red unmediatecf communion with the worid ar large, but it is for the iiving to karn to

"taste"names anew, with fÙil attention to the conditions of location and relation.'O

The immediate locational and relational contem of the verse fragments and
poems flesh out the underlying intertexrual linkages. The first poetrc allusions in Stare are

comparative reference points for aspects of' Iocation' and ' reiation' at the urne of Malfied's

arrival at her bach The ailusions draw on a range of intersections such as: the North Esland's

subtropical flora and seasons in contrast to the South's; Malfred taking up residence wfiere the

previous owner, Nora Corlett, had died; MaEed's books, Beautiful New Zedand and Paintins

of the New Zealand Scene, which stand "with some sense of neigbbouring rivaIryV(SS 43)

beside Noratsbooks of British poetry. *'

With the quotations fiom Keats, Barreft Browning and Amoid, Frame b r i n p into

relief the relationat tensions which Malfied brings to Karemoana and those which the isiand

itselfapparently manifests. Malfied aimost expects a diaiogue with the landscape as she ponders

the "wonderfùl view.... the porse and manuka! But they tell nothing." (s32) She recalIs Keats's
"Ode on a Grecian Urn," connecting it to her impression of these things: "....one gets fiom

contemplating them, not the expected delight in spring blossom but perhaps the feeling of horror

roused by the prospect of everlasting life,... paralneci in growth, like the lovers on the Grecian

Um...."
 Malkd dismisses Keats's longing for permanence amid change: "..,onecould

g o w tired of immortality..." (SS_ 56) She wants to see animation and change in art as in iife. It

is no accident that the one painting of her own which she hangs in the bach is "TheMou& of the

Waiwki." (243)" The oral meraphor undeneores the hoped-for sensual exchange of messages

between M a i M and the land and an ailegory of place as Malfred's lover:

...because her Iover had not stayed, when the mountains. the sea,
the bush, the nvers had stayed.. - because almost eveqdung had
stayed, Maified bad carefidly changed the label that hung in the
vacant love-place, Human Beinq to r a d , Almost Evenrthuiq.

Maified, like Keats, asserts a silent communication which one "gea tiorn" objects

contemplatecl:

Head melodies are sweet, but those unheardl

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;'
Not to the sennial ear, but more endeare&
Pipe to the spirit d i m of
~ no tonei
("Ode on a Greciao U n ' ' 11. 1 1 - 14.)

n "The Eve of St.Agnes" (s

Keats's "BoldLover" on the Urn, iMadelinerscloseted Porphyro i

42) and Barrett Browning's lover (ll...I heard the footste~sof thv soul" ["Sonnet7,"SS 431) al1

reinforce a common sentiment: spintual, or imaginative, communication as an adjunct to

sensual apprehension.

In this cluster of lines, Frame also includes some fiorn Arnold's "Empedocleson

Etna": "1sit so small a thing to have enjoyed the suni To have lived light in the spring?"" The
mid-nineteenth century tirne-frame of this poem connecl it with the others, yet this poem

applies in different respects to State's narrative and its themes. Empedocles, like ~Malfied,has
grown aged and, looking towards deah, e?ciIeshimself from an unsympathetic society. He

speaks of simple, responsive joy, which connasts Malf?edrsprecamcted "eqected delight in

spring blossom". He deplores "That we must feign a bliss".

Amold suppressed the hi1 version oF"Empedoclesnafier it was first published in

1852.'' The reasor, stiited in Arnold's much-anthologized Reface to the 18% edition of his

Poemç, centres on this dictum: "'All.4rt,' says Schiller, ' is dedicared to Joy, and there is no

higher and no more serious problern. than how to make men happy. The ri&t Art is shat alone,

which creates the hi&est enjoyment'" (Tinkerwiii) "Empedocles,"Arnold decides. belons to

a class of situations whch p e no pleasure in their representation:

They are those [situations] in which the suffering fin& no vent in

action: in which a continuou state of mental dimess is prolonged,
unrelieved by inciden~h o p , or resistance; in which there is
everything to be endure4 nothing to be done. (Tinkerxviii)

in this conte- "Soy"has a specific meaning and function, both of which relate to
the moral effect of a work of art upon its audience. LioneI TRlling describes the aesthctic, thus:

[Arnold's] feeling is for energy and health, and hs poerns, as much

as they dwell upon reasons for despair, seek to frnd countenrailing
reasons for hope. And if they do no? find what they seek,...
still. d e y served to redize and discharge the negative emotions
and made possible the affirmative qualities which become
manifest in Arnold's prose." '
The poem's reprinting in îuil in 1867 indicates Arnold's reassessment of the poem's abifity to

persuade readers with its "affirmativequalities." These are the same qualities that Frame
 highlights in her sligtit quotarion, which, at the sarne time, foresfiadows the "prolonged" and

"unrelieved""mental dimess" rhat the succeeding pages of A State of Sieee depicts.l6

A g o s n g over his exile, Empedocles ultimately commits suicide by throwing

himseIf into rhe volcano: "Thou canst not [ive with men nor with thyself 4 0 sage! O sqe! -

Take the one way le%' And turn t h e to the elements, thy tnends, " (429; II.33-35). His thai

will to action paralIels, in several respects if not dl, the images and events of Malfred's final

hours: her isolanon; the symbolism of the elements; and the implication that "t h)er spint

-
as it nturns to a fiuidamenral state an imrnediate relation wirh die
undergoes a purifi~ti~ny''7

world's otiginative forces. Thus,Empedocles' death, like Malfied's, foregrowrdsa cieu sense

that the metaphysical exists within the physical reaim in a symbiotic, orme relatioriship: "O ye
elements! I know -;Ye know it too - it hath k e n grarited mel Not to die wholty, not to be al1

enslaved/ ... The nurnbing cloud/ Mounts off my soul; I feel it, I breathe kee.:'"(Ml; 11.404-8 .)

The patallelism Frame devetops between Malfied and Empedocles is one of ma-

tfiat prefigure -5hIfied's death Marc Del= outiines numerous e.uamples and concludes:

...the nove1 supports, if only at the levei of metaphor, the view that
Malfied dies to ber long-harboured vision of the world,
concomitantly with the onset of the quest.
***
This intemiogiing of caregories of life and death...carries deep
implications with respect to the issue of (Frarne's) alIeged
pessimism.... she posits the possibility of a survival of sorts....
(wtiich) transcends the habitua1 boundç of individuality...
(Delrez 1 30-1)

Calder considers the same technique in terms of nanative fonn and function. He

focuses on several "doublings and invotutions of the narrative" (Calder 99). For example, when,

just afier the poeay books are identified as Nom Corlett's, Maltied examines one ofirfora's
family photos and describes a man we know is Malfred's father. "...Miss Coriett anticipates 3

firture for Malfred-.Ae already is what Malfkd will becorne....- it is as if events in the book

are headed towards a Cuture they already contain." (Calder 98)

works toward her desued new view of the worid. her hoped-for
As ~Malfied

tkeedom seems to be happening. Recailing Elizabeth B m t t Browning's Sonnets from the

Portueuese, she considers herself to have put

hith.. .in another...as the q e n c...until dreams took over, or until

some pan of rhe body or min& unbotinci, made assauft, creative or
Jestnicrive. on the limiting environment ...of being 'at home' to
human imprisonmentn(SS 450.

Freedom for Empedocles occurs via dath, wbile [ove'sagency prevails in Barrett

Browning's "SonnetOne" ( IO-14):

And a voice said in mastery while 1 =ove-/ "Guess now who

holds thee?" - "Death,"1said But thereJ
The siIver m e r rang, 'Not Deah but Love."/ (SS 45)

The narrator treats MaRed's identification with ane en" ironically: "Mdfied's readuig began as

a pleasant ïnduigence of one who is at 1 s t aione, in charge, and at rest." (s46) As conditions
unfold, Malfied is clearly none of the above. Tùe intertextual narrative of freedom draws

Maified into itself, foregrounding her life as a fictive variation: "Was she tsfing to re-enact a

legend?" (SS 47)

Malfied's percepnon of freedom paradoxically circurnscribes the narrative of her

future as much as it has delimited her present and p s t . The narrator says of Freedom: "The

dream and the deiusion gave interest to al1 rnyths and Iegends." (s15) Here is a clue to a view
 that Matfied cannot yet imagine: al1 dories refer to the inevitability of &th and the constant

renewai of life, o k a symbolized by love. The two are inextricable. Freedorn h m one consists

in the provisiod absence of the other.

"Sonnet Six" 46), quoted in Ml, dweils on death and the pal1 it casts on love.

The sonnet opens with three spare words: "Go fiom me." Thou& brief, it is a cornplex

statement Barretr Browning's speaker dectares and acknowledges physicd separauon as a fact

of death, but the irnperative command implies her own porver. This predicative fom also

suggests her emotional state, thas she "resents the loss o f ' individual life"'([1.4] Dow w):

Tevermord..1.shail.../...lifl my hand...Without..iThy touch upon the palm...:...What I do/ And

what I dream include thee..." (11.2-1 1 ) Deatb Ieads to a spintual entwining so absolure that the

speaker longs for the discrete consciousness of ber own psyche, aione. Her vision is ultimately

that death paradoxically effects more an invasion than a separarion.

Here again Frame prefigures Malfred's firnire through quoted verse. Dunng a

night-long n o m , Malffred is besieged by a constant hocking at her doors and windows. She

wonders about the identity of the person tenoriring ber and, in dreams, imagines it is someone

she has known and loved but who is dead: her father, her rnother, Wilfred, her fiance, who died

in WWI; or former students wbo would still be alive.

Frame contrasts Barrett Browning's speaker's world irnbued as it is with enduring

-
human consciousness, witb Auden's, envisaged as incognitant and m s i e n t . Malfred sbifts her

thinking fiom pathetic fallacy and its immediate, synecdochic emblem, Nora Corlett's volume of

the Sonnets, by remembenng "the words of one of her favourite poems" (SS 5 1 ). The poem is

the sarne one Aisley Maude quotes in The Ada~tabIeMan from the chorus of Act II,ii of J&
Do4 Beneath the Skin. The words gain a different emphasis here, however, with Malfred

focusing on Iife cycles that continue apan From the influence of any human consciousness:

Lucky indeed/
The rampant srnering suffocatingjellflshi
Burgeoning in pools, lapping the grirs of the desert,
The eiernentq sensual cures,
The hibernations and the gowth of hair assuage; ....

MaIfred muses ironically on the ' luck' of her mother's death and, consequenrly,

"herown release or wakmg from hibernation..." Thus, in her own pursuit of "elementarysensuai

cures,"she experiences "the strange feelings that an animal might have known, an animal no

longer young, Ming asleep in the frost and snow, wakrng to spnng and bright sunlight" The

narratots allegory here reff ects Malfred's dissociation from people and her increasing awareness

of non-human Iife forces. Night is a palpable presence, and the wortd, personified focuses on

her
7

Malfred had the feeling that she could walk out the window
straight into the sea; only the sea was visible fiom where she lay....
With such wide horizons before her window it seemed that the
whoie world ranged itself dong the horizon's rim, gazing towards
Karemoana, with the relentless questioning that characterizes the
whole worid Tell. Tell. Answer or else. Give. The b e m of hght
that came suddenly through the window was the moon, hastily
bundled in rags of cloud and thnist into darhess. (s 52ff)

This passage reveals another allusion to Curnow's poetry, ths time "A Small
Room with Large ~ i n d o w s . "Section
'~ 1 of that poem asks: "What would it look like if really

there were onlyi one point of the compass not known iIIusoryj....The unwinding abiding beam
from birtiu to death! What a plan!" (11-7) This Iife "ptan" approaches the exactitude and

Iironically undercuu the ideai by contrasting it

imniutability of a rationalkt ' ideai.' Section I

with nature's interrdationai cornpiexities and regeneration: WaIf land, tialf water, what you cal1

a view/ Stning out between rhe windows and the tm-ûunks;/ Belovr silIs a worId moist with

new-makrng...:"t IL, 21-24) C. K. Stead notes: "Thisis the r d view which the ideai cannot

survive."20 f i s conuast benveen ideal and real corresponds in some respects to ;Mal&d's "Old"

and '?ie\v" views. Sensing that con for mi^ to rational ideats ailows no place for imagination,

-
she \vans to become part of "the 'landscape'of experience" (Stead 1973,69) experience

Uiduding one's tfioughts and &eams. Maifieci i m a ~ n e sherself moving outside of her 'smalI

roorn.' figuratively, outside her head with its conditioned and festnfeStncted
view, to find that, with

"the whoIe world" contioating her, she need not be just a passive observer, but active and

engaged with creation.

Frame transfoms Curnow's "beam from birth to death" into the moon's "beam of

lightn recaiting the imagery of her own poem "Waitingfor Daylight": "Iikea policeman shuiing

a torch through the darW saying to night What are you up to, Move on there.iWMaltied shrinks

from the light and goes to sleep "suddeniy" (SS 53) - as quickiy as the ciouds shroud the moon's

light For the tirne king, she avoids both interrogation and the agency she might assume.

Maiffed's rejection of the oid vieds deadening conformiry uocovers her fear of

direct interaction with the unseen world suggested by the horizon's nm. She feels subsumed by

the universal: "Malfredwas overcome by the sense of the insubstantiality of the visible and the

tangrbIe.... The whole world lay without; within, there was nothing." (SS 63) Her irnmediate

reaction derives from the powerfui vestiges of the old view still operative in her sensing of
danger. She "IisteNs)intently" for the sound of the sea amid the storm, attempting to i&ntifv

sornething recogtuzable and thus assen a human-centered order which would gran1her

unassailabie power and space: "1 mus make something rational, eternai ftom this animal

From this point in the narntive, Malfied's 'journef toward a new view becomes
less a rnovement across the physical world and more cIearly an exploration of her imaginative

renderings of the world This shift mark the beginning of a process that pares away "the

conflagration of clichés" (s116) which comprise "Malfieci"in order to reveal aspects of her
self and her relation to her world

MaIfied's oid view relies on the "prisonof shape" (z

109). It is a particular way

of perceiving and organizing 'sdaces'and a fundamentai source of knowledge in western

culture. In Malfied's circumstances, her isolation in violent weather and growing attention to

"the rebeI in the eye" (-7I),she finds thar surfaces transfonn ininto mutabIe and
permeabie thresholds. She reconsiden previously beiieved-in, defended surface-barriers against

' dangerou' free-thrnking. ïhe barries, even if not transparent, becorne ways of seeing into and

out of enclosed objects or ideas:

...the mind was realized to be a Christmas stockirtg of that sbetch

matenal, Imagination, bat found itself laden with gifts -...the
-
suetch material...had one limitation o d y it \vas bound to fit, to
follow the size of what lay within it; if it were accepted for a
lifetirne as a finite materiai, then nothing could be done. There
had to be, from within the parcel,...a sudden pressure by
calcuIation or chance, that showed the marveIs and potentiatities
of the enclosing material.(z 74)
 In addition to having these enciosing and snetching qualities, Malfied imagines

surfaces as conjunctive. The idea gives her some fear. It is paradoxical and even subversive

since accepted wisdom and appearances indicate discontinui. "The barrier of things in their

isoiated worlds that yet protnided unlûlowingiy, for it was supposed they had no knowledge, into

other worlds, had never seerned to Malfied more vivid and fiightening." (s79) Frametssense
of surfaces. depths and their e f f t i ~ then,
, differs from that of Gilles ~eleuze;' for example,

which posits the categories as discrete and antagonistic. Gauging by Frame's use of shadows and

grey areas of overtap, a far more complex relationship is 3t work.

Malfied is confùsed about her changing perspectives and aims since Ieaving

Matuatangi. Her ideas about the sig;iificance of light, dark and shadow in her teaching and

previous artwork, change ofteil and affect her zbility to paint at Karernoana The new view

remains for her a tenuous concept, a m e of mind she expressly hopes to achieve but hesitates to

adopt Unidentified fem cause her to move forward somewhat in her ' progress'yet, at times,

they also make her regress to secure, defensive ways of thinking: "No one has known, ever, the

persinence, and now, the persecutions of shadows in my life. 1'11 let no one in." (s1 18)
Monique Malterre describes "Maifkd's progress towards edightenment" as a spiritual

"purification...to get rid of her interior darkness."(123) ïhîs analysis simplifies t e . d

arnbiguities into sûictly oppositional forces.

Mal fred criticizes "so-called poetic thinking that.. .marries opposites in srder to

unite them and decrease the effort of tqmg to undemand their separate natures." (SS 16 1) She

begins to apprehend her world inclusively, but not Eom the perspective of a rnanying priest

whose doctrine disallows divorce. Paying attention to complex interrelations & inherent

differences, she begins to explore her otvn "stretch material, Imagination," sensing "the marvels
and potentialiries of the enclosing materiai." (s74). She c a k this perspective "the pretiminary
ciream,*= to distinguish it from the new view, which remains locked diaiecticdly with the old

view

...the preliminary ciream, her s e i n g her choosing, her setting it

d o m in picnires. the earkst most vivid hnd of writing h t
included the shadows of h n g s seen, not separating object and
shadow, not exposing the object to the striking d o m of the Sun.
but folding the shadow witbin the object itself (s 166')

This alternative perspective is daunting ("theone mgically constant fearure ivas the way it
stayed preliminary" 167)and more new to her than the so-called new view becam its basic

paradigm is unrelated to the old view.

Former ways of seeing stiil present familiar, uncomplicated sanctuaries, to which
Malfied retreats when fear sets in. She fears losing her culture's common way of seeing, her
comection with the worid as she has known it:

...who will daim my essence if 1 do not?.... I do not want it to be

dispersed, 1want it W e d , View within View, double-burning.,...
If I were to paint it 1wouid apply al1 the d e s of perspective,
proportion, shading color, my materials wouid be the b e s ~but as C
say this I remember that rve a New View of the worfd, and my
New View must include rny owa essence, the pebble-core and
sirnplicity of it. (s 177)

Malfred vaciliates among perspectives of identity, or "essence," to which she attaches different

concepts of the role of one's "shadow." In a drearn which projects the future fiom a past

moment, she is Iooking forward to her discovery of "a New View of the world, when 1shail be

faitfil to myself and not my shadow." 227) in the new view, thouph the shadow is present,

it remains distinct fiom an 'essential' self Maffred senses this division is tàcile.
 Elsewhere, thinking from the perspective of the "pretiminarydream," Malfred
describes one's shadow as coherent with identity; whatever changes either may mariifest in time
and space:

Man,without his shadow.... is robbed of his essence, of his first

and last company.... m i l he is dust, then as dut-shadow to dun
Aies with hun in the eyes and brearh of the wind round and round
the wortd (sI95fT)
Again and ;igain, the narrator belies both the old view's rigd collective

individuaiism and Mal fied's Romantic dream of unfettered s e l f h d according to a new view.

Key to revealing the faIse 'simplicity' of both are the foregrounded tensions among the redis&

lyricai, expressionist, surreal, and metafictionai narrative Iines:

...each detail so closely associated with one wornan's way of living,

s e h g as an achor to b ~ thegscene, the night, the continuous
bocking to an ordinary level of domesticity, of sirnplicity.
So one would have thought. Yet dways, death, the pas& the
future. are on w ci ready to thnist rneaning into the srnailest gap
in the simplicity; somewhere, at some time, the domestic,
everyday, conventional armor wears thia (s 243)

Malfred's philosophical attemptç to make sense of ber life clash constantly with mundane

intrusions and her perceptions of the world's influence on her. She fin& rneaning, when she

believes it txists at all, to be of the moment, shifking as time, exprience and memory shiR This

flow fnghtens her as she ncognïzes the impossibility of viewing idenuty or even ordinary events

and expetiences in a stable, unambiguous context The start of a "thunderotsdetermineci

knocking" (s6 3 ) , which Malfied attributes to a prowler and which lasts unti1 State's final
pages, introduces a repeated demand for her attention, for her to engage fully with her location
 Part Two, "Darkness," gives Ualfred's response to the knocking a series of at

Imn twenry-five embedded nones and sketchesx She anempts to comaa help over an
uncomected telephone. imagining aloud, in story fom, the identity of the prowler. recaIiing

events and p p l e , and thbkkg of her funire. Malfred speaks with the hope of being overheard

by the prowler, whorn she wants to &&en away with the thrat of heIp on the way. She is

obviousiy unsuccessfd since no one cornes. Passing the thne tili daylight, her stories become

increasingiy confessionaI and introspective, yet they evoke no w p a t b y from the prowkr. The

harasment continues.

Through the narrators filter, the story-tetlingsons out what Malfied does and

does not know, especially about hersetf. The stories expose w b t she must know if she is to
displ her fears, starting with learning how she herseif sees. This lesson beçins as the effect of

her displacement emerges in her uscent crativity with words as well as paints:'4

...the background of her life was k i n g shredded,

dissolveci., mountaùIs seen out of the corner of one eye, as a
white fortress; or daf3odils seen and known in spring .. were
certainties that gave meaning and consolation, though one may not
realize this until one had arrived in a m g e landscape; ...where
nothing was h o w n or stayed or couid be predicted. (SS 141)

WhiIe she spins one-sided conversations over the unconnected phone to the one

police officer on the island, to an imagined neighbour, to a minister, an4 off the phone. to

herself, distant and late relatives, fiiendsand fonner students, Maifred builds a word-based

cornmunity around henelf in terms that gradually become ner own. The narrator ' ailows'

-
Malfkd sections of fia person narration, both in indirect discourse, e-g., 10 1 103 and direct

discourse, e.g., t 15- 1 18. Malfieci's fictionalized life experiences, sometirnes told in different
versions, provide the h m e of reference. They refiect the place that formed her, and continues

Furthenore, they
to, figuratively mapping a geornorphic version of her unique "pebbie-c~re."~

outline the process by which she works out a preliminary ciream of world and self, emphasiùng

the inclusion of "the shadow of things seen."

Whereas the verse quotations and allusions in Part I, "The Knocking,"draw

largely on Romantic and Victorian poetry - the Fragment from Auden is the only exception -

those in Part 2, "Darkness," are more diverse: Burns's pastoral lyric "To a Mounrain Daisy"; a

traditional British May Day ballad; Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"; and sonnets

by Shakespeare and Keats. Linked to particular times and events in Malfred's Iife, the f h p e n t s

are touchstones for the theme of identity, both personal and national. Together, they forrn a

-
nexus behveen the fictive lives in State and the extra-te.vtual worid a ntxus that signifies

textual mediarions behveen Malfred's knowledge and tangible fragments of the crnpirical world,

where the reader can know what Malfied knows simply by familiarity.

Through source and infiuence, the genencally diverse surfaces of die tes's

structural components suggest various, flexible readings of textual identity. Th=, because of

their recursive cornplementation of the principal narrative, the verse fia-ments also opente as a

metafictional Iritmotif which expands the levels of expticit intertextuality and questions

restrictive testual identity by foregrounding and provisionaIly contextualizing inhen'ted literary

conventions. Parallels run deep, for example, between State and "TheRime of the Ancient

Mariner" (II, 105-6), which Malfied alludes to in the first-person: "1 regretfully dispensed with..,

- the discovery of genius - to replace it with shadows and the calmer knowledge that no one in
my classroom would ever 'burst into that silent se&'" (5S 1 18) As with State, this long poem

uses joumeys, actual and metaphorical, and it too is confessional and morally instructive in tone.
Like the Mariner, who purges his guilt by reteiling his "ghastiy tale" (WI,
584), MalFred divulges

and explores her guiIt for having oppressed her own and her pupils' imagination and creativity.

The quoted line derives from that point in the poem when the Mariner's shipmates justiQ the

killing of the albatross and become "accomplicesin the crime" (Ti n,) by succumbing to b h d

confonnity. MaItied is similady complicit in her own situation of social confomity.

Furthemore, Fme's use of the Iine "bufst into that silent sea" is understood by

Evans (149) and Horrocks (134), for example, only to symbolize imaginative genius and

independent will. In context, the Mariner exclaims, "We were the first that ever burst' into that

silent se%" teferring in fact to the Pacific Ocean. F m e ' s irony undercuts the European

perspective of New Warld 'discoveries' apparent in the line by foregrounding in h a owm text the

presumed dominance of Anglocentric culture over place. Malfred and her collcapes actively

suppress their pupils' apprehension of unco-opted indigenous cultures and the possible,

rnetaphysical aspects of place. 'Ihus, the dominant culture itseif creates an intellectual and

emotionai distance from the place "New Zeaiand" while it works to maintain the imaginative

potency and political power of the geographically remote Mother country.

CoIendge's description of the uncharted sea as "si1entWtakes on an added weight

in Frame's usage because her te* engages its ambiguities: more than being simply ~ l t h o u t

sound, the sea may be understood as both 'unheard' and 'having been silenced.' Yet that which is

silent has the force of presence, as Matfied cornes to see while at ' alien' Karemoana. Het silent,

but not cornpletely unconscious, agency in the repression of her own and her students'

imaginations and desires metaphorically echoes the "silent sea" with a contrastingly false note.

The therne of extrication fiom this rote - hers, specifically, and others', perhaps by influence -
shapes Malfred's attention to language and literature in her word-sketches. On al1 narrative
levels, the movement is away fiom monology towatd dialogy,and beyond, to the "untoward

abundance of possible meanings." (Calder 93)

When MalFred observes the cultural generation of a national identity turning fiom

colonial ongin toward native New Zealand features, she thinks that both the concept and

autochthonous manifestations of it are "too fiagile to attract dreaming or the belief that follows

dreaming." (SS I 2 1) Of ail Mal fred's -dents only one, Lettice, "...had been abIe to absorb,as a

mindless sponge absorbs food From the sea, the myths and legends of her o\m country" (SS 123).

Malfied "thought of the Maoris as she thought of Lettice... It wasn't fair that they should know so

much, instinctively, about their countty" (SS 125). MalFied sees "theenvy she had known, seem

to become part of the national character." (SS 123) The substance of this envy is a desire to
belong to and possess the land simultaneously. Materialism and specious art are functions of

this envy in action. In a self-inclusive, parenthetical jab, Frarne notes that New ZsaIand's nation-

building has been led by poets: "Puning kowhai, pmmngi, man &a,... on postage namps and

biscuit tins (the first stage was insertion in poetry), selIing Maori carvings, faked or genuine..."

@ 124).

In State, the tensions between the te.ds realism and its abstnct levels play out

along certain mythicaI storylines, such as the family romance and the quest, or along those pans

oFthe story involving events resonant with archetypal import, like the fertility rites Malfred

observes mimicked by her nudents, colleagues, sister and even herself. Throughout "Dafknessn,

quotations underscore the narrative's mythicism, the depths of Malfied's fears and her urgent

need to understand her relation to place.

 Frame uses Bum's "To A Mountain Daisy" to illustrate Malfieci's remark that "the

miracutous change that should have overcome the travelers was absent":

...al1 wss Floaî's] traveling had not given her the courage to rwd
doud to her fourth fonn the whole of To a Daisy. She still
skipped, with blushes the verse:
Such is the fate of man or maid
Sweet floweret of the nvaI shade,
Bv love's sim~licihibetraved. (-9~)~'

-
The poem itself concem death: "That fate is thine no distant date" (1.50). Malfied has

navelIed to the place where site wi1I die and, like Miss Float, çeems without courage: "She

wanted to run fiom the house, to cry out,. she wanted to fetch help. She lay without rnoving..."

(SS 80). Contemplation and reverie are her main reactions, contraMing Burns's

..simple bard,
On lifetsrough ocean luckless startd!
Unskilfiil h e to note the card
Of prudent [ore,
Till billow rage, and gales blow hard,
And whelm him o'er!
(11.37-40)

Malfred's examinations of her owvn life as weU as those of others reveal an

emerging source of strength: her unused ability to scrutinize and probe her world It cornes out

in her readings of the re-enactments of a Fragmented culhiral Iineage. Attending the Jubilee

StafTBall at schooI, Malfied watches the female students in "shepherdess costumes" dance while

singing the ballad: "Haste Haste Shepherds and neighbod Shadows are falling, music is

callingJ Corne now leaving your labours) Dance on the green till the close of the day." /SS 134)

The performance's discontinuity with the occasion, venue and weather outside the gymnasium
catches Malfied's attention no [ess than that of the girls' nansfonnation into "Maori maidem

playing their sri& -es, singing the Maori words..." ,MalfTed sums up the acT, performed many

times around town, in simple terms: "theHigh School girls played shepherdesses and Maon

maidens and succeeded.. in being neither." (SS 135)

Setting mythologies as discrete and homosegous. is. in iUaIfred's view. ultimately

a "naïve approach to m m , for myths. iike nvers, corne out of the common sea and r e m there,

and none is aIone..." (SS 125). Frame emphasizes insincrively known possibilities of r
n wc

patterns which find conscious expression m o n certain people. Lemce Bradley being one. This

focus demonstrates Frame's ratfier loose use of a Jungian seme of the abstract muctures of

myths. She is not so much interested in the concept that myths contai.universal organizing

principles of human exPenence." but in the processes of transformation and renewal inherent in

the different versions and patterns present in individuai retellings.

