earticle

영어

The purpose of this paper is to examine one of the most pervasive and persistent stereotypes of mental illness; the mad genius, which assumes a close and necessary connection between artistic or intellectual achievement and psychological dysfunction and the process of finding the identity as a writer in An Angel at My Table, by Janet Frame. Janet Frame is portrayed as a creative, imaginative young woman growing up in New Zealand in the 1930s and 1940s who, struggling to find her place in the world and traumatized by the early deaths of two sisters, retreats from reality into her poetic imagination. This recovery can be possible when she confronts her painful past and transform it to consistent narratives. However, as she seeks refuge from the social expectations that frighten or oppress her, her increasingly antisocial behaviour becomes the object of medical inquiry and social censure. An Angel at My Table demonstrates the instability of classifications of psychiatric disorder, when Janet's diagnosis of schizophrenia is later found to be false. Finally, she realizes that the place which she has to write in is the South Island’s place in New Zealand. Frame deliberately dismantles notions of a fixed identity and begins to write as a national New Zealand writer.