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

Abstract

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).

Keywords

• childhood
• childhood stories
• clausula
• closure
• endings
• hospital stories