New Zealander Literature

They gave her a rise by Frank Sargeson

Author (1903-1982): Norris Frank Davey “Frank Sargeson”

Early life: “Religion - Uncle – Why he changed his name? – his influence to literature.

 Norris Frank Davey was born in Hamilton in 1903 and died in 1982. Henwas one of New Zealand’s
most celebrated writers of the 20th century.
 His father and his mother were loyal supporters of the local Methodist congregation. According to
his son, he was 'one of the town's worst wowsers in a town that was run by the wowsers'.
 Norris saw his father's puritanism and work ethic (a belief in the moral benefit and importance of
work and its inherent ability to strengthen character) and his mother's materialism and slavery to
convention as a reflection of 'little Bethel' – the world of the Methodist chapel. And that expression
came to represent for him all that was narrow and repressive in his upbringing.
 In 1921 he went to stay with an uncle, Oakley Sargeson, on his sheepfarm. Oakley, only 16 years
older than Norris, was gentle, generous and non-judgemental. He quietly debunked the Daveys'
religious beliefs, displayed an anarchic sense of humour, and worked to the rhythms of the seasons.
For Norris, the farm became the spiritual centre of his life until the death of his uncle in 1948: 'a
stationary point in time where one was released from all personal and social disorder, a point from
which one could get a marvellously dispassionate view of one's affairs, besides those of human
society.'
 In mid-1925 Norris moved to Auckland where he studied to be a solicitor. He also attended concerts
and plays in the city and read the classics of European literature. After practising as a solicitor in
Auckland for less than a year, he discovered he wanted to know the Old World while he was still
young and had the money. So, he sold a Hamilton section, given to him by his father when he turned
21 and sailed from Auckland in 1927.
 In London Davey began a frenetic round of art galleries, museums, concert halls and theatres. He
also undertook a two-week hike and an eight-week walking and train tour in France, Switzerland and
Italy. Back in London Davey moved to a room in Bloomsbury and began a five-month period of
writing in the mornings and reading in the British Museum Library in the afternoons (an attempt to
discover what religion, philosophy, science and art had made of human life').
 In 1928 he returned to New Zealand where after a series of homosexual encounters he ended
arrested. He was given a 2-year suspended sentence on the condition that he lived with his uncle.
 For 18 months Davey worked on Oakley's farm. He also continued to write fiction and poetry in the
mornings and helped with farm chores in the afternoons.
 In 1931 Davey left the farm to live and write in the family bach. He registered as unemployed so as
to be eligible for relief work and payments, and he began to grow fruit and vegetables on a large
scale. He also befriended social derelicts, whom he referred to as the 'odds-and-ends kind of people I
tend naturally to cherish and try to comfort'.
 Norris legally called himself Frank Sargeson. This was partly a rejection of what he saw as the
bourgeois values of his immediate family, partly a tribute to his uncle, and partly an attempt to
conceal his criminal conviction of 1929.
 In 1935, he published what he called his 'first real beginning' in a 500-word fictional sketch. It was
called 'Conversation with my uncle' and its style was influenced by the compressed prose. It also
New Zealand Literature

made use of the language and rhythms of everyday speech: what Sargeson had been seeking as 'an
appropriate language to deal with the material of New Zealand life'.
 In mid-1936 his first book, Conversation with my uncle, and other sketches was published. Sargeson
now began to meet other New Zealand writers. He continued to write fiction and journalism and had
had more than 40 stories published by 1940. That same year his 'The making of a New Zealander'
won first-equal place in the story section of the centennial literary competitions. By this time, too,
he was being published in journals in Sydney, London and the United States.
 Throughout the war Sargeson was troubled by surgical tuberculosis, which protected him from
conscription and qualified him for an invalid's benefit. He was cured when antibiotics became
available in the late 1940s.
 Sargeson's major preoccupation in the 1950s and early 1960s was the writing and production of 2
plays, a comedy and a drama. The effort of both productions exhausted him and critical reception of
the plays was insufficiently enthusiastic to persuade him to continue working in this genre.
 The 1960s brought an extraordinary revival of Sargeson's career. In 1965, he won the Bank of New
Zealand Katherine Mansfield Memorial Award.
 Sargeson devoted much of the 1970s to the writing of three volumes of autobiography. He also
wrote his final works of fiction in this period.
 By 1980 he was suffering from diabetes and congestive heart failure, and he had a mild stroke
shortly before his 77th birthday. The onset of senile dementia and cancer of the prostate in 1981
added momentum to his physical and mental deterioration. He was admitted in a geriatric in 1981
and died there in 1982. His last book, Conversation in a train, a collection of his critical writings, was
published in 1983.

 Frank Sargeson's major achievement was to introduce the rhythms and idiom of everyday New
Zealand speech to literature, although his technical sophistication makes even the short stories of
the 1930s and 1940s much more than the mere transcription of reality for which they were
sometimes mistaken.
 While his first stories were about the constricting effects of a puritan and materialistic society, many
of his later writings celebrated the freedom of those who had escaped from it. His work also
revealed a gradual shift from a colloquial and laconic manner to something closer to a more
elaborate style in his later novels and memoirs. His early style influenced a generation of younger
New Zealand writers.

