Reclamation of Death
This novel is a meditation on life and language rather than the "lives" of her characters. Godfrey, Beatrice and their family are representative of something larger, more universal. The title is a symbol that Frame's story is filtered through. The novel was originally enclosed by the moniker The Rainbirds, which points directly to this specific family, the new title guides the reader beyond the actual story line. The images of antipodal relationships are pervasive. This method of looking at the novel shows us that Janet Frame is not just writing a story, she is playing with the power of language. By making the story symbolic, the placement and meaning of each word becomes wrought with importance.
The Rainbirds are not individuals; they are representatives of the "everyman". They are symbols of the world they live in, and their actions exemplify the impact of that world on any individual. The word antipode-referring to two opposite points on the globe-guides the reader to this world-view perspective. The primary example of this is the connection between England and New Zealand. They are both small island countries, yet the interests of one supercede the other. Geographically they are antipodal, but globally they play very disparate and unequal roles. Godfrey and Lynley, immigrants from England to New Zealand, emphasize this. The contrast between their perceptions of the new land, Godfrey as long-time resident and Lynley as new arrival, reveals a great deal about the British mentality as concerns colonization. Soon after her arrival Lynley observes of Godfrey:
He talked, too, as if the whole country belonged to him for him to do what he like with it. In England it was never like that. You knew your place there and you were respectfully grateful for it and you did not get ambitious, above your station. This was something new in Godfrey-to be admitting so freely what he planned to do and acquire, as if he had inherited the whole country like a vast estate. (85).
Land in England has been, for centuries, primarily the property of the aristocracy. In this new place, ownership of land becomes a possibility for anyone-at least anyone of British descent.
This thought is taken further by Frame's repetition of "reclaimed land." The natural appearance of this island that has been claimed by the British is not enough, now the unusable and undesirable portions must be reclaimed. While Godfrey is in his coma, he thinks of home as "[t]his reclaimed land that I never claimed yet am given a share of" (38). In this thought, the entire island becomes reclaimed land-stating the presupposition by the British that the indigenous peoples do not have an original claim. Beatrice makes this point to Lynley by saying, "We're people here, you know . . . just as you are people over there. It's no use trying to compare your country and mine by weighing the burden of suffering with the verdict that the heavier burden gives superiority!" (117). She could have made her point stronger by saying that New Zealanders actually carried the heavier burden, the burden of the British. Yet she shows herself the stronger character by attempting to negate the value of any type of superiority/inferiority dichotomy. At the end of the novel, Godfrey again comments on this when he returns to the site of the accident: "And it was there too that it had happened, almost at the same place. . . . The land should never have been reclaimed" (231). By this point he realizes that his place in the world is somehow inappropriate, that he is filling a role that should not exist.
Of course, his perceptions are greatly strengthened by another antipodal relationship-between life and death. After he is proclaimed dead and then returns to life he is reborn, and this is a concept that he is unable to comprehend. He tells Beatrice, "I don't feel like an inhabitant of earth anymore. I feel as if I've been blasted back to where they kept telling me to go when I first came here-remember? Go back to your own country. I feel as if I've gone back but it's no use, everywhere's a place I don't recognize" (123). His "death" has made him an outsider for a second time, and he is unable to assimilate. This takes on religious connotations, where Godfrey is compared to Jesus Christ the savior. "Our children, the country's heritage, are being claimed and possessed by a crank who has spread the word that he died and returned to life when who knows what really happened" (243-244). Supposedly, the British are "saved" and the New Zealanders are "heathens," yet none of these characters are religious. Because of this, the Christian overtones placed on Godfrey become symbolic. As he removes himself more and more from the world, his situation becomes increasingly frightening to everyone else.
The imported British and the ideologies they represent are unwelcome. Godfrey cannot resolve this for he has been told that he has a right to this land, he has made it his home. After he dies, however, his hold on his home becomes very fragile. He no longer knows where his home is. He asks Beatrice, while sitting in their living room, "This is our home isn't it? This and not the place you found for Teena and Sonny and you and me where the yellow flowers grow in the summer" (210). The other place he is referring to is the new family plot in the graveyard, emphasizing the antipodean relationship (the yellow flowers confused as the living room). While it seems that death would be the best thing for him-nonexistence is a role he could fill-that is also impossible because even the graveyard has been reclaimed. The antipode that makes up the reborn Godfrey has no place in the world, and he cannot dissipate this warring dichotomy within himself so that he can find his home.
