SOURCE: "Janet Frame," in Commonwealth Short Stories, edited by Anna Rutherford and Donald Hannah, Edward Arnold, Ltd., 1971, pp. 148-50.

In the following essay, Hannah finds that "Two Sheep" and A Boy's Will" are ostensibly very different but similarly convey a sense of the world as a menacing place.

Janet Frame, a New Zealand writer, has probably more compelling personal reasons for writing than any other author in this anthology. Having spent eight years of her life in a mental hospital she consulted yet another doctor, and 'was astonished and grateful to hear him refute all previous commandments—"Why mix, why conform? I think you need to write to survive'." And later in the same article in the New Zealand periodical Landfall, No. 73, she states:

Though I began writing when I was a child and have never really stopped writing, I think I really began when my need to...