Owls Do Cry

Rating:
Summary: A power-filled book influenced by great writers of the past.
Review: In a career spanning over forty years, Frame created such successful works as The Lagoon, Scented Gardens for the Blind, Owls do Cry and To the Is-Land. As a gifted wordsmith and an acute observer of life hungry to express herself, it was no surprise that she chose to write about her own remarkable life. With her autobiography, An Angel At My Table, her unique artistry and strength was only further in evidence, as she managed to turn seven years of a harrowing, personal nightmare into a work of beauty, compassion and subtle humor.

While a young student at university, "[H]er shyness and insecurity made her 'different' and this, coupled with a clumsy suicide attempt, led to the first of her incarcerations in a mental hospital."

Originally diagnosed as suffering from "schizophrenia," Frame wrote about her experience: "The six weeks I spent at Seacliff Hospital in a world I'd never... thought possible, became for me a concentrated course in the horrors of insanity.... From my first moment there I knew that I could not turn back to my usual life or forget what I saw.... Many patients confined in other wards... had no name, only a nickname, no past, no future, only an imprisoned Now, an eternal Is-Land without its accompanying horizons...."

The nightmare continued with her introduction to electroshock. "I was given the new electric treatment, and suddenly my life was thrown out of focus. I could not remember. I was terrified. I behaved as others around me behaved. I who had learned the language, spoke and acted that language. I felt utterly alone. There was no one to talk to... you were locked up, you did as you were told or else, and that was that... I was 'there for life.'" The treatment left her "in terror and despair equivalent to an execution."

Throughout her writing Frame creates passages that are powerfully evocative of the terror experienced when one's mind is meddled with by a force over which one has no control. Her writings are have some distinct similarities with Shakespeare's "The Tempest": Prospero meddles with the subconscious minds of those shipwrecked on his island. When they are regaining consciousness, he says: Their understanding Begins to swell, and the approaching tide Will shortly fill the reasonable shore, That now lies foul and muddy. (V.i.70-82) That a storm has been induced in the minds of Prospero's foes is evident because their "reasonable shores" are "foul and muddy". Ariel, at Prospero's command, has lured Alonso, Sebastian and Antonio to a banquet only to confront them with thunder and lightning and the pronouncement of their mutual guilt in having banished Prospero from Milan. Ariel says, "I have made you mad" (III.iii.59), but her action is not the equivalent of inducing an epileptic fin in the minds of these men. Gonzalo says, "All three of them are desperate; their great guilt,/Like poison given to work a great time after,/ Now gins to bite the spirits" (III.iii.104-06). It is the consciences of the three men that are activated by Ariel's enactment of Prospero's plan. Prospero is ever careful to avoid harming those upon whom he exercises his power. He boasts to Miranda that he has not harmed one hair on any of the creatures upon whom he has worked his magic (I.ii.30-31). Frame does not, however, have such benevolent or skilled workers delving into her subconscious mind. Her storms are electrical convulsions of the most uncontrolled kind.

Frame's bewilderment at finding herself mistakenly diagnosed with schizophrenia resounds in the passage from The Tempest (I.ii.206-10) which stands as an epigraph to An Angel at My Table:

Prospero: My brave spirit! Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil Would not infect his reason? Ariel: Not a soul, But felt a fever of the mad, and play'd Some tricks of desperation.

In this passage Prospero is asking Ariel which of the mariners had been able to resist Ariel's performance of his magic. Ariel's reply indicates that none could help by be affected by her sport.3 Frame's use of the passage, however, seems to suggest that even the bravest, firmest, most constant of human beings, including Prospero, herself or the reader, might find their spirit (or mind) infected by "a fever of the mad", and that Frame's "tricks of desperation" in having role-played text-book schizophrenia to gain attention have been such a success that the medical profession has been duped. When Frame was diagnosed as having schizophrenia, she says, "I kept 'pure schizophrenia' for the poems where it was most at home, and I looked forward to John Forrest's praise" (Angel 79). In keeping "pure schizophrenia" for her poetry, Frame was using language to create a storm, rather than to construct a 'realistic' narrative. Much of Daphne's singing in Owls Do Cry is an example of this technique.4

In creating storm by using poetry, Frame is emulating Prospero who is able to conjure up tempests by using his magic art. It is ironic that Frame's incorrect diagnosis and subsequent hospitalisation were preceded by attention from her psychology lecturer, who almost coaxed the young woman into believing that madness and genius were inseparable and that schizophrenia was an asset to the serious poet. Forrest made a remark of which Frame writes,

[The comment] was to direct my behaviour and reason for many years. ... "When I think of you," he said, "I think of Van Gogh, of Hugo Wolf, [of Schumann]." (*) All three were named as schizophrenic, with their artistic ability apparently the pearl of their schizophrenia. Frame blends the past and present well in her story.

It's interesting to note that despite the good intensions of her family members, tragic stuck mercilessly.

Rating:
Summary: In search of treasure
Review: Owls Do Cry, Frame's first full-fledged novel, is a poetic anthem to human spirit and endurance and speaks ultimately to universal concerns. A remarkable novel from a gifted artist.

Rating:
Summary: Exquisite, Painful Writing
Review: So much better than other 'madhouse' books - knocks The Bell Jar into a distant corner, Janet Frame is one of the most poignant and moving of writers. She was so injured by life but is able to achieve an extraordinary almost clinical separation in her literary creations when writing of things that should have been too great to bear. I have to be feeling very strong to take her in. An Angel at My Table brought her to the fore for a while, but she has never really occupied the place she deserves in the front of people's minds. Time for a big rediscovery I'd say. But when you look at the sales ranking her titles gain, the probability is slim. Shame. Come on literary public, give her a go - come on her publishers push those books back onto the shelves.


Rating:
Summary: A Beautifully Stylised View of a Family
Review: This novel follows a linear time scale of the growth in a family's generation with occasional shifts backward or forward to comment on the present. It focuses on the intense emotions of its characters through a detailed focus on objects and the character's speech. There are eloquent descriptions of clothing, the setting of their hometown and even the rubbish in the junkyard the children play in. The most striking part of the book is the long sections narrated from the third person singular perspective of Daphne who spends a good part of her life in a mental institution. These sections are highly poetic and suggest the other language with which people who are mentally think by seeing the world not as reality but as a clutter of subconscious and symbolic images. This, in contrast with the long diary entries of Daphne's sister Teresa (Chicks) who lives in a conventional domestic style maps the different patterns by which people think and reminds you that the world can be perceived in a multitude of different ways. Through poignant metaphorical descriptions and sharp dialogue she conveys what is missing in human relations, especially between family members. There is a delicately portrayed need for genuine respect of the individuality of the children apart from the fixed images acquired in childhood. People change; identity is fluid. When an image of them is maintained or they are held up to an ideal (like the Bessicks who turn out not to be so ideal) then a connection is lost and the individual is left isolated. They become a stranger. This is emphasised in the epilogue where a socially prominent couple discuss articles in a newspaper who they know nothing about but are characters we have become intimately involved with over the course of the novel. It is a beautiful, intimate and heartbreaking portrayal of a family.