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Melancholia in Janet Frame's Faces in the Water

Gambaudo, S

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Authors

S Gambaudo



Abstract

New Zealand author Janet Frame was initially diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1945, during her stay in Seacliff Mental Hospital, Dunedin, following a mental breakdown. She spent eight years in and out of psychiatric institutions in New Zealand. The diagnosis of schizophrenia was reversed in her late 30s. In 1956, she left New Zealand on a literary grant to travel Europe. While in London, she voluntarily attended psychiatric assessment at the Maudsley Hospital to re-appraise her mental difficulties. In 1957 she was declared “sane” and told that she had never suffered from schizophrenia. Her mental difficulties were believed to be the result of years of “treatment” undergone in New Zealand. Frame’s psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Hugh Cawley, suggested she write about her experience to gain some form of cathartic closure. The result was Faces in the Water, first published in 1961, in which she narrated her experience of the psychiatric establishment. She also wrote about that experience in the second volume of her autobiography An Angel at My Table, first published in 1984. Both novel and autobiography share a common story line. Not surprisingly, clarifying the relationship between fiction and fact in Frame’s work has preoccupied most of her readers and critics.

Citation

Gambaudo, S. (2012). Melancholia in Janet Frame's Faces in the Water. Literature and Medicine, 30(1), 42-60. https://doi.org/10.1353/lm.2012.0008

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Mar 1, 2012
Deposit Date Mar 14, 2012
Publicly Available Date Dec 2, 2014
Journal Literature and Medicine
Print ISSN 1080-6571
Electronic ISSN 1080-6571
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 30
Issue 1
Pages 42-60
DOI https://doi.org/10.1353/lm.2012.0008

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Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2012 The Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in Literature and Medicine, 30, no. 1 (Spring 2012), 42–60.





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