If the girts who dance as Shepherdesses and Maon maidens nicceed in being

"neither",w h t & they succeed in being? This is the of Maifred's investigation into her

own identity. As she becomes increasingiy self-aware, she contrasts the South and North Islands

and uses her dienation in the North as a means of locating heneif within the worid she sees and

within the worId of words which impinges on her vision. Malfied objects to the lack o f

authenticity in ttie pastiche of the students' dances, yet pastiche is the method that becomes her

own. ihe "confiapsion of cIichesnthat MaIfred early in State have accrued during her

lifetime with culture-based purpose and significance. Malfieci's efforts at "peeiing them away"

give way to the moment when she may reconstmct her life, self and milieu, even wi th the

clichés, in an arrangement that primarily reflects her experience and vision - rather than just the

overriding i r n p ~ of
t her culture.
 With P a n Two drawing to a close, lLtaifked tfiinks again of Nora Corlett

Why had the woman corne to Karemoana to mire? What tiad she
boped to fùld here? Or what had she hoped to lose? Sitting at ber
fiont door...reading The Sonnets from the Pommese, Sonnets of
John Keats, "The poety of earth is ceasing never. on a \onewinter
everung, when the fiost has wought a silence";or "When I have
feus that I mi@t (sic) cease to be..." (s157)"

The first sonnet quoted here. "Onthe Grasshopper and the Crickek'' pretrzpres a "new. first

silence emergïng fiom emptiness"(s160). ~Malfiedbriefly experiences a similar ' fom' of

silence: "As she almost watched the silence vanishing, .MaIfied felt that there ms some action

she shouid have taken... sornething tbat should have been thougbt of or dreamed while the

silence belonged to her." (s162) "Onthe Grasshopper and the Cricket"is a Petrarchan
sonnet, a cennal convention of wbich is the use ofstriktng compansons. Keats uses rwo

contrasthg pairs of images, the grasshopper and the cricket and summer and winter, to evoke

moments of nature's silence and sounds. n u s , he strives to reflect "the poetry of e h n in his

own. Maified's awareness of the sonnet is displaceci, king projected onto Nora Corlen She

misses a moment of possible illumination wbile still wondering about ber own abilities.

The second sonnet contains lines that in this contes allude to ~Wfred'sstate of

mind and situation: "..A may never Iive to m c w Their shadows"(il. 8-9) and " - then on the

shore! Of the \vide world 1 stand done" (11. 13-13). b i n e n t death and aloneness converge in

the final part of State, which Frame enritles "The ~tone.""Maified decides here to "see what it

is 1wish to be saved fiom":

Wlo am 1, then? Where do 1 creep, crippled, or fiy, dancing?.... 1

haven't cned out, "SaveMe, Save Me," until tonight, when there's
 no one to h m me. Ail rny Ii fe there has been someone within
lisenhg distance of me... (s 178)

In her isolation, LMalfred asks and asserts: "Whobesieges me? It is not leatherbound, pocket
editiom of poets, though I... have space to spare in myseiK.. for the shadow of the retired teachei'

(SS !79). Malfied quotes poets she associates with ~WssCorlert. creating 3 shorthand detinition
of that 'othei wornan by makmg a cento fiom fhgments of The Rubaivat, Keats's "Men 1 have

Ferirs," and Shakespeare's "Sonnet66". She &ers Shakespeare's words ( "Tiredwith ail these, for

resttùi d a t h I cry ") and the fm person subjects of both sonnets to the third:

...the retired teacher who spent her t h e with Elizabeth Barrett

Browning..., having "fearsthat she might cease to be," "tiredwith
al1 these crying for restful death,"... and finally knowing that her
fears were justifie4 and that restfiil death hrrd corne. (SS 1790

Malfieci's ambiguous rendering of "Sonnet 66" echoes her dream in Part Three,

where Wiifked and dead and distant farnily members visit her in the "'roomw o inches behind

the eyes"', as if, in coming to her, they d l then find restful de& Maified imagines "tum(ing)

against everyone I have known to daim frorn them the part of the essence of me that they

possess, to fit toeether the cIaimed barts into a Dartern of wholeness" (s180; my emphasis).
Once again, iMaIfied explicitiy views those ciround her, in addition to herself, as pastiche

creatures in need of selfairected reconstitution.

The floor in Matfieci's dream room suggests the chas board setting of Throueh

the Lookino-Glass. Frame avoids making a direct allusion, however, by describing the pattern

as:
 the kind of squares that belong to everyone's rnemory - gingham
dresses..., tablecioths, tea towek, of games ptayed with a hierarchy
of tail kings and bishops...; or simply mernories of squares of light
and shadow.., fiying shapes distorted by movemwt and l i e
square lawns, drainage grills, ancient courtyards seen only in ttie
imagination. (s 18 1)

ï h e description goes beyond the Looking-Glass allusion, but the resonances pamcuiar to that

te.- indicate the direction o f MaEed's narrative and enhance the interte.YNaI figuration of State's

conclusion with its "Jabbenvocky"-like poem.

The familiar influence of Xice's advancement to ~ 7 underpins

" sipficant

events in Mai fied's push towards self-actuaiization before dath. ParalIels become clex.

Chapter VII of Looking-Glas ends: "Wherethe noise came from, (Aiice) coddn't rnake out: the

air seemed fidl of it, and it rang through and throu& her head..She started to her feet and spmg

across the linle brook in her t e ~ o r - . . Chapter

"~~ Vm opens with the noise seeming "todie away,
till al1 was dead silence"m d 293), which suggests yet another dimension of Malfieci's

apprehension o f manifest silence. After the noise and silence, a dream state works irs way into

the consciousnesses of AIice and Malfred, each of whom questions her role and place within (or

out of?) the dream (cf.:Looking-Glass 293; 230).

Alex Calder sees the influence of the Looking-Glasssemng in terms of langage-

surface and bodydepth dichotomies:

For the most part the novel only registers the threat of a language
thar loses its distinctions from the body.... it is rnarked by a series
of emphatic retums fiom an alanning encounter with depth to the
securities of the surface.... When Malfied splits into the one who
knocks on the door of the dream room and the one who is inside,
outsides and insides meet as if folded in a Mobius (& strip;
again, there is a retreat Ciom depth to a play with the surface
possibilities of narrative. (Calder 102)
The Moebius sPip analogy is Deleuze's (28 l), iliustrating his point thar in Lookine-Giass: "By
h g dong the [mirror, ches board] surface, dong the edge, one passes to the other side;

h m bodies to incorporeal events. The coatinuity of h n t and back replaces al1 Ievels of depth, "

(Deleuze 280) The presumption of- "continuity,"which issues fiom a set equation between

the physical and non-physical, is a big one, as is the idea that "dl levels of depth" are replaced.

or. as Calder fin& in Fme. that the? are "retremed fioni." Larger ml1 than these issues is an

-
underlying realist epistemology that ' purely' bodily "depthsW"
survive, intact the transition of

representation and reflection from an oral to a written mediuni_

Artaud, DeIeuze and Calder make individuais and ' personal' language usages

virtually the entire focus of their discussions of Carrollian litervy techniques. Frame looks in

another duection even while depicting Malfred as one whose pain and fears are thoroughiy self-

examine& to just this si& of k i n g cornptetely overwhelming. In Nick P e w s words, Frarne's

writing is

about how a sense of ciifference is socidIy constnicted about the

conneaion betwem social relations and a sense of self This is
New Zealand writing with the signs reversed What was inwards
has become outward, w h was difficuit ha become clear - and
vice versa ( P e q 177)

Happily, though Perry's image- coincides with Ddeuze's, he does not infer that Framefs

obversion of imer and outer surfaces necessarily precludes the presence of under- and overlying

-
strata whether ernotionai, physical or structurai.
 The connection of Alice's Looking-Giass world with Malfred and her world

foregrounds dimensions of laquage and culture that are intedized by the subject of these

social d i t i e s . Maifie& as subjec~declares: "Tonight1 witl soive this mystery." (s180) She
is determineci to discover her "pebble core of beingnand the relation of her sense of self to her

location. Her guide is language, with its threads' oftem and vestigal s i g s of person. site and
'

incident:

1 see the labels Frrther. Mother. Grriham, Lucy, Wilfied. the tall
letters,.... I get up Born rny golden square and walk 6om letter to
letter... 1R2hUn to my golden square, and sit quietly whle the
names forq the names of rny places - the Bost and fie-split rocks
of Kurow, the green and silver sbingle-swirl and sigh of Waitaki,
the cade du% dry gras of Waiareka (SS 18 1-2)

The people whom Malfied envisions in her dream room are linked with particular

poem and denotative relations with the land This narrative pattern depicts influences upon and

aspects of Malfieci's 1ife, which lead like a trail to her own poems and to fragments she

remembers from Brasch and Camus, ail of which heIp her divine, figure and redress ber sense of

relation to place. Each poem and quote, in succession, repositions and refines the context o f

Malfied's 'shadow self,' Nora Coriett and by extension, the Romantic vision of self and site

Iinked with that retired teacher. iMalfied uitirnateIy moves beyond her previous obsessive belief

that shadows are paradoxicdly concrete, absolute shapers of her Iife toward a perception that

shadows and their substantial counterparts, in play with light and dark,do comect with obscure,

possibly, metaphysical events,

Maifieci's father is the fim penon to visit her drearn room and she nonces: "heis

not the whde being 1 imagined... there is nothing I can grasp of him that does not belong to
another person, age or place? (s186) Thinking of hirn as "public figure"and "parent"she
finds hirn remote. But,rhen, in verbaily sketchinq hm,euiogimg hm in a way, her voice

recounts her moving, filial admiration.

She situates her relation with hirn in the Southem Alps: "...in mv life f have

drawn most tiom that region where rny father explored and none of us couid follow." 19 1 )

She associates these mountains with "theyourhfiil dead who, ~vishfiillegend tells.....lie

Iuminously boned and souled" (SS 190), a contrasr to the "impurebeniated lives" of ordinary

people. X poem cornes to her minci,William K e a Seymour's "SheepBones," and fiom it she

interprets that: "Perhaps, in this country, sheep and men are .so ciose, so dependent upon one

another h t in tbeu mountak deaths tkre is an intermixture of sanctity." (s191)

Aiong with the d p s and death, images of snow and mutability ' flow' through each

sketch, one of which focuses on ~Wfred'simpression that her fathet's expedition photoqaphs

bave dated quickly:

Is it because mow, never ciianging, casts upon men who have been
photopphed in it, al1 the burden of change and time? Last yeafs
snow is as white as this yeafs, but 1st year's suit and shoes and hat
and the man wearing them have aged doubly. (s 19 1)

S e i n g the cyclicd permanence of nature in a manmade object, the photo, allows bldfied to

accept the loss of her father as simpIy naturzl. Her impulse for creativity in advance of her o\m

death provokes an idea that symbolizes her Iink with her father and, more than that, her

cornmitment and relation, in Wedde's sense, to her location: "...the Southern Alps ...1 think 1

could thread the peaks together as if they were the spiral shells from the broken string of beads,
 - -
and wear them forever. like pearis though whose disease, my ueanire about my throa~"(SS

1910

Malfred's "respectabie," less fancifid creanvity - her shadowing abiiity - is central

to her mother's visit to the dreLun roorn. Mn. Signal notices she has no shadow berself, and asks

Malfred to make her one, which ~MaRredcannot: "'Theyhave to grow out of your body.'" is
198) hh. Signai's skin resembtes "a geographex's vegetation map" (2194) and her "predaro-

eyes" make her "like the sun leaning for si@ of ;t mounrain lake to suck up its darhess and

shining water" (SS 195). These tropes signifi related substitutive figurations. kfdfreds mother

is fim imaged as passive, twoaimensionai and static (after aiI, she is dead). Her abraded skin is:

-
"..,worn thin, as if something - &ys or years has trodden it, mbbed it" (- 194). Ln the simiIe

that follows, her eyes paradoxically activate her personah, but entomb. as they did in life. the

worid within her field of reference. These tropes are fitting substitutions for one who first

admire4 then grew tired, then jedous of her daughtets anistic ",aiW (s197) and its mysterious
origin: "...then we forgot to wonder." (s198)
Malfied's representatiooal style has brought her to her "preliminary dream": "1

think now that I undersmnd my need to learn and teach the art of shading; ...my concern with h e

shoveIs and their shadows was not wholIy the crime that some may have thought" (s196). She
recognizes thar the phenomenal conditions e.uisting around her straddle red and dream tirne and

furthemore, that artifacts of the imagination which r e h c t the organic and its 'shaàows,' neittier

reproduce the inherent processes nor emdate the patterns. Such artifacts comment upon their

own shaping forces. This is why "Widdicombe Fairn is sung by AM.

Signal, who is not Iiaked

with the "preliminxy dreamwbut in antithesis to the "New View unfolding without hindrance, an

island canvas that mes to make some pattern of (Maified's) life."(SS 175) The ballad reflects
cause and rationalism, but causarion is indeteminate since she looks for ir in broken d o ~ m

rationai pracnce. "Reasonnis titeraily groundless in Maihd's drearn room What -&ns a place

now, what becornes tangible, is the language of suffering "the withering (that) shows itself even

in a man's language." Frarne connects Wilfî-cd's "macabreshocking experiences"during the War

with ~Malfred'sparochial Iife by fimng botb as physicdIy emitted signs. Thus, ~Maltiedis

sensing, more than cornprehending, that language has a visible, as well as covert, role in "the

consummation ot'a sense of relation" wth one's "location".

The fmus on cultural conformity shifts as Frame

continues to direct Nalfiedtowards the hoped-for engagement witb "hmparion" which

initiated her journey north. At various points in the narrative, Maifieci's increasing awareness of

individuat creativity explores the "marvels and potentiJities" (s74) of imagination and their
interrelations with perspective, memory, narrativiq, and voice.

