She was institutionalized for a decade but avoided a lobotomy. She was incorrectly institutionalized as a schizophrenic. This was Janet Frame's first novel and it has strong autobiographical elements. It records the darker side of human behavior how humans behave toward the impoverished, the ill and the aging. This is a book about the mentally ill, the physically ill, aging and death. She wrote her first novel (Owls Do Cry) while staying with her mentor Frank Sargeson, and then left New Zealand, not to return for seven years.ĭid I enjoy reading this? No, but that is because of the subject matter. She sought the support and company of fellow writers and set out single-mindedly and courageously to achieve her goal of being a writer. She returned to society, but not the one which had labelled her a misfit. She continued to write throughout her troubled years, and her first book (The Lagoon and Other Stories) won a prestigious literary prize, thus convincing her doctors not to carry out a planned lobotomy. The story of her almost miraculous survival of the horrors and brutalising treatment in unenlightened institutions has become well known. She spent four and a half years out of eight years, incarcerated in mental hospitals. Desperately unhappy because of family tragedies and finding herself trapped in the wrong vocation (as a schoolteacher) her only escape appeared to be in submission to society's judgement of her as abnormal. The fate befalling the young woman who wanted "to be a poet" has been well documented.
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