SOURCE: "The Rhetoric of Rejection: Janet Frame's Recent Work," in South Pacific Images, edited by Chris Tiffin, South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, 1978, pp. 196-203.

Ferrier is an educator and editor. In the following essay, she discusses thematic shifts in Frame's fiction from her earlier to her later works.

Through the carefully-woven patterns of imagery and symbolism which distinguish Janet Frame's novels runs a dominant theme—that of oppositions. These range from the antinomies of treasure and rubbish around which Owls Do Cry is organised, to the juxtaposition of 'this' and 'that' world, discussed by Frame in a well-known interview [in Landfall, 19, March, 1965.] In Frame's earlier novels, the opposition is between perceptions categorised as the opposition between the 'sane' and 'insane' views of one's society, and it is clear that for Frame the insane view has ultimate validity. As she continues writing through the sixties...