Walking-Out Most of us will have walked-out on someone, sometime. Most children ‘run away from home’, if only momentarily, and as adults we ‘run away’ not from our parents but our partners, again often momentarily. Some adopt the silent approach, relying more on gestures, others combine strategies, perhaps slamming a fist on a table whilst screaming ‘I’ve had enough’. Whatever strategy is adopted, it is clear that walk-outs are a highly charged and significant social action. Given a growing body of academic work on everyday life (e.g. Bell, 2001; Miller and McHoul, 1998), analysis of walk-outs could begin with a trawl through the literature; here, however, I want to take a different approach and focus on a single case. It is the story of a walk-out by Janet Frame, one of New Zealand’s literary greats. Although my interest is sociological rather than literary, I hope to show that these two realms are deeply entwined. In early adulthood, Janet Frame trained to be a school teacher. The significant walk-out in her life is a dramatic departure from the classroom on the day of a teaching inspector’s visit. The conventional wisdom (e.g. Evans, 1977; Frame, 1984) is that this event marked her turning from the everyday world – a teaching career – to the world of the literary imagination. Michael King’s recent ‘authorised’ biography (2000) presents a different version, or at least a change in emphasis from the versions of Frame and Patrick Evans. It is fitting, though, to begin with Frame’s version as told in her autobiography. It is 1945. Janet Frame has just turned twenty one, is training to be a primary teacher and is on section in a Dunedin school: