Wrestling with the Angel: A Life of Janet Frame

by Michael King

The first full-scale-and long-awaited-biography of Janet Frame, sometimes described as the "most distinguished woman writer in English" Janet Frame, born in 1924, is New Zealand's most celebrated and least public author. She has published more than twenty books and has been shortlisted for the Nobel Prize. Her three-volume memoir, described by Michael Holroyd as "one of the greatest autobiographies written this century," was the subject of the award-winning film An Angel at My Table. Relying on documents never previously released, including Janet Frame's diaries, health records, and court transcripts, Michael King reveals the formative episodes of her life-the poverty of her childhood, her enduring sense of being an outsider, the deaths of two sisters by drowning, her incarceration in psychiatric hospitals for the better part of a decade, and her continuing struggle against diagnoses of mental illness. And he deals in frank detail with her life in the decades since her memoirs were published. Insightful, shocking, and unforgettable, Wrestling with the Angel is a remarkable account of a writer who has been pushed to the limit by life and, with equal force, has pushed the powers of her imagination and talent to create extraordinary work.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Mental Illness

592 pages, Hardcover

First published June 4, 2001

About the author

Michael King was one of New Zealand's leading historians and biographers. In 2006 he was named one of 100 most important New Zealanders that have ever lived. He published more than 34 books in his lifetime. His last, The Penguin History of New Zealand, has sold more than 200,000 copies and is widely considered to be the definitive history of New Zealand. His work in literary biography - most notably Wrestling With the Angel, on the life of Janet Frame - also received great critical acclaim. He made many level-headed contributions to race-relations debates and is sorely missed by his country.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE GOTHIC HORROR OF JANET FRAME’S FIRST THIRTY YEARS ON EARTH

1924. Janet born to a poor family. There were four girls and one boy.

1932. Her 9 year old brother has his first epileptic fit.

1936. Her 16 year old sister Myrtle drowns while swimming. Turns out she had a heart defect.

1945. Janet’s first suicide attempt and admission to a mental hospital.

1947. Her 21 year old sister Isabel drowns while swimming. Turns out she also had a heart defect.

Hamlet : I perchance hereafter shall think meet to put an antic disposition on.

In An Angel at her Table Janet Frame tells us she was misdiagnosed as a schizophrenic. For eight years between age 21 and 29 she was in (a lot) and out (not a lot) of mental hospitals and no one figured out that she wasn’t schizophrenic. Wait! What was going on? How could they not realise they’d made a mistake? Janet herself does not get into those details. According to her, what happened was that she attempted suicide by swallowing a packet of aspirin, then told her psychology teacher (she was doing a course) Mr Money, and then, that very evening her landlady called up and said

"There are three men to see you. From the University."
I went to the door and there were Mr Money, Mr Prince and the Head of the Department who spoke first.
“Mr Money tells me you haven’t been feeling very well. We thought you might like to have a little rest… we thought you might like to come with us down to the hospital…just for a few days’ rest.”
…And so I was admitted to the Dunedin hospital, to Colquhon ward, which, I was shocked to find, was a psychiatric ward.

It all sounds heartless, almost brutal, and you think yeah, they would do that, it was the 1940s.
But Michael King explains that it just wasn’t like that. In fact, this guy Money was like a one man Janet Frame Rescue Service, finding people to help, organising family members to visit her, and Janet was lying on his couch saying that her happiness was so acute and her misery was so unbearable that she had to die. After a week of this, finally he concluded she did need a short stay in a psychiatric ward. And he was kind and sweet and talked her into it. And then came the tragic comedy.

When doctors attempted to interview her she became inhibited, elusive, sometimes overly dramatic, and subject to fits of nervous giggling. This behaviour, in conjunction with her suicide attempt and her interest in psychology, was subject to far more sinister interpretation than Frame could have known

Meaning that they concluded she was schizophrenic. But wait! On that flimsy basis? JF explains in Angel that in fact she had read schizophrenic case histories and was able to put together a “repertoire” of symptoms which she would display for the doctors. In this way she was the main contributor herself towards her misdiagnosis. Why she would think that would be a good idea is left open. That is the heart of the mystery. She did have some type of mental illness, that is undeniable.
She wrote

I was growing increasingly fearful of the likeness between some of my true feelings and those thought of as belonging to sufferers from schizophrenia.

Anyways, help was at hand. When she was 24 they decided that the new (for New Zealand) treatment called electro-convulsive therapy would be of great benefit to Janet, so she got many doses of that (two zaps, twice a week, for twelve weeks) , which in those days was administered without anaesthetic. You know what ECT is? Sure. But just to remind us all, Michael King explains

It involved attaching electrodes to the scalp and passing an electric current through the brain of sufficient strength to cause convulsions and a short term coma.

A couple of years later, back in the hospital, MK says

Because of what her hospital notes describe as a “strong resentment” of ECT, medical staff attempted to reduce the severity of her symptoms by the prolonged use of insulin shock therapy. This treatment produced comas and convulsions, accompanied by writhings and moanings, and was believed to have beneficial effects for schizophrenics.

But this new shock therapy didn’t work very well. So by December 1952 the doctors were brought to the conclusion that there was nothing left for her but a lobotomy. She was told “it would be good for me, that, following it, I would be 'out if the hospital in no time'”. She received this news with “a swamping wave of horror”. I am not surprised.

She wrote about it to her old mentor John Money. He was working in another mental hospital. He replied

At this hospital it is generally felt that lobotomy has not lived up to expectations : they do not perform it here. So if you have any choice in the matter… I would say no.

Imagine that conversation – doctor, I’ve been mulling it over, and I don’t think, on balance, that I should have a lobotomy.

Then came the couldn’t-make-it-up-twist. Days away from the operation the hospital superintendent Dr Blake-Palmer was reading his newspaper and saw

The Hubert Church Memorial award for prose has been won by Miss Janet Frame for her book "The Lagoon and Other Stories".

This was the country’s major literary award. Janet had no idea she had won the award, no one could contact her. Dr Blake-Palmer had no idea her writings were considered quite so highly. So made a decision. In view of the surprising evidence that his patient was actually a literary star, he took her off the list of lobotomies and said

I’ve decided that you should stay as you are.

MY FAVOURITE JANET FRAME PHOTOGRAPH

In 1990 Jane Camion filmed An Angel at her Table, and Janet was played by three different actresses. Here she is with all three Janets.

[Will Ansbacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have to admit I skim-read this massive tome, a remarkable biography that’s sensitively written, meticulously researched and exhaustively (perhaps even excessively) detailed.

I had wanted to read it because, after Janet Frame published her autobiography An Angel at my Table in the eighties, some doubters were still wondering whether her account of her struggle was accurate. Well, it turns out that a few events she mentioned aren’t in exact chronological order - hardly surprising since she was writing from memory – but that’s all. .

The first half of Reid King’s book covers the same period as Frame’s, up to 1963 when she returned from England, though the two are totally different. Reading Frame’s memoir is a profound and disturbing experience; but King had the advantage of her hospital case notes and the correspondence with John Money, Frame’s psychologist at the time of her breakdown and who became a lifelong friend. Here in sharp detail is how the mis-diagnosis of “incurable, degenerative, schizophrenia” (but in fact what we’d call nervous exhaustion now) and compounded by Frame’s acting out (or at least describing symptoms) of how she perceived schizophrenics to act, led inexorably to her being committed as an involuntary mental patient.

The later chapters, where King also had access to Frame’s correspondence with many more writers, and ending just five years before she died, are similarly packed with detail. One priceless interchange he recorded concerns the kiwi DIY mindset …

Everybody at the table was talking about difficulties with cars and household appliances, and how shoddy and expensive was the work of repairmen. Asked for an opinion, Frame allowed that, ‘I once spent a whole day putting in a ball-cock.’ This produced such a chorus of ‘Whats’ and ‘What-did-she-says’ that she blushed and took refuge again in silence.

I was also touched by her uncanny ability to find unsuitable housing that always turned out to be surrounded by cacophony that prevented her from writing. Kiwis are a noisy bunch …

‘I’m going mad with all these penis-motormowers being worked in the weekend and everybody hammering and sawing,’ she told John Money. Even more intrusive, a quarry a mile away was now using a bulldozer whose sound and vibrations echoed back and forth across the valley throughout the day; at night, she listened to the ‘nerve-destroying’ whine of washing and drying machines from a laundry down in the gully below Evans Street.**

It is details like these that make the biography so engaging – it isn’t just about her literary career - but I have to say that in documenting every month of Janet Frame’s life, he could maybe have left out a few of the lesser incidents.

