An Angel at My Table

Janet Frame was born Janet Paterson Frame in a working class New Zealand family in August 1924, the third of five children (Myrtle and Bruddie were her older sister and brother respectively, Isabel and June were her younger sisters). Various scenes from her childhood are dramatized - traveling on a train with her family, being punished for stealing money from her father to buy gum and selling it at school, witnessing Bruddie suffer an epileptic seizure, visiting the school nurse, befriending a child named Poppy, who suffers from domestic abuse, writing a poem for class, discovering sexual intercourse, graduating from primary school, and reenacting scenes from a fantasy book with her family.

As a teenager, Janet attends an all-girls school where she becomes increasingly interested in literature and begins submitting her poems to newspapers. One day, Myrtle and Isabel go to the public baths; Janet does not go because she wants to write. Only Isabel returns because Myrtle drowned. She meets Poppy again, who is now in trade school. After reading The Scholar Gipsy, Janet resolves to become a poet instead of a teacher.

A few years later, Janet, now 18, leaves home for Dunedin College of Education to train as a teacher, burning up her works before leaving.

Prospero: My brave spirit!

Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil

Would not infect his reason?

Ariel: Not a soul, but felt a fever of the mad; and play’d

Some tricks of desperation

Shakespeare, THE TEMPEST (Act 1, Scene 2)

Arriving in Dunedin, Janet stays at the house of an uncle and aunt. While training, she becomes increasingly shy and reclusive and begins auditing courses at the adjacent University of Otago (before their merger in 2007), during which she develops a crush on Mr. Forrest, her psychology lecturer. Isabel later joins her and one day, they are discovered secretly eating their uncle and aunt's chocolates and kicked out, but they manage to find an abandoned house. However, as Isabel begins to make friends, she moves out and Janet is left alone again, faced with an unwanted future as a teacher.

One day, Janet abandons her teaching post in the spur of the moment and begins working at a kitchen to support her dream of writing. Her autobiography draws Mr. Forrest’s attention, especially her account of an unsuccessful suicide attempt via aspirin overdose (not shown in the film) that has decayed her teeth, and he helps commit her to a local psychiatric ward before she is transferred to Seacliff Lunatic Asylum, where she is diagnosed with schizophrenia. Meanwhile, Isabel accompanies their mother on a vacation that ends with Isabel’s fatal drowning.

Following Mr. Forrest’s advice, Janet visits a Mrs. Chandler in Christchurch and follows her advice to be admitted in Sunnyside Hospital, receiving over 200 applications of electroconvulsive therapy over 8 years there and gradually losing her will to live. In 1951, her short story collection The Lagoon and Other Short Stories is published and wins her the Hubert Church Memorial Award. In light of her success, Janet's doctor cancels a scheduled lobotomy and she is eventually discharged from Seacliff and returns home. Upon returning, June introduces Janet to Frank Sargeson, who has developed an interest in her work and allows her to live with him and mentors her. During this time, she completes and publishes her debut novel Owls do cry (1957); this helps her receive receive a literary grant to travel and work abroad.

You may go to France for me,

Ha Ha the wooing o’it…

Robert Burns, DUNCAN GRAY (poem)

Arriving in London, Janet is denied entrance at a hotel she claims to have made a reservation at, eventually finding a room at a cheap hotel managed by a man called Patrick, with whom she soon begins a relationship. She takes a trip to Spain, during which she engages in a summer fling with a young man that impregnates her. Returning to England, Janet aborts the baby and applies for an office job under Patrick’s encouragement, but her schizophrenia leads her to be rejected. Hoping to determine her true mental history, Janet voluntarily admits herself into a mental hospital and learns that she was misdiagnosed.

Janet meets with her agent who tells her to write about her years in mental health facilities. She takes the manuscript to a publisher who praises her talent but tells her to write a bestseller instead and provides her with financial support.

One day in 1963, Janet receives a letter from June telling her that their father has died (their mother had as well, with only Janet, June, and Bruddie still living) and decides to return home, where she is approached by two local reporters who want to interview her.

One night some time later, June’s daughter dances to "The Twist" outside of Janet’s writing camper while she works. After June and her daughter turn in, Janet exits the camper and dances to it before returning to her typewriter, resuming her work on A State of Siege (1966).