MaiFred's apprehension of these conduits of one's sense of k i n g advances during

a dream room encowirer with family members: "...recognitionof Lucy, Roland Graham, Femie.

does not demand any special mernosr of them. They simply are, as domestic objects or

Iaodmarks." (s2 10) Once again, the irnagery of place characterizes those who appear in
Ma1fred's drearn world:

Lucy stands there,...thinking about her native plants - aipine shrubs

are in fashion this year, .... she is W n g...of how she will remain
"loyalnto M a ~ t a n g iunlike
, her eider sister who bas deserted the
t o m her father helped to build (SS 2 10- 1 1)

Rooted in childhood as well as pIace, language, various in its aspects and eff'ects,

appears here dong continua of brilliance to insipience, the cultivated to the neglected md the
numiring to the blighting The dream room encounter with Lucy begins with Maified's thoughts

of her sister as an adrttf depicted in sfionfiand with a wry note on Lucy's reading habits: "...she

reads the recommended books and one or two that she daringiy discovers on her own. Have you '

read Little Known Facts of the Thilteenth Centurv,' she will ask her guests..." fs21 1) ~Malfied

remembers that. as a ch14 Lucy "was aiways clever at reciting poeny"(SS 212) and that the

chosen poems were balladic, gotfuc romances like Hilaire Belloc's "TarantelIa" and Alfied

Noyesrs"The Highwayman": "Nevermore. mir an da, nevermore.,. On- the hi& peak's hoar, h d

Aragon a torrent at the dooa";and "Themoon was a ghostiy salleon tossed upon cloudy seas"

(s3 12). The poerns' words evoke mernories of vivid c b c t e r s who mdd with Malfied's
image of herselfas a young girl. She notes the genre's strong psychological effect: "(t)he

romarttic picture appealeci.... one can be diverted so easily fiom one's dosest concerts to tuander

without compass or nap or language into another century among other peopte."(SS 2 12K)

MaIfred the schoolmarm criticizes her sistefs recitations: "...though tter

enunciation was good, she did not have the imaginarion to capture the far piaces." Ironically,

Maifieci's readings psitriate the images and words to ' her' New Zealand by precisely echoing

those of Staie: a woman whose life is ending; snow-covered alps; a mountain river, a door, the

moon portendhg death; tempeshious winds and sea Ail these reflect iMaIfied's attempt at a

paradoxical process of totatizing herseif piecemeal. in contrast to -the romantic picture." the

fragments express her antipoàal experience of the presence of direction, place. lan-age. histop

and sociery in her Me.

A11 of îhese circumstances, plus MalFred's "closest concem," also have presence

in her dreams. As the first person account continues, Malfied dreams Ui a state of full awareness

that she is returning to ~Vatuatangi.She leaves Karernoana, going back to the da? before and
only as far as Auckland's waterfront where she had waited for the ferq to take her to the island

There, at the w k r C she sees but does not recognize herseif:

Her face, c o d k e d in iîs expression, look out at the hof hi&

sky.... Day d e r &y, year after year, we go in o u ,Iives face to
face. face to fàce, searching r a d i n s scanning interpreting
tnnslating in our own lm-c w h t WC have discovered in the
face thrust close to us. with its lipç and tongue and throat working
in speech, its eyes traveiing (eyes & travel. "domto Odord
towers") fiom destination to destination. (SS 22 1)

.Memory, irnagmation and laquage make up the lem through whch Malfied begins to know

herself: perspective and place, the f o d (textuai) &us whereupon she siniates dirs self Her

quotation fiom Arnold's "The Scholar J.psyn asserts an unbroken co~ectionwith her p a s

through the poetry of her childhood More than tbis, it confinns in her mind the human ability to

look at once ourward and inward. Her parenthetical remark literaiizes the eyes' travels, reifying

the metaphor, while it conversefyforegrounds the eyes as figurative ("our" eyes; "its eyes";

Arnold's "eye"). The synbolism of the eyes, and the concept of perspective it suggests,

assimilates time and space in terms of the directions, destinations and duration of life. Malfied

thus delineates this sense (sensation and meaning) of perspective witbin her senes of language-

based processes of discovery and metamorphosis.

Ai1 of a sudden, Malfied's dreamed vision of herself seems to vanish but, unaware

that "the womari"has not moved, she I O O ~out fiom that dreamed seIf Nso on the wharfis a

middle-aged man, a "hobo, vagant, cal1 him what you will" 233), who watches everythng

intently. Mai Fred says,

 [ watch, too, q i n g not to let myçelf be drawn into wtiat is not a
drama..; no, indeed (1 say primly), to let myself become involved
with the affairs&pigeons, ofm e s , of workmen balancing on
rotten planks to paint a nisty ship. 1have cbosen as
involvement, the scenery, the naturai scenerv of my country. (s
-.--
737)

LMalfï-ed'srecounting of the scene is quietty ironic. She says "no, indeed" pnmlv, as if she wodd

another way! And her starement of "involvement"resonates with the "New View," which she

already abandoned while on Karemoana.

Here on the wharf Maifred eauaminesher most recent pasl which Frame

contextualizes with literai manifestations of oppositions, spiittings, doublings, insides and outs.

The hobo, another rnythic player, is an "RSA":

the old solder r e m e d home from the wars...the man who couid
charm princesses from slcep, who could dance a11 night in an
undergound Wace ...share his 1 s t slice of bread and butter with
the sick fox who codd not (he thought wrongly) hope to reward
hm; ...1shut my eyes, bloning the dream fiom the dream;... and
then, suddenly,... he thnists his head forward, jetting his butt,
globed with spi&to the ground at my feet (g224)

When the man, whom Malfred calls Wilfied (s227), picks up the butt, she
suppresses ''a desùe to vomit" (s223) She thinks of her "training in public hygiene"and is
shocked by his transgression. The &ce cas-off bu% wet with his spit, is a non-verbal objection

to her repressiveness. She reacts against it internally, in terrns that bespeak her transformation:

"My former self as a schoolteacher rises in me in full view of the world where it wilf be rescued

- ...or will drift unnoticed downmeam to the sea to be submerged forever." (s

2240 Everyone

leaves; there is no rescue. Unaccountably, Malfkd continues waiting for the wornan's r e m .
She wonders, "Am 1the woman from Mamtangi, imprisoned in my dothes'?" ff this is sa- chat

woman, her "formerself,"ceves to infiuence Malfred's way of being3"

1 am tired F o r g e b g my condemnation of W i k d and his habits.

my disappointment that old soldiers home f?om the wars are not as
1 dreamed them to be. my disappointment with myself for knowing
that &eams are illusions. and hoping the? are not so, I lie down on
the slatred wood seat, on the damp and the sea _milkiroppings [sic]
(Chinese White mixed with Ivory Black), staining my srnart brown
cosrwne, yet not caring anynore ... (22270

in the dream, MaIfied faIfs as1eep on the wharf bench When she wakes.' she is
'

in her cottage and the hocking persists: there is "someonewanting to get in at al1 costs." (SS

228) Having decided to retum to the security of her dream-roorn, ~Malfredfin& the door locked

She clairns her "rnind has its instruments as burglars have their jemmies" but the lock ivill not

yield even to the insemon of "atfiin inflammable wedge of blackmail (if no one dreamed you,

you wodd die...)" (s230).

Malfked tries manipdating her dream, as if its existence is separate From her own.

"putîing(it) where sense and awareness decided it should be - years backward in t h e..." (SS

23 1) This ' common sense,'authontarian approach leads to her fust poem, "a special c h m "

utîered "inthe vernacular of ikfatuatangi, of the fishermen who used to watch me":

Waitaki, Waitaki J Corne down dkiy,! Flood my room;' Sweep it to

the river's mouth,/ Grînd its wails on the stoned Change the golden
brown squares to pebblesJ Waitaki, WaitakiJ River that I loved
and painredJ River that 1 walked besidej Where I sat wider the
willowsf Shified the white Stones with my feet,/ Corne down d i l ,
corne down dirtyJ Drown the room that will not let me in.!
Nature's Iaws notwithstanding, "(e)ven as she repeated her charm she knew it would not heipn.

Though the colloquiaiisms and seriai ïmperatives empharicaily impiore, they do not persuade.

The lexis of the speaking voice is admittediy dien Mdfied morts in the second half to a

' personai appeal' to the river, focwing, h u g h a series of mediai modifiers, on her ' relationstüp'

with it. All ths, before her c d for the deah sentence: "Drown the room that will not let me in."

Wbat of the blackrnaii, "Ifno one dreamed you, you would die..."? Would Malfkd die dong

with her dream?

The dream-room doot does open, without tlooding or drama. only "a groaninp

sound (SS 233). Malfkd moves '3acicward in rimenas the room becomes the broom closet of

her family home. Perfect coal shovei shadows that she has drawn, known and imagined

"cornfort" her. Out of this nostalgie milieu appear the apocdyptic images of nuclear winter

common among Frame's books:

...the worid would be muffled, wouod in a fate deadIier than if it

suffered a snowfàil; ... dl the tourist excursions into nonsense cut
off, the route of their return nopped; the sLy in the strange land lit
with coals fiom a fire shovel fed with a human kart, and the night
in the strange land its perfect biack shadow. (g 333).

MaIfkd views the thrat of dobal annihilation in personal terms, as intimations

of her death intemie. She feeis "asudden pain over her hem" and reaching for the coal shovsl.

fin& it is a ,grden shovel, "andthere was the dirty old man ... filling in the grave, fliling and

spitting... his outaf-date newspaper poking out of his pocket." (SS 334)

The knocking resumes, bringing Malfred out of the dream with its room, door and

shadows. From this point, Frame explicitly depicts only the bach's door. iMa1fied longs for the

coming of o q and mes another charm: "Sun,begin the goId rush, too sood The world becomes
a ghost t o m buried in povertyf The drained sky is ci& The cloud-signs han& inviting but no
light cornes in" (s
238) This poem ends in self-prophesying failure.

The knocking increases and Malfied wonders why she cannot be "lefiin peace to

1ive.h communion with mounrains and rives..." She meIodramaticaIly pleads with the

"prowier":

Why cannot 1be left to make my View of them....look at deah see

fée1 in s e i n g iç...wonder why, paint why; paint r e d
it in the land...
red. why? The glacier slides down the valley my hem is too
aumb under its weight

Malfied afso addresses an absent audience, "some who"(SS 239f) may d e c q her

passionate relation with place a s "promiscuous".in ironic accord with their view, she quotes a

line fiom Charles Brasch's "TheSilent Land": "tolie with the gaunt hills like a lover" (z239).
The poem envisages a human need to create human order, or its appearance at least, especially

tiirough the act of narning However, ir also posits an enduring connection communicared fiom

land to person which supercedes transitory human impulses. The connection is physical and

metaphpical, visible and invisi'ble: "He wiil walk witb bis shadow across the bleaching plain!

No longer solitary, and hear the sea talkingf Dark in the rocks,O the angel will vis&' Signing

life's air rvith indefinable markq3*Parailels in theme and image- exist betweeo Wenr Land"

and State but Malfred assens differences by dropping from her quotation the subject, "!dan",and

substituting the modai of obligation or necessity, "must", with the infinitive marker, "ton.She

thus tailors Brasch's phitosophical mandate of organic connectedness to express her own hopes

for fernale perspective and fear of attaining this eternd existentid condition.
 ImmediateIy diere foilows a quotation from Camus' "La femme adultére":'6

-Devant eIIe les étoiles tombaient une a une. puis siéteig;naient uarmi les piemes du désen. et ji

c h u e fois Janine s'ouvrait un peu dus a la nuit.. Ie ciel entier s'étendait au-dessus d'elle,

renversée sur Ia terre fioide ..." tSS 239). By proximity, this passage expatiates tix line From

Brasck links the New Zaland tradition of thought withm which he works with a conceptual

sibling f?om ekewhere and zeros in on Camus' female protagonin, Janine. Frame accomplishes

this unraveiling of i n t e n e m l iinks throush Maifieci's consciousness in the final pages of Srçt

The demanding tone of the charm poems, the vision of Malfied as isolated and

defenceless, and the negative cornparison by "some who" of her with Janine, al1 contrast

Malfred's confident positioning of her o w n words dongside those of Bnsch and Camus. The

quotations' highly visuai images become emblems of Maified's paradoxicalIy idiomaric yet not

uncornmon sense of location by implying aspects of her physical and spiritual k i n g within

ambiguous, scriotible conte.^.^'

"The Adulterous Woman" reveals intertextual and symbolic possibi hies of wtzich

Malfnrd is aware. The sentence preceding her quotation and the others shc omits kom the

passage cited are very much sexuai:

(Janine)tournait avec (les itoilesj et le même cheminement immobile la

réunissait peu a Peu à son êîre le PIUS profond, oii le froid et le
désir maintenant se combattaient. ... Ames tant d'années oiZ fuvant
devant la peur. elle avait couru follement, sans but. elle s'&tait
enfin. En même temps, il lui semblait retrouver ses racines. la
sève montait a nouveau dans sa coms.... Les dernières étoiles des
constellations laissèrent tomber leurs grappes un pius bas sur
l'horizon du desert. et s'immobilisèrent Alors. avec une douceur
insupportable. l'eau de la nuit commença d'ern~lirJanine,
submer-geele froid, monta mu a peu du centre obscur de son être
 et déborda en flots ininterrornous i w u r asa bouche f lei ne de
gcjrnissements.js

The above quite literally represents "the consummation of a sense of relation" with location.

The portion of text MalEed does cite is circumscrïpt but the meaning remains clear. She

suggests by ailusion, then, the eroticism of her ernerging self-awarenrsss. Allusion allows for the

unconfinedperç~ectivesof both the physicai and spirinial processes of her "quen" whiIe also

poinnng to the diversity of the aspects. the phases and îàces.' of these processes.
'

The subtlety of the t e w l reworkrngs connotes Malfieci's ironic distance fiom the

censorious "some who." This distance resonates in ber use of passive predicanons and verb

phrases: "1, Malfred Signai, may be regard&.."; "1ask ody that I be given the peace to live as I

have decided... without being besieged by those who have been close to me ..." The Iast verb

phrase typifies Malned's feeling no active closeness for %ose who." She speaks politeIy

because, having been influenced ail her life by others, her request "that (she) be Jiven the peace"

refleas a choice whose basis is habitua1 passiuity.

Thinking of the coustant 'deceptions' of others, however, MaIfred reasserts &

"preliminarydream, her seeing, her choosing, her setting it d o m " (SS 166):

.-.1 want in this, ç t i I I rny preliminary dream, to explore beyond the

object, beyond its shadow, to the ring of fire, the corona as its
circumference...to find wherher the fire is rnoving, leaping alive, or
whether it is petrified, a burial of past fire, stone flames whose
flight and dance are illusory in that they remain fixed forever, as
stone is rooted to its place of being. (SS 239)

"1 ask" becomes "1 want", which is repeated three times, anaphorically, in thrs long, hi@dy

complex sentence. Passive verb forms disappear as Malfied concentrates on understanding

=tes of being A preponderance of copulas and subjective complements reflects this focus.

while the hyporactic, seriated arrangement of the syntactic elements, itself kaleidoscopic,

expresses M f i e d ' s variegated perspective. The correlative conjünction "whetfier...or whether"

!structuresthe final adverbial clause in pardei form and sets up an antithesis of life ("leaping

alive")ruid death i "a burial"). Typical of F m e . the asymmeny of the subjective complements

sirnultaneously emphasizes the last idea through increased periphrasis even while it asserts the

opposite by means of an ironic climax wth the finai word: "being". tiltimately, this iopsided

arrangement Mies the entire antitheticai (binary)proposition in favow of an integated

perspective, ernbodied by the cyclical f i m g of the iexis.

Fire symbotically engenders both life and death here. The fire and mane allegory

relates to the formation of the New Zealand landscape and to the formation of a person's physicd

sense of location gains further

context and metaphysical,linguiSacco-texts. ~W£ied's

dimensions through a vision of worl&-within-world~,~~

which Frame intercomem with Starets

redis and symbolic t e m l saara:

...( sîones) couid, if they wanted to, tell tail tales of rnoss,
desperation in burning, murder, as plate and date of marvel, as
stone, they can be overturned where centuries and men are served,
swalIowed, written and i m e d : and s b e d on the dark water,
stone may be the shadow of a cathedral. iB24 1)

Outside this window there are marïgolds growing...and the thin

gold g m s , its gold so pale that one thinks the - a s may be the
shadow of heavedy grass. (SS 242f)

The irnagey and tone of phdosophical detachment here seern to inlcate ease or

chosen resignation, a contrast to the fear and lack of f k e will marking Mal fied's earlier

apprehension of metaphysical dimensions." If Malfred reaches a sense of detachment and

baiance - between symbolism and realism, the old view and the new - it is because the nanator

impiies Malfied bdieves herself " d e " , thiuhng "(c)ommonplacethoughts without anguish,

simple wishes that do not bnng within their boundary the pst, the tùture-deatk relations of

p p l e one with the ottier, love afFain with men and land bondage with rivers." 243)

Forgemng to fear and relapsing into a perspective of excI_usive"simpliciry,"Malfred loses rouch

with her prehminap dream and her sexch for o r p i c connectedness.

The namtor upsers the apparent balance by hntrng at the imminent reconnection

of Malfred wirh the dynamism and violence of her dream: "...always,death, the past. tfie tùture.

are on guard ready to ttinrst meaning into the smailest gap in the simpticity." TEus said, a

window suddenly smashes; M a l M stands "temfied...A sense of collapse seemed to overcome

the house, as if its walls were made of paper." (s244) On the metafictional Ievel, Frame
gestures the novel's end but the story continues, foIlowing the "paper"and word trail through the

"sense of collapse"and the coliapse of 'ratiorial' sense in the stone poem.

Spreading out rtie newspaper, Malfred sees "(s)crawted across the pnnr, in red

crayon, ...the words Heip Kei~."(SS 244) That phrase appean greviously at least five other

times ( 142; 178; 179; 182ff; 18S), Conmting images of dark and light. a sense of

overwhelming fear, the repression of s m - v a i instincts and speech, and the perception of an

unreachable audience surround each instance. AI connect with Maltied's fGlure to

comrnunicate because, other than in dreams and thought, she has no y

J to speak and reveal --the
i
l

need for someone to eavesdrop the cry" ( 179).

In the 1st instance, Malfied wonders: "Ohwhy did 1 nat cry Help Keip Save me
'

-
save me' when I was born fifty-three y e m ago or perhaps 1 did..and no one heard because no

one knew my language; they thought my cry was the cry of life!" (s185). (which again
implies narrative revenions and nansformationsj Malfied did cry for help at birth her sense of

that cry echoes "Jabberwociq" and foreshadows its influence on the gone poem j u s as

Maified's auditors do not "know" her language, Aiice, as audience, does not "how" the

"Ianguagenof "Jabberwocky"(see endnote $8). Frame specifidly links the word "know" with

die p h c "Help Heip," which to this point Malfkd alone speaks."

Emphasis on the howkie anci unknowable shifts with Frame's choice of the

word "leamed"when iMaIfred cornes to r a d the stone poem. The poem. "the news". 1s "notin

any Ianpuage ( Malfred) had learned" Malfied intuitively knows the meaning of message "Help,

HeIp" - it is, titerally, her private cry. By sumrnarily dismissing what her audience [might have]

believed it heard, i W k d i%ls to l e m the element of exchange ernbedded in the utterance.

"Help Help" implies community - someone speakmg to one or more listeners who may act to

save the speaker. Th~sis the acronymic "S.O.S."signal of the novel's title. As a stntcml

pattern that is embedded with symbolic content, the recursion of t h phrase illustrates the notion

that "Iearning"c m imply community in ways that "howing" does not necessarily.

Frarne's differentiation of the seeming synonyms, to howito Iearn, is rooted as

much in the words' traceable interte.- as in their finer semantic distinctions. She underscores.

again, the syatagmatic (overt) and paradigrnatic (covert) t e . d axes ernbedded even in single

words, and it echoes State's aestfietic of connectedness which merges, rather than submerges. its

member parts. Alice touches Coniods "Aninides", which incorporates Shakespeare, al1 of

which corne together visibty in Frame's tes. Detennining authorship, thoupifi, is not the point.

identification is a convenient tag but Frame foregrounds the sensinq of Ianguage as most apt for

comprehending relation and, hence, location.

 "(T)he news," is the 'thrust of rneaning' for which MalFred has k e n waiting It
qstallizes the unieaming process by whicb she paradoxicaity leam to know without the

influence of desired simplicity and security: "She wanted it to be a river none but she knew it

was not" (SS 245) ~MaIfiedcan likewise r e c o e e fami1ia.rfeatures in the poem. even if she
cannot precisely idenrie thsm. The poem is italicized, a s a foreign langqe would be. its

poetic lines signi* that it is verse. Line lengths and the metre are ineçular, and there is no

stantaic break in the total 3 I Iines. Tosether, the puncwtion and a y t a x suggest the rhythm of

Engiish, which is cfearly the source of lexemes (''is", '-done",%urne". "evtT', 'cblame",'-crrme",

"ftiming"), fiuiction words ("in", "o', "the", "O", "who", "c~nd',"wrrh". "of, "to"),morphemes

(rC-ing","-ner", " - h g w ,"-ei', "-ly", .'-s", -thv', "uc-", 'per-") and the morphology of non-

standard EngIish compounds (% --krll-crrmr "~

"rlrnbertime", "cloudprime*'. "cur~e-clispluce".

and portmameau words "punfomt" Ipunylunifom),"whone" [who/done], *perdemro-"

Iperditiodperemptory], "zllthn[itVfitth]). (SS 244-5)

Frame foregrounds a large array of formal linguistic and genenc marken

recognizable to Engish speakers and literati. The markers can create sense because, by

convention, a particular rneaning (or, meanings) is attributed to them and, through usage.

undemood. On this basis of shared understanding, just as Frame modifies quotations and

arranges their CO-temto ignite intertextual play, so too does she modulate conventions evident

in the none poem. Overlapped boudaries becorne creative rools which point to the "untoward

abundance of possible rneanings".

But what & this multifarious news? Maifred's reading of "last century's or

tomorrow's news in verse" (SS 235) and her holding the Stone "fast in her hand..with promise of
 sun" (SS 246) represent the culmination of her "quest". This ending carries the familiar

apocalyptic weight of man-made desoiation, nuciear destruction and death Below i quote a

fiagrnent of the poem (italicr)and gloss (roman) its compound words, differentiated by Y", and

euphemisrns "[Br:

' End" tind? fiadle with [bom b ] fuming\timing cooI!deatti/

chilMi\[ice] cur\um\curdleperdempfory narnel
scourge\urge\courage-displace
[murderll
tiIl\wedth [bombll
ill\dilth, evil [bom bjfimingfindieJ...

Fme's compression is remarkable. Throughou&infiections are few in kind and

function words minimal. With fiindon words suppressed, the relationships among the lexemes,

or, 'content' words become associational, based on implictly comected ideas. Underscorhg

these linkages are diverse schemes of repetition at phoneme and word Ievels, and within and

among Iines, g g : ailiteration ("c" 1.3); initial- ("filrh"-"illrh")and end-rhyrne ("name"-'Sflarne");

anadipiosis ('Fndle","forch","jîming");and parailelisrn of phrases ("torc/zJirning coolrh "

"[orchfimtngfindZe").However obscure the immediate content of the nonsense words may be,

al1 these linkages give the syntax some direction and coherence. In addition, the synax

throughout is right-branching, i.e..it fo1Iows the 'nomal' order of Subject, Predicate, Object,

Complement, AdverbiaI, as in: "rhe barim in pem is striflerswrmrneriy trone " (7.4). Despite thk

linear syntau, the poem still forces on its readers the concept and act of sensinq the lexïcon by
saturating lexema wirh poiysemy and polyphonY." The result is a brief wn that is multi-

faceted multi-layered.

The poem aiso e-xpressesdimensions of the Bibficai apocalypse.'3 Consider

"Help Help" as a label and the poem reads as a prayer in answer to the piea. When this aspect is

regarde& the opening kxis and image- evoke Chnstianity:

"Solrrrn"('soui'\'trine') is an invocation of the Trinity, which "camew"qualifies with an

to 'you', & Chrisr of the Trinip.

allusion to 'carmineva@hoci]that belongs [-'-minew*]

Christ put on the ' puny unif o m ' of humanity and died, the ' de-king ' of "desse ". ' Lingering',

the Holy Spirit flies, too, and the Word, ['bribe". '~ride'!'rhyne'."] which is both i d d and reai,

always has an alter eszs or doubie-edge. Line three suggests communion and the second-coming.

a series of figures k t commoupiace qualities associated with

Beginning with the deteminer "-a",

Chnst : ' a fadhone'; ' a fair and wise i~lurniner'~; staff!' turf'.
' stary\'

The 1 s t word in this seties. -'wolpe", suggests ' woe-" help" 'hop'. Despite

conternptuous overtones, the word ' whelp' is not an incongruou coiIocation either, given the

apostrophic "volpone" (fox) of 1.5. The allusion to .ESOU'S

Fables and, arguably, to Ben

Jonson'ssocial and moral satire, the verse pIay VoIpone ( l6O6), bespeaks the complex scope of

-
State's ending. The Biblical apocalypse is not presented as entirely a positive event. Line five is

an ironic irnperatiue, seemingty apposing --volpane" with "ppherne". "[A]cc/rme" calls for the
fox's adaptanon, whiie the terminai qualifier assem the fossitization of the Word Overlaying

and belying any assurance in judgment jusice and redemption is the horror of indiscriminate

nuciear annihilation: "fUming of perbun f n g rones, deash. done to fleuth'.

The stone poem resonates with the Old Engiish eiegy's lcxis of lament. irrernedial

loss and loydty to the death:

'Che compound words resemble OE kennings, a device of poetic periphrasis emphasin'ng

emotions and quaiities. h d .*hirrdIing" is a nonce worci, using the OE suffIx "-ling" to make a

substantive of "hind, also an OE derivative, to mean ' Iast remaining one'.

The stone poem also plays with the notions and Iexemes of the murder mystery:

who and done whone. whone";"kiU-crime":"rorchgieamcrime";"biame".The am biguous and

indeterminate meanings seem to lead away fiom our learning whodunnit. The poem conciudes:

rones, deash. done to fïeath.

in blame, voipone, volpone,.
O in urnberrtme
cloudpr ime
whu und thne
whone. whone-

~eath"has happened in the past (cL~m&errime")

and will in the hmire ("cioudprime-', portenrous

mushroorn cloud). BIarne is gven and borne by both killers and victims, one to another.

Volpone, traditional trickster, is of the naîural world, yet exists beyond the bounds of
 cornmunity. This figure is sirnuItaneously accuseci, judge and redeemer manqué, or, al-

tricksrer. this figure remains absent. invisible under cover. "(W)ho and done" çplice together

symblizing the poem's envisioned biend of identity, action and beinq acted upon

The stone poem hones one but in its tremendous intricacy, it defies essentidism.

The same is m e of State. Its modei of source and inî'fuence locates the character identified as

~Malfied.The relationai aspect of location is clear in the microcosm of the portmanteau word

and, hence, it is demonsnated by the tes's expanded interte,mal and conceptuai references.

The word "state' rernains the touchstone. It is a condition of existence; it is the place of the
body politicr it is to declare in words, M y , without question These States are the ' places' of

relation: where being exists and is influenced, and where king itself exerts influence upon

existentid, political and linguistic contingencies.

Malfkd's quest and her artempted isolation From the presence of others Ieads her

to the inescapabiIity of ianguage and voices. The peeling away of her "conflagration of clichés"

tums back on itself - like a Moebius mip. Language and voices are her birthright and ber

heritage. Her relation to location receives meaning and makes sense because communications of

a11 sorts are omnipresent to the human eye and ear, but panicuiar si-- at particular times stand

for the consunmation ofone's relation to the known and unknown, learned and udeamed

world. This parricularity reveals Malfied's "pebble-core of being" and encourages perspectives

that would examine and coinprehend its pastiche of sources and influences.

Frarne's use of intertextuali~throughout her works creates visible patterns of

how she sees te- generating meaning out o

f and among themsetves, hence the stone poem's

nearly impenetrable variegation. In addition,

these patterns, as empirical and imaginative reflections within a single work, point to how

language acts upon its users and how users impact Ianguge witt.1 expressions drawn fiom the

sociolecds) and their own idiolects.

Malkd's quest begins as a retreat to "the prison two inches behind the ep'.

From this place, she begins to undemand that the -prison or'shape" is a cuitural concept she

uncritically accepted The quotations and allusions in State chart the progress of Malfied's

transfonning perspectrve - fiom that ofrigrd shauer to painter wno eulogsicaily mixes lanoiin, a

symbol of her mother's -1ucW death, with tempera when she paints the surreal marine "My

Las Days at Matuatangï' at Karemoana. As weil, they comment on forces which language

exerts in the world outside the teda allusions access shared t e ~ t o r ywithin the mind and on the

bookshelf, with al1 that tbat entails as culhuai shorthanci. ~Mdfredre-views the conventions and

conventionality that shaped her life into a prison and, in doing su, exemplifies the deep structure

of metamorphosis that underlies cornmunicanon, one's comection with place and al1 life in ail

places. Recognition and inclusion are the principtes informing State; they are borne out by the

narrative and al1 its anciIIary elements. In this te- Frame's use of verse and prose quotations

amplifies rich allegories of water and geolopy as originators, shapers and holden of existentid

anifacts. The embedded te.= are Iike dnlI core samples. They reveal particular and general

facts of place and history, and much about the habits of thought and expression of the one who

chose to consider the make up and import ofjust that spot.

