Screens in Janet Frame’s “The Secret”
In “The Secret,” the safe world of childhood is shattered by an enigma far larger than all the small secrets it shelters, and yet the story reads like a little riddle: Myrtle who already sees herself on the screen as the next Ginger Rogers is in fact nothing but a Gingerbread girl. Far from introduc...
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| Gepubliceerd in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ces, |
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| Hoofdauteur: | |
| Formaat: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Taal: | Anglais |
| Gepubliceerd in: |
Commonwealth Essays and Studies
2021
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| Online toegang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Samenvatting: | In “The Secret,” the safe world of childhood is shattered by an enigma far larger than all the small secrets it shelters, and yet the story reads like a little riddle: Myrtle who already sees herself on the screen as the next Ginger Rogers is in fact nothing but a Gingerbread girl. Far from introducing a reassuring logic, the subtext contributes to the uncanny nature of what is touched upon. What proves particularly powerful in this story, as in the rest of The Lagoon and Other Stories, is the paradoxical association of opacity and transparency: the imaginary is not a veil for the symbolic that can be lifted. There is no going behind the screen – even when one crosses to the other side. Rather, enigmas in Frame’s fiction write themselves on screens which, whether verbal or visual, are to be conceived both as barriers and filters. |
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