Janet Frame and resistance

Critics have long tried to account for Janet Frame’s writing in terms of the apparent “good” that it serves. This good has often been preconstituted in the scholarly paradigm that critics have deployed, while overlooking some of the most difficult moments in Frame’s writing. In this paper, I explore (1) how the good of Frame’s writing has been understood, as against various articulations of Frame’s apparent resistance to criticism; (2) the nature of creative responses to her fiction, especially by Patrick Evans, which have pursued the less companionable side of her writing; and (3) how these responses can help us to address the disturbing materials at the heart of one of Frame’s most challenging novels, Daughter Buffalo (1972). I argue that by attending to Frame’s wild and unsettling representations we are better able to confront her distinctive textuality — its rebarbative capabilities, and its presentation of fantasy and darkness. If this is not quite a register of praise, it is not one of proscription either, as I seek to move the critical conversation beyond various forms of moral criticism and recuperation.