Title: The New Zealand Novel 1860-1965

Author: Joan Stevens

Publication details: Reed Publishing (NZ) Ltd, 1966

Digital publication kindly authorised by: Sylvia Johnston

Part of: New Zealand Texts Collection

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The New Zealand Novel 1860-1965

A Local Problem

A Local Problem. When Katherine Mansfield reviewed this novel in 1920,9 she discerned its unusual sincerity, though she had some very hard things to say about its art. She fastened in particular on sticky passages in the first chapter, where Jane Mander tries to show us all at once both her heroine and the world to which she is introduced. Katherine Mansfield picks out this passage from the paragraph on the "tremendous scenery" (page nine) :

"Stiff laurel-like puriris stood beside the drooping fringe of the lacy rimu; hard blackish kahikateas brooded over the oak-like titoki with its lovely scarlet berry." (Just before this passage readers have met for the first time the unfamiliar names kauri, kowhai and rata.)

She asks, "What can that possibly convey to an English reader?" This is the right question, asked in the wrong way. The true audience for literature is human beings, whoever they are. But in 1920, doubtless, it was the English reader who had to be placated. The real question remains, is this bit of native, local information relevant to the theme, significant, and contributing to the total effect? What is Jane Mander wanting to do? To convey Alice's state of mind? (Did Alice know the Maori names?) To make a picture for us? Or has she been betrayed into what is merely a pointless tourist blurb? The latter, I believe. Examine the rest of the passage. Is she not "romancing"— with kowhai, rata and clematis in bloom, and titoki in berry, all at the same time?

But The Story of a New Zealand River is nevertheless a novel which ought to be taken seriously, an attempt to interpret experience. In strength of feeling, in a creative vision of reality, in use of the possibilities of a New Zealand setting, in its frankness about sexual problems, it is well above any New Zealand novel published up to 1920. If today some of its didacticism seems flatfootedly obvious, its melodrama of childbirth and accidents by flood and field too highly coloured, we should remember what the difficulties then were of getting New Zealand experience on to paper. Jane Mander never developed any great technical skill, but she is clear-eyed, courageous, honest; she has a sense of form, and some understanding of artistic control.

She wrote three more New Zealand novels, and two with English settings. Unfavourable reception in her own country discouraged her after 1928 from further efforts.

The Passionate Puritan, 1922, brings a young school teacher into the Northland timber settlement of Puhipuhi, where a lively plot in- page 39 volves her in the usual love story. The value of this novel lies first in its documentary material, the amusing, vivid picture of the mill township and its inhabitants. Secondly, there is a good study of a young woman moving from romantic illusion to a more balanced and realistic attitude.

The Strange Attraction, 1923, deals with country journalism and politics. Allen Adair, 1925, takes up that persistent topic of the twenties, the pull between Home and home. Allen, son of middle-class New Zealanders with hankerings for Home, is sent to Oxford to become an Englishman. He hates it, and comes back, settling in the Northland gumfields and opening a country store. A second conflict then develops, for he marries a city-bred wife, whose longing is to return to the quick-profit materialism of the urban world. The novel ends quietly in compromise, with a wry acceptance of fate.