Title: “They gave her a rise”

 The title of the story is connected with the value that money has to Mrs Bowman.
 It makes reference to how she saw an opportunity for her daughter to get a rise after some of the
other workers of the ammunition factory were killed by an explosion and so she forced her to go
back to her work (even though she didn’t want to).

Tone:

 Satirical (the way Mrs Bowman worries about the other dead girls). I think the author uses a
humorous story to show us what happened in a traditional family or a desperate mother in the 20’s
or 30’s. I feel like Frank Sargeson criticized these actions because it could have been part of his life
when he was young.
New Zealand Literature

Summary:

The story is about what parents are willing to do (or not do) for their own children. Mrs Bowman, a single
mother, is going through a tough time from a financial point of view, so in order to make ends meet she took
on cleaning jobs several days a week. One day, while working on the wharves with Mr. Doran (our narrator)
they hear a big explosion which they both know it must have happened at the nearby ammunitions factory.
It is here where Mrs Bowman has sent Sally, her 17-year old daughter, to work, so that Sally could provide an
extra income to the household. After this, Mrs Bowman is almost sure that her daughter is dead. She prayed
and begged God to give her baby back, and if God does that she would never do anything wrong. Eventually,
Sally appeared alive; she was just knocked down by the explosion. However, to the reader surprise, Mrs
Bowman doesn’t keep her word, she behaves mean as regards the amount of tea and sugar spent in her tea
and also obliges her to return to her job because of the money.

Historical Context: “New Zealander literature”

New Zealanders have long been avid readers, but until the mid-20th century most of the literature they
consumed was imported from Britain. Historian and poet Keith Sinclair identified the 1950s as the decade
'when the New Zealand intellect and imagination came alive'. This flowering of creative and critical talent
was not sudden, but the climax of a process that had begun at least two decades before.

By the 1930s a new breed of New Zealand writers was emerging, assisted by the growth of universities and
small publishing enterprises. The New Zealand centennial in 1940 provided a further boost to the local
literary scene, and later that decade a state Literary Fund was established. By the 1950s there was a wider
range of outlets for creative writing, including the influential magazine Landfall. New voices in poetry and
drama were generating heated debate over identity and politics, while writers of novels, short stories,
children's and popular fiction were also finding new audiences.

The 1930s saw the emergence in New Zealand of a new breed of writers, whose work usually embodied a
reaction against established ideas and conventions. Often these writers were influenced by recent trends in
literature overseas, notably modernism, and by social and political events such as the Depression. A growing,
if narrow, sense of nationalism was expressed, focusing on the dilemma of Pākehā who still looked to
England as 'Home', but increasingly identified with New Zealand through ties of kinship and daily experience.

Fictional writing: The novel and the short story

Much fiction of the 1940s and 1950s concentrated on the plight of an isolated individual in a hostile,
puritanical society. This theme mirrored the actual struggle of many New Zealand fiction writers to make a
living and achieve acceptance. Among those who produced significant novels were expatriates Dan Davin
and James Courage, and younger writers including David Ballantyne, Ruth France and Janet Frame. Frank
Sargeson's 'realist' narrative style with its blunt New Zealand idioms dominated. Maurice Duggan
transcended realist conventions in his short stories, drawing on a wide range of textual models.

Setting:

In time:

 War time: Because an ammunition factory is mentioned.

New Zealand Literature

In place:

 Wharves: a large dock or similar structure next to which ships are attached at shore to load or
unload.
 Mrs Bowman’s house:

Characters:

Mrs. Bowman:

 single mother
 hard-working
 pessimistic
 materialistic
 Hypocritical
 Manipulative
 grumbler (habitual complainer) and mean:
 not well-educated (grammar mistakes)

Sally:

 17 years old
 Manipulable and submissive
 hard-worker

Mr Doran (Narrator):

 a worker on the wharves,

 injured in the foot;
 a doolan,
 optimistic,
 subjective narrator,
 friendly and kind.

Conflicts

 Manipulation vs submission
 Life’s value vs money’s value
 Money vs love

Themes

 Materialistic - Hypocrite: Mrs Bowman is more interested on the money her daughter provides than
on her safety. She is hypocrite because when she believes her daughter is dead she regrets having
put her in that dangerous work but in the minute she realises she is alive, she insists in her coming
back to work in that dangerous place.
New Zealand Literature

 Selfishness: Mothers are supposed to be self-sacrificed. This mother is quite the opposite she is
more interested in her own being. She wants her teenage daughter to work on terrible conditions so
that she doesn’t have to scrub floors again.
 Promises in times of despair: Mrs Bowman, who is not a faithful follower of God, turns to him when
she is desperate for her daughter. She asks for forgiveness and makes a promise that she never
fulfils.
 Economy over love:
 Children’s obedience

Symbols

 A rise: dangerous working conditions in the factory. Cause