NOTES

lan Wedde. The Penguin Book of New Zeaiand Verse (Aucklamt Penguh. 1985) 23: 76.
'Janet Frarne, The Pocket Mirror (London: W - HAilen, 1967) 1 15.
"Beingintluenced is hardly a condirion specific to provincialism. b u retiüing IO acknowiedge
it rnay be." C. K Stead, "At Horne Widi the Poets." hswering ro the tanmage: Essavs on
Modern Wnters f Auckland: Auckland U.P.. 1989) 141. Stead's generaiIy negative ~ v i e w of the
Pencniin AnthoIow of 'lcw Zedand Verse poses severai x ~ m e n t sirnilar
s to the above by
statins the obvious as innuendo. I retùre it here to support my use ofT.Yr'dde-s introduction
against rdated criucism. The P e n e n h t h o k y is geographicdly and regonally specific:
nevertheless. this impIies neither de facto provincidisnt nor the willed ignorance that Stead
reads into the anthology's introduction and its assembly.
Rogx Worrocks. "Reading of A Stîte of Seice te 1967) and A Stare o i Siece i 1978\.' 3
(1984): 131.
'C.f.1 Heather Roberts, Where Did She Corne From? New Z d a n d Women Novelins 1862-
-
1987( ~ e l l h g t o a :Allen & Unwin, 1989).
Opposed to Horrocks's view, Rob a t s argues for recognitionof "a strong female tradition"
(3) which the dominant "male" literary nadition in NZ "hats)suppressed and ignored (7). She
sees Frame, in such Company as SyIvia Ashton~Wamerand Robin Hyde, as seeiung "alternatives
to the pattern" (4).
The tradition of women writers is undoubtedIy strong in NZ, however Roberts envisions
it very narrowly, "placing the novels discussed..into one pattern" (7) to sstablish "'the continuip
of the female tradition from decade to decade."' This patteni, wfiiIe oudining significant
achievements among the women writers, ultimately serves neither them, as individuals, nor their
te% since the critical template leaves out much
Roberts describes a wholly negative relationship between wriMg by men and women
which she bases on the dificuity ofwomen's efforts "being recognised...in a worid...where male
life is believed to be the pattern of Iife for ail" (3). This generd miIieu le& her to regard texts
and their traditions as sepanble separatc along the iules of authorial gender. To structure a
femaie ndition this way suppresses the Ml contes (see Wedde 42f) in which it happens. The
Eiaws of Roberts's approach are perhaps mon obvious in the smdy of F m e , whose "original"
inflections borh conhibute to and resonate with substantially more of NZ's litemy tradition and
iconography than Roberts, in her quest for absolute dterity, dIows here.
6
Typicaily, Frame's symbolism includes the mundane and banal along with the spiritua1 and
cerebral, and irony, whether gentle or harçh, often fills out her symbolic representations. For
MaIfred, whIe journeying, asks: "Where were the people to look on the scene and lcnow its
meaning? To look north, south, east and west? ....some couid not help saying aloud, as if it were
the most articulate national prayer that would put the situation right with Kim or Those who
were in a position to take care of such ttiings, "It's a great country ail right. a great country." (SS
22)
-
' "Romanticism,....stressed the creative power of the mind and allowed nature to be seen as a
responsive mirror to the soul." Chns Baldick, The Concise Oxford Dictionam of Literarv Ternis
(Odord: 0;uford U.P.,1990) 193f.
-
Cf: In Through the Loo~ne-Glass,while reading"labberwocky," Alice thinks: "...it's ail in
some language 1 don't know,.." Lewis Carroll, The Annotated Alice 190.
9
Ailen Curnow, "Attitudes for a New Zealand Poet (iii),"The Peneuin Book of New Zealand
Verse, intro. and ed. Allen Curnow ( Auckland: Blackwood and Janet Paui, 1960) 305. Curnow
ironically encodes his own "failureto adapt on islands" (1. 5). to Ieam ''the trick"by
foregrounding mimicry: the poem is a Sbakespearean sonnet
'O --If.
as Simon Petch argues. (Frame) occupies a place of ' memory and imqnation...a hoard of
secret identity ihrough which she transcends her social being', she signds in A State of Serge rhar
such a place cm exist only as an 3ct of faith in which the \Miter and reader collude." Rurh
Brown, "A State of Seiee: The Sociable Fme,- JNZL 1 1 ( 1993): 5 8.
" Roger Horrocks describes Miss Corleti's books as Malfkd's "mainbooks." He mars them
superfÏcially, like ~Malfred's"oldacademic style"of art, describing them as nothing more than a
genteel "cany-overBorn Victonan England" (132).
l2 Frame fiequently depicts the Waitaki with oral metaphon: ex., SS 9; 11; and "Andnow the
flat silver tongue of the Waitaki would be lying lapped by the incoming tide, She codd tase the
snow in the water." (s 29) The word "lying"has a punning quality which retlects the colIoqWal
sense of "silvertongue." N.B., also that the river is, at least in part, susceptible to analysis and
translation by Maified's tongue. Malfied's perception of the rivers of the South Island is that
they have lesser powers than the sea, which she regards as property of the North Island
l 3 This quotation is slightly enoneous.a the original, which 1quote partjdly to
indicate something of the contem:

Shall \ye judge what for man is not m e bliss

or is?l
is it so small a ihing
To have enjoy'd the sua
To have Lived light in the spring,
******
That we must feign a bliss
******
And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose?
(425-6; I,ii.397-406)

Matthew Arnold, "Empedocieson Etna," The Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold, eds. C.B.
Tinker and H.F. L o v (London: O.dord U.P.,1963j 40643.
IJ
The 1867 editioa of Arnold's Poems carries a note describing the 1852 edition: "...(I cannot
say republisb, for it was withdrawn from circulation before f i
e copies were sold)..." (Tinker
503).
15
LioneI Trilling, "MatthewA n z o t ~ "Maior British Writers, gen. ed. G.B. Harrison (New York:
Harcourt, Brace & World) 589.
 Cf.: y State of Sieee ouohadows Frame's ooter books for the untlinching singiarity of
purpose with which it anempts io rnap the darhess besieging human !ifel just beyond the ken of
ordmuy m g conscioumess. While allowing for this, and withour Iosing sight of Frame's
disposition to despair, I ivodd Iike to suggest that those redings wbich emphasize the dark side
of the novel,[endnote] to the exfiusion of more positive aspects, may originate in a failure to
ernparhize with the autho?s proposed ' imagnary recognitions."' Marc Delrez --TheEye of the
Storm: Vision and Sumival in A State of Sieee," The Rine of Fire: Essavs on Janet Frzime, ed.
Jeanne Defbaere Sydney: Dangaroo. 1992) 127.
17
.Munique .Maiterre, " M y h and Esoterics: X Tentanve Interpremrion of A Sute of Sierre:"
Bird Haivk, Bogie 123.
!R
C e m n aspecrs of Barren Brownings's persona and Iife &O ,Maifieci's. & her minic strints
and isolating fiuniliai devonon: "(Barrert Browning) {vas a iveII-.hotm. widdy r a d and
admired poet and reviewer, whose intellect, invdidism, and reciusiveness were woven into a
formidable mysuque." MalfreQ a spinster, teacher and admired local painter, is ' released' by the
death of her mother, whom she has nursed for years. Men EIizaberh Barrett met Robert
Browning, "(s)he was *-nine, still ernotionally drained fiom her brother's death... and
believed berself to be passively dying In E3row&ng she saw a vigorous youns man....williug and
almost perversely eager to burden hirnseif with (her)....The transformation of this vision of the
lovers and the overcoming of these fears are the preoccupations of the SonneB..."Dow,
Miroslava Weiri, A Variorun Ediûon of Elimbeth Barrett Brownings Sonnets From the
Portuguese (Troy,NY: Whitson, 1980) xi.
l9 Allen Cumow, "A Smail Room with.L.arge Windows," The Penmiin Book of New Zealand
Verse, inuo. and e d Al Ien Cumow (Auckland- Penguin, 1960) 11 1- 13.
' C.K Stead, "Allen Cumow's Poetry: Notes Towards a Criticism," Essavs on New Zealnnd
Literarure,
,*
ed Wystan C m o w (Auckland: Heinemann, 1973) 66.
-' Gilles Deleuze. "The Schizophrenic and Language: Surface and Depth in Lewis Carroll and
Antoinin Artaud" Textuai Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Stnicnualist Cnticisrn, ed. and inrro.
Josué V. Harari (Ithaca: Comell U.P., 1979) 277-95.
- g:
-7
Patrick Evans believes that Maifnd "hasalways been caught in ' a preliminary &am ...'"
(Evans146) He equates the pretiminary dream with the old view. The quotation - below, main
-
body recognizes moveable, compositional facets existing witfiin a given object, which
contrasts the concrete uniformity advocated by the old view. Marc Delrez inrerprets the
preliminary dream as the initial s u e roward the redintiotion ofthe new view: "fhe New View
only proves subversive of 'the outiines of objects, the prison of shape' insofar as it rernains
withui the order of the ' prelirninary dream'..."(Delrez 133). C.f.distinctions between these h w
perspectives discussed below.
" ironicaily, Maifred keeps pickuig up old copies of Readefs Digest to read duo ughout ths
section.
" "Malfied does acnially bring herself to paint oust once) in the novel." (Delrez 13 1) Delrez is
but one critic who notes Malfred's departure fiom her previous "traditional reahtïc manner" of
painting toward "the New View (which) remains inuch of an abstract conception.'' Horrocks's
discussion of Malfieci's painting includes references to New Zeaiand paintek and specific works
that are contemporaneous with the internai and publication time-fiames of Statg He links the
 lirerary scene at that t h e exclusively with Frame, however, thus avoiding discussion of
MaIfred's, or the fator' or's, fictive connections with paralle1 literary practices and theones.
'IDelrez @.B. 118-9) touches on the geological and anheologicai metaphors in State in relation
to theme. Frame's images aiso Iink Maifkd's "emotional geology" (s 121) with the s t o -
making process itself, *ch tmearths certain 'artifàcts' of Maifkd's [Se. The t e x as a whole.
relares person and place in a way that is not definitive, i.e.,Malfred's f'joumey" impiies t'unher
possibilities, other reading, in terms of what she excavates of her past or may be part of in the
future.
" Nick Perry provides a good andysis of this process in "Flying by Nets: The Social Pattern of
New Zealand Fiction," Islands 3.2 ( 198'7): 16 1-77. See also, Robert Chapman, "Fiction and the
Social Pattern," LandfalI 7 ( 1953); rpt. in CVynstan Curnow,ed, Essavs on New Zeaiand
Literanire (Auckland: Heinemann. 1973) 7 1-98.
" Frarne misquotes die title and the n a n a fragment, which should read: "Such is the fate of
arcless maid' Sweet flow'ret of the niral shade!! By love's simplicity beuay'd" (11.3 1-33).
'' This is not to sa? that Frame dismisses or entirely avoids archeorpal parteming. ïheir
idrequent use ironicaiiy underpins Malfred's exneme conventionality. When M&ed considers
how she came to look after her mother, she thinks: "Buthere, there and everywhere, the
unmanied eldest daughter cares for the aghg parents. My role in this modern myth was mot
even decided by words. * (SS 2 14)
'' John Kem, "Oathe Grasshopper and the Crickeq"11.9- 1 1;"When I have Fears,"1.1. ( Framr
misquotes this Iast line, using "might" rather than "may".)
30
In the last few -es Maified sates: "1murt give up the ueamess to ice, the sun stnking with
its warning chill. I mus live up north uahl1die...1am alone, in luminous rnetat weather, where
a touch of the finger dong the s@ bums like the touch on hot bIue steel." (SS 242) Monique
Malterre fin& the collocation of "burns" and "sky" to be surprishg (Maltene I24), but the
importance of the contrast between South, with its "chill" sunlight and North, with its more
intense, metal-heating sun, should be recognized as 'natural,' given Malfkd's journey. The sun is
the same in either place; one's relative proximity to it makes the ciifference.
" Frame uses chaptrr Vm of Looking-Glass, with its parody of Wordsworth's "Resolution and
Independence," e.xtensively in The Ada~tableMan.
32
Gardner 290. Alice hears the dnrrnming noise when she has just one more brook to jump
before becoming a queen, &.,she "leap(s) the Iast brook into womanhood" as she reaches QS
(m. 345, n. 1). Malfred is experiencing the penultimate stage of her joumey and her state of
siege: thé moments before she dies.
'' The tenn "depthsnin Deleuze draws its sense fFom Antonin Artaud's Oeuvres complètes:
"...surface p e m s...srnell of happy leisure moments and intellecîui triurnphs.... 'Jabbewocky' is
a poem that its author has taken special pains to keep outside the uterine being of suffering into
which al1 great poets have dipped, and from which, having delivered thernselves into the world,
they srnell bad." Deleuze 279.
34
The transformation of Malfieà's character, charted here, has not been noted before. Alex
Calder sees the opposition of Wilîred (body)and MalFred (imprisouing surface) as static.
representative of "a series of emphatic r e m fiom an alarming encounter with depth to the
securities of the surface." (102) He views her as essentially unchanged by her tncounters.
 " Charles Brasch, 'The Silent Land," The Penmiin Book of New Z d a n d Verse, inuo and cd.
Allen Cumow (Auckland: BIackwood and Janet Paui, 1960) 18 3 4 .
36
Albert Camus, "La femme adultère," L'Exil et le rovaume ( 1957), in Ewres comptetes
d'Alkrt Camus, vol. 4, norzces, Roger Grenier (Paris:Club de I'tionnête Homme. 1983).
37 n
...as long as people live and even when they die, they cunningly adopt the disguise of
characters in myth and legend.. not even denunciation... can uncover the deception." (SS 239)
58
Camus 127.
j9
Frame imbues this vision with tenets of the Christadeiphian faitfi. &,that there *.vil!be a post-
apocalyptic heaven on eanh and that the divine and the elect exist unperceived amid monals.
TIatonism, more readily r e c o g n d l e to most raders, dso rnerges here.
rg
&: 'She remembered Plato's shadows on the cave waI1s. She wondered what procession of
Go& marched, like srreet lighrs, through Time, leavine their irrelevant and unrezaded shadows
- groups of human besnp. suffering movementç and distotions they codd not control-
influenced by the procession of marching lights. Until now. Malfred had never really undersrood
the fear of the marching pylons, the Imdscape cnss-crossed with G d . "(SJ 79)
J1
The collocation of Malfied and cry affects interpretations of State's conclusion which
broaden the reference beyond M a l k d & "Themessage... ' help, help', is a daim for
recognition fiom whoever is outside..,. in the end those who threaten are accredited with
humanity: they too cry 'help, helpr." Brown 55. iMalfied may wefl be symboiic o f . humanity,'
the ferninine' or 'the artist,' however, the words of that cry only ever corne from her. It
specifically encapsulates her d e d desire to express ber being. The transfer of @ utterance
from Malfied to the human/femininctartistputatively replicated outside the door of the bach is
not borne out by the text Malfred's unspoken words are mocicîngly thrown back at her by (al
leas) one person who immediateiy leaves the scene SS 244). The point is not the prowler's
need for help but Malfied king confronted with ber words, her perspective, her "tocation."
Whatever Malfred shares with the universe and its parts, whether her physical being or an
abstract status, Framerscarefùi handing of the details shows that the worid represented in the
text subsumes neither Maified's literal nor her figurative individuaiity.
'* PrOnunciation of many words is ambiguous because, though the source words that are spliced
together share the same media1 vowel, it is often long in one and short in the other. i&
"findle": find'fiddle. Frame complicates the issue with contes in many cases. The word
following "firide", "wtth", bas a short Y', but 3 words away is the ailiterating yfimrng*',which is
clearly long. Both meming and the sensual quality of pronunciation are made detiberately
slithy.
4;
- Cf.: Noting that "Christianity in Janet Frame's novel only stands as one fieid of reference
among others"(l23) Monique Malterre cites the Book of Revelation fi22): ''1 wiil give h m a
white stone, with a new name wrirten on the stone which no one knows except hm who receives
it" R a . 2: 17; and "Behold, E stand at the door and knock" Rw. 3:ZO.
.&l
References to "red" objects in State vary: tropical flowen 60); a gothic illustration of
"The Hi&wayman" (1 84); "old scorch marks" (194); and the crayoned words "Help Help". In
the bac4 Maifred fin& a tube of "Carmine" tempera (59), a crirnson or blood-red shade.
References to crÏmson have significant overlap with allusions in the stone poem: "in summer
(the pohutukawa) would burst into flame and its flowers tvould die in a carpet of crimson ashes"
(62); -Maifred kit the color burning inside her as sne said, -It shouid ~e m m o n ! " ( 13 l 'l; "why
should we fly with &mon wings...den the earth itself is brown and d m is W...?" (316).
Crimson symbolizes funle human passion. As in Owls Do Cm,*bloodn and "red" are not
specificaliy collocared in Stare, however. rnetaphoric referents [orai emissions and place (208-
9 ) and inescapable death (234)j c o m m biood concepnially witb crimson Frame collocates the
same figures and imagep. separateiy, with both. Tiius, whereas uncoloured' blood in Owls Do
CN signifies the invisibiliry of pqchological damage. the redness of blood irnplicitIy sums up
~Mdfieci'sfigured vision of h m in State.
As
The morpherne -'-ime-' is the most prevaIent Ic'cicai recursion. It occurs as a part of
portmanteau formations and as the most common rhyne: "5rrmc.".. .xcirme":"

