JANET FRAME'S SHORT STORY THE BATH: The Tribulations of Old Age

We often entertain this romantic and sentimental assumption that old age is a time of peace and happiness after a whole life devoted to work and the family; it's a time to enjoy the full benefits of one's hard work and efforts. In The Bath, however, New Zealand writer Janet Frame (1924 - 2004) reverses this interpretation and uncompromisingly explores the terror and torture of old age. It's 17 years since this old woman is managing on her own after her husband's death. Each year she makes it a point to go to the graveyard to place flowers on the tombstone. But the journey is a real problem. In a few concrete details, Frame charts her mental state - the walk to the bus-stop, the change of buses, the bitter wind, the tiredness. Each works against her, exerting demands she finds increasingly awesome. So much so that there's a death-wish on her part: she longs to find a place beside the graves.

Physically and emotionally drained, living has become an excruciating experience for her. With growing pain in her back and loss of strength in her hands, fear builds up inside her - a feeling that will harass her at every moment. Taking a bath turns out to be irksome. It's a task she is afraid to perform. She fears falling and injuring herself, and with no one to help. We find her clinging tightly to the edge of the rim that seems like the edge of a cliff with a deep drop below into the sea. A striking imagery to bring out the profundity of her distress and panic. Her slow, painful movements portray her perturbed state; she doesn't lie down or lean back to bathe, she sits upright. Her fear is not being able to climb out. Indeed, climbing out of the bath is a major obstacle - the fear of making a mistake is very much there on her mind. She wants to get over it by inventing all sorts of excuses to stay in the bath for some more time. It's a fear encrusted far into her mind.

Loneliness She makes several unsuccessful attempts to get out. What we notice is her utter helplessness and her agony of something happening to her unexpectedly. She feels imprisoned. The author uses body language to brilliant effect. In fact, a simple gesture like striking the sides of the bath vividly brings home her anguish, confusion and her desperation to survive. It's a relief when finally she climbs out. I will never take another bath in this house or anywhere, she says to herself. This is just to tell us how old age can be a burden sometimes.

Nearly everything is a potential danger to her life: her faintness, dizziness, household chores, potholes, cars, motorcycles. Threat from outside as well as from within summarizes her existence. She has relatives. They do drop occasionally but ironically not when she needs them the most. Old age can be a pathetic moment. Each little task becomes burdensome and one is condemned to live in fear, especially when there's nobody around, for one never knows when a second of inattention can claim your life. In The Bath we come face to face with this sad, cruel reality. In the short story The Bath the bath is compared to a grave symbolizing the danger in performing everyday tasks. For example, she sees her mind and body as two different things, working against each other; surprising her bad back and powerless wrists into performing feats they might normally rebel against. She sees her body as the enemy, not a friend, meaning that the old lady is a danger to herself. The scene set in the graved in The Bath emphasizes the loneliness of elderly life. For example, I shout for help, she thought, no one will hear me. No on e in the world will hear me shows the isolated loneliness of the old lady and her theory as she feels very lonely without her husband. I looked after my husbands grave for 17 years also shows her heart is still with her husband and in a way shows her wishes either for him or to join him in death. In The Bath the old woman is constantly saying No one will hear me, no one, no one, reinforcing the idea to herself that she is alone now, though occasionally she dares to think how much easier it would be if her husband were alive, or if she were dead. In Winter Garden the words no change, no change are constantly repeated throughout the story to emphasise how tr apped and isolated Mr. Paget feels. Frame uses repetition in both texts to support the isolation of her main characters. Frame uses internal monologue the to express the feelings of helplessness and desperation that the old lady goes through while in the bath and trying to get out. She says If I shout for help no one will hear me. No one in the world will hear me. No one will know if Im in the bath and cant get out. The main character in Winter Garden, Mr. Paget, expresses this helplessness of life; Would she not be better dead then lying silent, unknowing in a world where he could not reach her. Frame uses internal monologue to highlight the isolation and despair of these characters they must speak to themselves ultimately because they have no one to talk with. In The Bath, the language technique of transitioning from third person narration to first person narration, when the main character talks to herself, is used to communicate the loneliness of the main character. Frame uses this to emphasise and bring sympathy from readers due to the fact that when elderly people have been living by themselves for years, they get lonely and crave the company of others. By talking to themselves it gives them comfort. Frame uses metaphor when the old lady of The Bath is describing the bath tub as an insurmountable obstacle to her; The edge of the bath cliff edge shows how afraid she is of the challenges of looking after herself now that she is older. The bath is also yellow stained, making it seem aged ju st like the main character. Frame presents her as believing the bath is something she cannot escape, an enemy to her survival. The author: Nene Janet Paterson Clutha ONZ CBE (28 August 1924 29 January 2004) better known by her Pen name of Janet Frame was a New Zealand author. She wrote eleven novels, four collections of short stories, a book of poetry, an edition of juvenile fiction, and three volumes of autobiography during her lifetime. Since her death, a twelfth novel, a second volume of poetry, and a handful of short stories have been released. Frame's celebrity is informed by her dramatic personal history as well as her literary career. Following years of psychiatric hospitalisation, Frame was scheduled for a lobotomy that was cancelled when, just days before the procedure, her debut publication of short stories was [1] unexpectedly awarded a national literary prize. These dramatic personal experiences feature prominently in Frame's autobiographical trilogy and director Jane Campion's popular film adaptation of the texts, with recognisably autobiographical elements further resurfacing in many of her fictional [2] publications. Characterised by scholar Simone Oettli as a writer who simultaneously sought fame

and anonymity, Frame eschewed the dominant New Zealand literary realism of the post-war era, [4] combining prose, poetry, and modernist elements with a magical realist style, garnering numerous [5] local literary prizes despite mixed critical and public reception.

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