And for anyone passing through OAMARU New Zealand, the Janet Frame House at 56 Eden Street is opening early this year, and for longer hours for the duration of the Real NZ festival.
http://www.nz2011.govt.nz/experiencerealnz/events/533-janet-frame-house
Opening date: Friday 9 September 2011
Hours: 1pm to 4 pm
Admission Fee: $5
"By the standards of most of their neighbours" says Frame biographer Michael King "family life at 56 Eden Street was austere and chaotic." The Frames were a working class family in a middle class milieu, and it's safe to say that then and now, much of the popular commentary in New Zealand about Janet Frame and her background has been filtered through a conservative middle class sensibility. Psychological judgements such as "chaotic" are made from a perspective on the "other side of the tracks". The daughters of the family all attended secondary school and three of them went on to study at University - an unusual achievement for a railway family.
Apart from its deep interest to fans of Janet Frame's writing, and to those who wish to learn more about New Zealand's greatest writer, Janet Frame's childhood home is of great interest because it has been preserved as an "authentic recreation of a New Zealand working class home during the Depression." A rare opportunity to step outside the grand mansions and museums and see how one ordinary small town family lived, and how from out of the protective cradle of the New Zealand social welfare system, that family gave rise to one very extraordinary New Zealand achiever.
1 comment:
Yes!!! this is great.Its a rare opportunity to step outside the grand mansions and museums and see how one ordinary small town family lived.
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