In Yellow Flowers, Janet Frame is telling a story, but it is not the story of the Rainbirds. These characters and all of their actions are manifestations of themes. Her story is of life and death, of the roles people play on this planet and the validity of those roles. Frame's language overrides everything found within the novel, and each of those words is carefully chosen. However, the characters use her words and the reader must focus not only on the words themselves, but who uses them and why.
At the beginning of the novel, when Beatrice is contemplating the arrival of Lynley, she thinks about the world Lynley is arriving from. "Heaths, moors, commons, downs, fells, fields, they're not part of my life" (35). While these words-these names-are meaningless to Beatrice, they are a part of her world because that world has supplanted itself on top of her own. Beatrice speaks in a never-ending stream of clichés in order to keep anything abnormal at bay. Her simple platitudes are meant to comfort, but they actually work as a reminder of how far from normalcy their situation really is. At the end of the novel she finally comes to realize this: "A feeling of horror at her poisonous cliché comforts made her unable to complete the 'What's best for you'" (232). By that point the damage has been done, and she is unable to make any sort of reparation-their lives have sunk into inevitableness.
Godfrey came to this same type of conclusion when he "wondered why he had ever trusted so obvious a deceiver as language" (198). Not only is Godfrey questioning his means of communication, but Frame is also asking her readers to question if any of this can be trusted. Godfrey tries to escape the boundaries and alter language, such as in his recitation of the Drol's Pryer:
Our afther which rat in heaven; hollowed by thy mane; thy dingkum come; thy will be done on thear as it is in heaven; give us this day our daily dread and frogvie us pour press-stares as we frog-view those who press-stare against us; and deal us not into tame pitton but relived us from veil for thine is the digkom, the prowe and orgly for veer, and veer, mean. (163)
The overtly negative connotations found here reveal that not only is Godfrey attempting to escape language, but that the role in which he finds himself is sacrilegious. He is angry at what has happened to him and places this anger on God, even though he is a manifestation of the Son. This type of word play appears again when Godfrey refers to his "dis-ease" (200). He thinks of himself as handicapped, however he has no disease. He is merely not at ease with himself, or with the world. Language again confronts him as he thinks of life, for he was proclaimed dead, and now he is "officially alive" (89). Without the language he would just be, and this confusion and fear of the unknown that surrounds him would disappear. But people use language to explain the unknowable with words like "life," "death," and "religion" and Godfrey finds himself irrevocably in the center of these conundrums.
Frame also uses a great deal of repetition to emphasize specific ideas. The word "reclaimed" appears over and over again, mostly via Godfrey, but it also appears in other places.
Reclaimed land. Miss Hendry spoke bitterly as if the land was being reclaimed and she'd not had her fair share. Who owned the land? Who stole it in the first place? Was it a matter between the sea and the Harbor Board but what an unlikely negotiation for the sea to make when the sea could not write its own name on a document, and yet its mark was more powerful than its name. (18-19)
Not only is the reclaiming of the land leaving her out, but she places the guilt of the British over the ocean. In many ways, this is how the British treated the peoples they claimed-as inanimate forces of nature that must be dealt with, confined, controlled.
The scope of this novel is far beyond the confines of the Rainbirds existence. It is Frame's meditation on her country and how it has been shaped through its relationship with Britain. The antipodean room of Godfrey Rainbird is a metaphor for life and death, for British colonization, for basic human connection. These are all topics that Frame herself was faced by in her own life-an intellectual with no other outlet than words on a page while locked in a mental institution. For her language was power, and that power superceded the confines of national origin, of class structures, and her own inhibitions.
If you would like to know more about Janet Frame, she has published an autobiography in three volumes that is easily available. There is also a movie based on her life entitled An Angel at My Table directed by Jane Campion (the names of Janet Frame and Jane Campion should both be familiar from the movie The Piano).
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