Closure and Happy Endings in Janet Frame’s The Lagoon and Other Stories

Armelle Parey (1)

1 ERIBIA - Équipe de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la Grande-Bretagne, l'Irlande et l'Amérique du Nord

Closure and happy endings are not phrases that immediately come to mind when looking at Janet Frame’s stories in her first collection The Lagoon and Other Stories (1951), texts marked by low narrative content and inconclusiveness which nevertheless maintain a formal ending. This paper explores the tension at stake before focusing on the self-reflexive dimension of some stories in relation to Frame’s idea of closure. It concludes with a study of the unlikely presence in Frame’s early stories of what is often presented as the epitome of closure, i.e. happy endings (as the temporary privilege of childhood).

Complétude et “happy end” ne sont pas des notions que l’on associe a priori aux nouvelles de Janet Frame, textes au contenu narratif faible et fuyant qui maintiennent néanmoins une fin marquée. Cet article explore cette tension par le biais du rôle de la clausule avant de se pencher sur la dimension auto-réflexive de certaines nouvelles et conclut par l’étude des fins heureuses accordées aux récits d’enfance.

Keywords: childhood; childhood stories; clausula; closure; endings; hospital stories; self-reflexivity

Keywords: auto-réflexivité; récits d’enfance; enfance; clausule; complétude; fin; récits d’hôpitaux psychiatriques

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Literature

Armelle Parey. Closure and Happy Endings in Janet Frame’s The Lagoon and Other Stories. Miranda : Revue pluridisciplinaire sur le monde anglophone. Multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal on the English-speaking world , 2013, 8, ⟨10.4000/miranda.3395⟩. ⟨hal-02171973⟩