** that laundry was also the bane of my life when I lived in Dunedin!

[Zoe Hannay · Rating 4 out of 5]

extensively researched and exhaustively long, i did so enjoy king’s biography of janet frame though he treats things with an emotional remove that i found increasingly alienating as frame‘s close friends and acquaintances die, various tragedies occur, but also as frame receives awards and acknowledgements of the highest civil order bestowed upon her (??) these occurances are handled the same as if she had moved house, which she does A LOT in the book, moving an average of every 2 years (14 houses) from the 70s to late 90s. anyway i suspect there are significant omissions but she was around when this came out so it figures. i like to read this alongside the biography and the fiction as each text enriches the other

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant account of the life of Janet Frame, one of my all time favourite reads.

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading because I have enjoyed quite a few Michael King books. This one did not disappoint too. His writing style is so engaging and I was interested all the way through. I had only heard of Janet Frame and have never read a book of hers. Will be curious to read some of her titles in the future.
Another great Michael King book!

[Jerke De Vries · Rating 5 out of 5]

The song Tempest by the band Low has the lyric “There suck I. Bell, I lie. Owl do cry. And bat to fly”. Today I found that this is part of the epigraph of Owls do cry. Very happy

[Bronwyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like all books by Michael King it is impeccably researched. We are so fortunate to have this biography of the Author Janet Frame written by an equally excellent, though different, Author. And especially so as they both died quite soon afterwards. A huge double loss to NZ's literary scene.

[Ross-Barry Barcock. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has special significance for me as I worked in a psychiatric hospital from the mid-70's and could relate to Ms Frames experience.
Something interesting regarding the author and Ms Frame. Both died within days of each other.

[Alina Pavlova · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engaging and accurate account of Janet's life, including her own interpretations and witty quotes. Good representation of New Zealand culture and the state of affairs in the cultural sector and mental health care at that time.

[Velvetink · Rating 4 out of 5]

awesome - a lengthy read but well worth it to dispel inaccurate facts about Janet Frame

[Lynette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Holy heck, I finally made it!!! Have been reading this in fits in starts over the past 3 1/2 months. Because it was so large and rather heavy going I couldn't settle to it for long, and kept leaving it to read other books. However, once I started again it always kept drawing me back in for a while ….
What an unusual but obviously very gifted lady she was! I couldn't get over the amount of house shifts she had and trips overseas. Particularly interesting to read about her life in my own home town! Pleased I kept on plodding but disappointed to get to the end and feel like it left things up in the ear as she didn't die for another 5 years after the book abruptly ended! An interesting life though the names all got a bit confusing at times.

[Janet Frame · Rating 5 out of 5]

Janet Frame,
My name sake and Michael King whom I had the privilege of knowing are sadly missed.

Janet and I share some inherited traits.

The better ( informal, non diagnosed ) diagnosis was / is that she did not have schizophrenia or any other mental illness, ( except perhaps depression and maybe Post traumatic stress), but was on the autism spectrum.

Autism is not a deficit, it's a " different way of thinking"

[Clarice Stasz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A noted New Zealand historian and writer, King debunks the bogie that followed Frame throughout her life, that she was insane. She was diagnosed as schizophrenic by institutional doctors who interpreted her imagination as evidence of hallucinations. She was a gifted and unusually introverted child who "helped" the doctors by feeding them what they wanted to hear. In England she found physicians who quickly disputed the diagnosis. From then on she managed what few writers, notably single women writers, could do, which is live on her writing career. She won major awards, was nominated for the Nobel Prize, and learned to live with her fragile psychology by accepting herself as very different from almost everyone. Her unique view of the world and fierce intelligence ground her writing.

She was still alive when he ended the book (did she object and stop it?), which means it tends to evade hints of interesting issues, such as her treatment of others. Everyone seems to be helping her, and her letters display a narcissism expected of such a rare bird. Why would a gay artist couple be so generous with their money and gifts? Relations with her family are complicated and not always clear.


Another problem is King's belief everyone in contact with her deserves mention. Thus when she goes to a town, the names of those at a restaurant meal get listed. Every brief stop by to a friend gets a sentence. The result is tedious at places, and I learned eventually to push ahead. In this regard sections of the book read like research notes rather than shaped narrative.


Still, it's what we have a this point and well worth dipping into for followers of Frame.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Painstaking attention to important but often overlooked details in this account of the writer's life focusing on her struggle to write in between episodes of mental illness. King does a good job of writing realistically about the illness without dramatizing it. Frame doesn't get lost in it as can sometimes happen when the lives of people with severe mental health issues are in biographies.

[Nadine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Covers much of the material in JF's autobiography plus a bit extra. Worth reading