SOURCE: "Janet Frame: A Way of Seeing in The Lagoon and Other Stories," in Critical Essays on the New Zealand Short Story, edited by Cherry Hankin, Heinemann Publishers, 1982, pp. 112-31.

In the following survey, Rhodes contends that Frame's early short stories are distinguished by her treatment of perception, both of the external world and of the inner lives of characters.

'Yes I have a pair of eyes', replied Sam, 'and that's just it. If they wos a pair o' patent double million magnifyin' gas microscopes of hextra power, p'raps I might be able to see through a flight o' stairs and a deal door; but bein' only eyes, you see, my wision's limited.' When Janet Frame was typing her Lagoon stories in a glorified linen cupboard, converted into a bedroom at the boarding-house where she was working for a short period, her outward 'wision', like Sam Weller's...