-drnbcrrrmr '-/Ar); pmime": "~.(oudprrtn~~

ai
" "1 ir/; ':"
"drune" /Lr}: ~nte-.
y

'-...inhis ri@ hand he held seven stars, from lus mou& issued a sRarp rwo-edged sword and
his face was like the sun sbinrng in full men@-- Rev.3: 16.
47
Kere. Frame nudiousiy avoids fhe term "muraer-', r e r l a n g deah more as a process involving
al1 of humanity than individuai acts by and upoa specific. identifiable persons.
"Everybody needs exempiars, people who are not necessarily mentors or teachers or guides but
who represent possibilities. It seerns to me that my exernplars are ncver quite immediatdy
obvious, but corne to mind obliquely, from the borders -"
Keri Hulme, "Out of Frame,"
The Inward Sun: Celebratina the Life and Work of ianet Frarne.'

Now, in closing, 1 frame my readings of Janet Frame's writine. This last 'board'

resists the usual closure of a conclusion, as 1re-visit the possibilities that her works connote and

invite their examination again. 1 have looked at patterns that shape the style of Frame's poetry

and studied these patterns 'in transIation,' so to speak, from verse to prose. 1have traced a

-
variety of sources and influences quoted throughout Frame's firçr six novels poems, nor the

lest. And, I have eqlicated in detaiI Frame's original verse, that which remains uncollected

-
and that in her novels, which rernains mostly winoticed in Hulme's terms, "ne\-er quite

immediately obvious".

They are tatking about 'dead wood' in novels, how you have to
somehow get someone fiom A to B and bat can't always be the
most interesting thing. Karl, from time to tirne, switches the
television on to check on the cricket test...Janet Frame says the
beauty of poetry is that it doesn't require 'dead wood'. Her
comments are punctuated by the thock of a wooden bat, the
-
wooden sound of the batl. Janet Frame is a 'poet' there is no
dead wood to be found anywhere, only curiously living woodm2

Frame's poetic sensibility has a cun'ously elusive relationship with its roots in

writing. She describes her mother as the locus of a family heritage of verbal expressiveness:
 She was able to hbtie every insect, btade of gras, flower, the
dangers and grandeurs of weather and the seasons, with a
mernorable importance along with a kind of uncertainty and
humiliîy that lead u s to pondcr and try to discover the kart of
everything. Mother, fond of poetry and reading, writing, and
reciting iî, communicated to us that same feeling about the world
of the written and spoken word. (Janet Frame: Autobiomohv
9)

This convergence of world and word is central to Frame's articulation of her expiences. She

learns that, howvever marked by contingencies, the sensation of a thing and one's awareness of it

can be shared through words. She absorbs, Eûrthennore, the understanding that the act of passing

words on to others also passes on the power of transformation to one who may then retell 'the

story.' The definite article, in this instance, is unsettled by the presence of anothrr stoqteller

and the existence of mukiple versions of one tale or utterance. Here, "humility" and

"uncertainty' charactenze Frame's sense of teIIing and re-telling. She knows that there is always

sameone eIse to give his or her version of 'the story'. But she must h o w also that no one speaks

as she does.

Frarne compares the onerous traditions of the "Old World" and what she

descn'oes as the lighter burdens of the "New":

My reason for returning waç literary. Europe was so much on the

map of the irnagination..while the Iayers of long dead and m e n t
dead are a fertile place for new shoots and buds, yet the prospect
of expIoring a new country witti not so many Iayers of mapmaken,
panicuIarIy the country where one first saw daylight and the sun
and the àark, was too tantalishg to resist Aiso, the fim layer of
imagination rnapped by the early inhabitants leaves those who
foliow an access to the bone. Living in New Zealand, wouid be for
me, Iike living in an age of mythrnakers; with a fieedom of
imagination among al1 the artists because it is possible to begin at
 the beçimiing and to know the unfomed places and to help f o m
them. to be a mapmaker for those who will follow nourished by
this generation's iayers of the dead (Janet Frame: .4n
Autobiomphy 424ff)

Here. Frame sees her place in a consrantiy unfolàing nadition but she cornes down on the side

she estimates to be fiontier-like. unfomed and, ttierefore. relatively open. But quickly and

ironically, ~ h pricks
e die pretense of this whole perspective. ndding: --Thefacr is that when I !vas

about to go home to New Ztaiand I did not nced reasons for r e m i n g ; but others neeueu to

know why, to have explanations." (42 5 )

Europe and New Zeaiand possess "this generation's layers of the dead", as ail

places do. Frarne knows that no writer escapes influence and, perhaps, may even become an

influence him- or herseif Like others of her generation, she has been nomished by dead and-
-
alive writers. And along with those orhers, she nourishes the writers of the ne.- generation.

Mark WiIliams conte.vtualizes Frame and some of her conternporaries in relation to tradition:

Tt is premanire to claim that a leap beyond the tradition of New

Zeaiand fiction exemplifieci by Sargeson has been achieved, when
writers as various as Frame, [Owen] Marshall, and Stead continue
to draw on Sargeson and when writers lrke [Anne] Kennedy
continue to draw on Frame. Here are to be found enriching
aîtentions to eariier writers that over a period of time make a
literature 'something different, something; Nobody counted
on'.[Ailen Curnow] It is by this concentration on form and
language, not by any sudden leapç to other kinds of experience or
modes of representation, that influence passes fiom one writer to
anotber. (Williams, Leaving the Hietiwav, 203.)
 Ftame's concentration on form in her novels questions both literary aucroritas

and socio-linguistic authority. No author, no genre, no institution seems beyond the scope of

Frarne's abiIity to tap and re-signiQ its 'trademarked' Ianguage for her own purposes. Even

thou& Frame's works are ailusively nch, the voice she has developed is both powerful and

recognizabIy her own. in Owls Do Cw Frarne combines elements of Dylan Thomas's poetry

with Blake's and Rilke's. She creates a verse narrative that blends these voices in order to evoke

and elctend the traditions of pastoral and Romantic poetry. The fom of the novel, however,

irnpinges on the poetic discourse, modulating it according to the exigencies of the characters,

plot and setting, and, of course, the demands of a lengthy prose narrative. Frame plays uith her

developing sense ofvoice and audience in her early poems by experimenting with elements of

grammrv and rhctoric. Her first novel confirms her ptace among the writers she emulates. She

takes the literary genres given to English writers by their Iiterary forebears - including the

-
Shakespeam sonne&the Penarchan ode, fiee verse, psychological realism and makes them

relevant She transforms such genres by making theirfonts gain sipificance in relation to

contemporary concerns.

The audience inscnbed in Frarne's texts is geographically displaced fiom the

centre of the traditions upon which she draws. In its inherent spatial and temporal dtfferc'nces, it

contrasts the apparently unintempted homogeneity of the audience inscribed in the source

matend. The intertextuaiity F m e employs reflects the condition of existential dislocation that

she haç leamed, and, through the intertexts, she reveals an aesthetic of fragmentation that

extends fiom realities of social organization to litemy conventions. Frame's use of quoted

materiat in Faces in the Water and Scented Gardens for the Blind, for instance, expresses the
view that, even with some implicit hop, despairs that language can redeern humanity from its

drive to be at war.

Wilson Ham's, discussing A State of Sieee, asks:

-
1s silence in its self-contradictory and amsting portraya1 in the
-
novel wiîhin a 'room two inches behind the eyes' so measurable
and immeasurable that it offers far-reaching, potential dialogue
with casualties of tradition whose voices are etched in spce?'

On the evidence of Frame's work to date, the answer mus be yes. Silence, as Ham's notes,

"begins to acquire the impn'nt of Iife." (Harris 65) Frame's poetic discourse uses devices

whose core is silence: apostrophe, with its ubsenf addressee; the rtietorical question, with its

implicit answer. Acts of communication practically Stream out of Daphne, istina, Thora, Vera

and Malfied, though the messages are unheard by dl but Frame's readers. However isolatcd,

each chancter has a voice that breaks the boundaries of drference that Frarne shows langage

enforcing. Each character uses silence to create her own imprint of life, to transfonn silence into

speech, and to shifi the lines that presume to outhe difference and similarity.

ihe poetic passages associated with these characters in particular and in the

narratives of the noveIs in general show the diversity of Frame's sense of the role poetq-can play

in the self-reflexive pst-modem novel. The original poetry of Owls Do Crv- The Edee of the

Alphabet, The Adaotable Man, and A State of S i e s may be 'enclosed' by fictive prose, but it

does break open the narrative Iine of this literary form. Frame's verse strongly challenges the

ability of the genre to convey the complex of meanings not only of existence in the presenr, but
 of the d i t i o n s and possibilities of language. She views language as inseparable h m identity,

and both as evolving and crwtive - except when rigid definitions impose their oppressive weight

The allusions and quoted materid in aii of the novels reinforce Frame's vision of language and
literary traditions as necessarily fluid, in both f o m and content Her use of the cento in Scented

Gardens epitomizes this perspective, which is aiso evident in her use of orignal verse, a.v the

' stone poern' in State.

Frame's incorporation of pue- into her novels allows for the organization of

narratives in specific patterns. Owls Do Crv uses contrast between lyrical and fictive, wMe

Faces in the Water wes an assimilative technique that paradoxicaily foregrounds a silenced levet

of the narrative. The Edge of the Alphabet uses original poetry to strive towards a narrative that

defies Iinearity. The progress of this concept is fulfilied in different ways in both Scented

Gardens and The Ada~tableMan Ia its movement fkom quoted material to onginai verse, A

State of Siege may appear Iinear, an echo of Malfied's journey, but the conclusion of the

narrative is open-ended Like the many fragments that make up tbat novei, the prose and the

poetry are rehctive, leading us to ponder the possibilities of al1 its aspects - what does the
final poem, with its strange words,mean? - is M a k d dead, or does she somehow live? -
where do the embedded stories take us fiom here?

"1s the self-judgemental (sic),self-confessional fabric in such a

covemt with the go&, with Ga[, beginning to fade in the
mcmory of Mankind, or is it subtiy, complexly reniming within
immateriaV material foundations of home? ( H m s 65)

Through the intangible effects of words that are harnessed into shapes that

-
attempt to communicate sentences and lines, parapphs and stanzas, p e m s and novels Frame -
wouid have us examine the visible forces that testrain possible meanings and,thus. the

possibilities of our own comectedness with who we are and where. By using poetry in her

novels, she iIIurninates Iiterature and human history as a continuum of nanative fkgments thar

paradoxicaily define ;iad unleash individual and collective voices.

.... there is no dead wood to be found mywhere. m l y curiuusiv living ~ ~ c d .

NOTES

I
Keri Huirne, "Outof Frarne," The Inward Sun: Cdebratine the Life and Work of Janet Fnme,
sel. and ed. Elizabeth Ailey (Wellington: Daphne Brasell, 1994) 194.
' Gregory O'Brien, "Drinking Tea Because of You," The Inward Sun: Celebrauns the Life and
Work of Janet Frame, sel. and ed EIizabeth Alley (Wellington: Daphne Brasell, 1994) 87.
3
Wilson fiarris, "An Open Lener to Janet Frame,"The Inward Sun: Celebratine the Life and
Work of Janet Frame, sel. and ed. Elizabeth AIIey (WelIington: Daphne Brasel], 1994) 63.
 Works Cited

1. Works bv Janet Frame.

I;r PubfiskicdPams:
si.p=i~tefy

Frame. Janet. 'The Dead." Lundfdl 1 1 . ? 9 5 7 : !JQ.

-. "The Ferry." The New Ztdand Listener 1 3 July 1956: 21.

-. T h e Liftman." NU 13 A g 1954: 72.

-. "On Paymg the Third Instdrnent." NU 10 Sept. 1954: 35.

-. "Tirnothy." NZL. 26 Nov. 1951: 1 1.
-. "The Transformation." NZL 28 Jan. 1955: 1.5.

-. 'Trio Concert." NZL 29 O n 1954: 1 1.

-. "Waiting for Daylight" Landfall 10 ( 1 956): 196-7.

-. 'The Waitresses." NZL 9 July 1954: 1 1.

2) CoUeCaOon ofPmms:

Frame, Janet The Pocket Mirror: Poems. New York: Braziller. 1967;London: W. K. Allen.
1967.

Frame, Janet Owls Do Cm. Christchurch: Pegasasus Press. 1957: New York: George BraziIlllcr.
1960; rpt, 1982.

-. Faces in the Water. Christchurch: Pegasus, 196 1 ; New York: Braziller, 196 1.

-. The Edge of the Abhabet. Christchurch: Pegasus. 1962; New York: Braziller, 1963.

-. Scented Gardens for the Blind. Christchurch: Pegasus, 1963; New York: Bmillcr, 1964.
-. The Ada~tabteMan Christchurch: Pegasus, 1965; New York: Braziller, 1965.

-. A Staîe of Sieee. Christchurch: Pegasus, 1966;New York: Braziller, 1966.

-. The Rainbirds. London: W. H.Allen, 1968. eub'd in North America as Yellow Flowvers
in the AntiDOdean Room. New York: BtzilIer, 1969.1

-. Intensive Care. New York: Brader, 1970.

-. Daughter BuffaIo. New York: Bmililer, 1972.

-. Living in the Maniototo. New York: Brader, 1979.

-. The Camthians. New York: Bran'Iler, 1988.

Frame, Janet. To the 1s-Land: An Autobiomphv. New York: BraziIler, 1982; London:
Women's Press, 198%
-. An Angel at Mv TabIe: An Autobio_graphv: Volume 2. New York: Braziller, 1953; London:
Women's Press, 1984.

-. The Envov from Mirror Citv: An Autobiom~hv:Volume 3 (Women's Press: London,

1985) 60.

-. Janet Frarns: An Autobim~hy.Auckland, NZ: Century Hutchinson, 1989; New York:

Braziller, 1991. [Combines Vols. 1-3cited above, into a single vol.]

Frame, Janet. The Reservoir: Stones and Sketches. New York: Brazilkr, 1963.

-. Snowman, Snowman: Fables and Fanmies. New York: Braziller, 1963.

Frarne, Janet. "Begimings." Land fafl 19 (1 965): 40-47.

-. "Memoryand a Pocketfil of Words." Times Literaw Supplement 3240 4 June 1964: 487.

il. Works on Janet Frame.

Abrams, M. H.,gen. ed. T. S. Eliot; Introduction. The Norton Antholow of English Lirerature,
rev. ed, New York: Norton, 1968. 257 1.
Alcock, Peter. "Frame's Binomiai Fall, or Fire and Four in Waimm." Landfa1129 (1975): t 79-
87.

Alley, Elizabeth, sel. and ed The lnward Sun: Ceiebrating the Life and Work of Janet Frarne.
Wellington, NZ: Daphne Brasell, 1994.

Arnold, Matthew. "Empedocles on Etnaw The Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold. E d C. B.

Tinker and H, F. Lowry. London: Oxford U.P., 1963. 406-443.

Ash, Susan. "The Narrative Frame: 'Unieashing (1m)possibilities. '" Australia and New Zeatand
Studies in Canada 5 (199 1): 1- 15.

Ashcroft, W. D. "Beyond the Alphabet: Janet Frame's Owls Do Crv." Bird. Hawk. Boeie:
Essavs on Janet Frame. Ed. Jeanne Delbaere-Garant. Aarhus, Denmark: Dangaroo Press,
1979. 35-44.

Ashcroft, BiIl, Gareth Gn'ffiths, and Helen Tifin. "Appropriating Marginality: Janet Frame's
The Edee of the Aluhabet" The E m ~ i r eWrites Back: Theorv and Practice in wst-Colonial
Literatures. New Accents Series. London: Routledge, 1989. 104- 109.

Auden, W.EL, and Christopher Ishenÿood The Doe Beneath the Skin, or Where is Francis? A
Plav in ïhree Acts. London: Faber and Faber, 1936.

Chris Baidick. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literarv Terms. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.

Barthes, Roland EIements of Semiology. Trans. Annette Laven and Colin Smith. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1968.

BI&e, William. Introduction. Songs of Innocence in Eiehteenth Centurv Enelish Literature.

E d Geofiey Tillotson gt al. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969. 1494.

Benét, William Rose, ed. The Reader's EncvcIo~edia:An E n c T

-
Arts. New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1948.

Brasch, Charles. "The Silent Land" The Penmin Book of New Zealand Verse, Intro and ed.
Allen Cmow. Aucklaud: Blackwood and Janet Paul, 1960. 183-4.

Brown, Ruth. "A State of Seiee: The Sociable Frame." JNZL 1 1 (1993): 49-58.

Brydon, Diana. "New Approaches to the New Literatures in English: Are We in Danger of
Incorporating Disparity?" A Sha~innof Connections: Commonwealth Literature Studies
Then and Now. Ed. Hena Maes-Jelinek et al. Sydney: Dangaroo, 1989. 97.
Camus, Albert "La femme adultére," L'Exil et te rovaume (1957). pwres compIetes d'Albert
Camus. Vol. 4. Nocices Roger Grenier. Pan's: Club de l'Honnête Homme, 1983.

Carroll, Lewis. AIice's Adventures in Wonderland The Annotated Alice. Intro.and notes
Martin Gardner. New York Clarkson N. Potter, 1960.
-. Through the Lookinn G l a s and Whaî Alice Found TIiere. The Annotated Alice. Intro. and
notes Martin Gardner. 1960.

-. More Annotated Alice. Ref. and notes M m h Gardner. New York: Random House, 1990.

Chapman, Robert. "Fictionand the Social Pattern." Lmdfall7 (1953); rpt. in Wynstan Curnow,
ed. Essavs on New Zealand Literature. Auckland: Heinemann, 1973. 7 1-98.

Cluett, Robert. Canadian Literarv Prose: A Prelirninarv Stvlistic Atlas. Toronto, Ontario: ECW
Press, 1990.

CoIerid~;e,SarnueI. "KublaKhan." The Norton Antholow of EneIish Literature. Gen. ed. M. H.

Abrarns. 1401.

Cowman, Colleen J. "The Wounded Spectrum: Colour-coding and the Value of Ham in Owls
Do Cw." JNZL (forthcoming).

Curnow,Allen. "A Srnall Room with Large Windows." The Penmin Book of New Zealand
-
Verse. Inuo. and ed. Allen Curnow. Auckland: Penguin, 1960. 2 1 1-13.

-. "Attitudes for a New Zealand Poet (iii)." The Penmin Book of New Zealand Verse. Intro.
and eci Men Curnow. 205.

Dalziel, Margaret. Janet Frame. Auckland: Oxford U.P., 1 980.

Delbaere-Garant, Jeanne. "Beyond the Word: Scented Gardens for the Blind." Bird. Ha\vk,
Bogie. Ed. Jeanne Deibaere-Garant. 69
-. "Daphne'sMetamorphoses in Janet Frame's Early Noveis." ArieI 6 (1975): 23-37.

-. "Memoryas Survival in the Global Village: Janet Frarne's The Cmthians." A Shapino of
Connections. Eds. Hena Maes-Jelinek et al. 2 23-224.

Deleuze, Gilles. "The Schizophrenic and Language: Surface and Depth in Lewis Carroll and
Antoinin Artaud." Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-StructuralistCriticisrn. Ed. and
intro. Josué V. Harari. Ithaca: CorneIl U.P., 1979. 277-95.

Delrez, Marc. The Eye of the Storm: Vision and Swvival in A. The Ring of ''
Fire: Essavs on Janet Frame. FA.Jeanne DeIbaere. Sydney: Dangaroo, 1992. 127.
Dow, Mirodava Wein. A Variorum Edition of EIizabeth Barrea Browninds Sonnet's From the
Portuguese. Troy, NY: Whitson, 1980.

Easthope, Anthony. Poetrv as Discourse. Methuen: London, 1983.

Evans, Patrick "At the Edge of the Aiphabet" Bird. Hawk Bogie: Essavs on Janet Frame. E d
Jeanne Delbaere-Garant 53-62.

-. Janet Frarne. Boston: Twayne, 1977.

Gunn, Thom. Mv Sad Cavtains. London: Faber, 1961.

GIover, Denis. "Arawata Bill." The Peneuin Book of New Zealand Verse. Ed Allen Curnow.
AuckIand: Penguin, 1960. 226; 248.

-
Kankin, Cherry. "Languageas Theme in OwIs Do Crv." LandfaIl 1 10 (June 1974): 9 1 1 10.
Rpt in Critical Essavs on the New Zealand Novel. Ed. Cheny Hankin. Auckland:
Heinemann, 1976. 88-104.
-. "New Zealand Women Novelists: Their Attitude Toward Life in a Developing Society."
WLWE 13, 1 (1975): 144-67.

Hannah, Donald W. "Faces in the Water: Case History or Work of Fiction?" Bird. Hawk,
Boge. Ed Jeanne Delbaere-Garant. Aarhus, Denmark: Dangaroo, 1978. 45-52.

Ham's, WiIson. "AdversanalConte- and Creativity." New Left Review 154 (1985): 124-8.

-. "ScentedGardens for the Blind" Bird. Hawk, Bogie: Essavs on Janet Frame. Ed. Jearme
Delbaere-Garant. 63-67.

Horrocks, Roger. "Reading of A State ofSeire (1967) and A State of Sieee (1978)." And 2
(1984): 131.

Hughes, Kenneth James. Sims of Literature: Lantwa~e.IdeoIogv and the Literaw Text.
Vancouver. Talonbooks, 1986.

Hyde, Robin. The Godwits Flv. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1938.

-. Check to Your Kinq. London: Hunt and Blackett, 1936; rpt. London: A. H. and A. W.
Reed, 1960.

Jones, Lawrence. "No Cowslip's Bell in Waimaru: The Persona1 Vision of OwIs Do CF."
ianàfall95 (1970): 280-96.

Jones, Joseph and Johanna Jones. NewZealand Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1983.
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H.Abrams. 1683-93.
-. "On the Grasshopper and the Crick&" Maior British Writers. Ed. Walter 3. Bate, et.
New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1954; rev. e d 1959. 326-7.

-. "When 1 have Fears." The Norton AnthoIoev of Enelish Literature. Gen.ed M-H.Abrams.
1682-3.

Leech, Geofiey N. A Linaistic Guide to Endish Poetnr. London: Longnan, 1969.

MacLennan, Carol. "Dichotomous Values in the Novels of Janet Frame." Journa1 of

Commonwealth Literature 22.1 ( 1987): 178-89.

MaIterre, Monique. "Myths and Esotencs: A Tentative Interpretation of A Statc of Sie~e."

Rina of Fire: Essavs on Janet Frame. Ed Jeanne Delbaere. 120-5.

Mercer, Gina "TheEdge of the Aluhabet Journey: Destination Death." Australian and New
ZeaIand Studies in Canada 5 (Spring '91): 39-57.

-. "'Expforing the Secret Caves ofLanguage': Janet Frame's Poetry." Meaniin 44 (1985):
3 84-90.

-. Janet Frame: Subversive Fictions. St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press,

1994.

New, W. H. "The Frame Story World ofJanet Frame." Essavs on Canadian Writing 29 (198-1):
175-91.

O'SuIiivan, Vincent. "Exilesof the Mind - The Fictions of Janet Frame." A Sense of Exile
Essavs in the Literature of the Asia-Pacific Reion. University of Western Australia,
Nedlands, Western Australia: Centre for Studies in Australian Literature, 1988. 18 1-1 87.

Owen, WiIfied. The Collected Poems of WiIFred Owen. Ed. and intro., C.Day Lewis. London:
Chatto and Windus, 1963.

Pechter, Edward. "OfAnts and Grasshoppers: Two Ways or More to Li& Te,* and Pouer."
Poetics Todav 9.2 (1988): 291-306.

Peckham, Morse. Expianation and Power: ï h e Controt ofHuman Behaviow. New York:
Seabury Press, 1979.
Perrine, Laurence. "'The Hunchback in the Park'" The Emficator CvcIomdia Volume 1;
Modem Poetry. Ed Charles Child Walcutt and J. Edwin Whitesetl. Chicago: QuadrangIe,
1966. 312-13.

Peny, Nick. "Ryingby Nets: The Social Pattern of New Zealand Fiction." Islands 3.2 (1987):
161-77.

Quirk, RandoIph and Sidney Greenbarn. A Universitu Grammar of Engiish. (London:

Longman, 1979).

Rilke, Maria Rainer. Sonnets to Orpheus. Tram M. D. Herter Norton. New York: W. W.
Norton, 1942. n.p.

-. Duino EIeeies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. Trans. A Poulin, Jr. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1977.

Rhodes, EL Winston. "Pre1udes and ParabIes: A Reading of Janet Frame's Novels." Landfa1126
(1972): 135-146.

Roberts, Heather. Where Did She Corne From?: New Zealand Women Novelists 1862- 1987.
Wellington, N.Z.: Allen & Unwin, 1989.

Robertson, Robert T. "Bird, Hawk, Bogie: Janet Frarne, 1952-62." Bird Hawk, Boee. Ed.
Jeanne Delbaere Garant. 15-23.

Rutherford, Anna "Janet Frame's Divided and Distinguished Worlds." WLWE 14 (1975) 5 1-68.

Said, Edward OrientaIisrn. New York: Randorn HouseNintage, 1979.

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New York: Viking, 1969; rpt 1977.

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