Category: 2016 Blog Post

“They had passed the hill above the churchyard, when Lady Glyde insisted on turning back to look her last at her mother’s grave. Ms. Halcombe tried to shake her resolution; but, in this one instance, tried in vain. She was immovable. Her dull eyes lit with a sudden fire and flashed through the veil hungover them. Her wasted fingers strengthened, moment by moment, round the friendly arm that they had held so listlessly until this time. I believe in my soul that the Hand of God was pointing there way back to them, and that the most innocent and most afflicted of His creatures was chosen and that dread moment, to see it.” (430)

What immediately shocked me about this paragraph was that Laura has this fleeting moment of extreme determination, that we rarely see in her, especially after her encounters in the asylum and those two awful men. She was “immovable” showing strength. Her eyes “lit with a sudden fire”, flashing through her veil, breaking free of the erasure that Percival and Fosco bestowed on her, even if only for a moment. These “wasted fingers” came alive to her own disposition, breaking free of their listlessness. This is a moment where we see Laura acting on her accord which she doesn’t usually do, but she still has the aura of a daze around her.

Another note is her shocking likeness to Anne, once again. Not only is she hanging around the grave of her mother, in a misty night, but she is followed by a caretaker (Marian resembling Mrs. Clements). And there they find Walter. The last sentence of this passage also proves interesting because it seems as if the hand of god has lumped these two unfortunate souls together of Anne and Laura. Although I’m not sure who this “them” is that god is pointing too. Maybe it’s the grave? It’s also interesting to think about how Anne and Laura are seen as the most innocent, but also the most afflicted, so what does this say? Are the innocent always characterized as the most manipulated? Usually, that’s the case.

“Her fingers had a restless habit, which I remembered in her as a child, of always playing with the first thing that came to hand, whenever anyone was talking to her. On this occasion they wandered to the album, and toyed absently about the margin of the little water-colour drawing. The expression of melancholy deepened on her face,” (142).

I find it very interesting to note that as soon as we discuss Freud’s ideas about repressed trauma through repetitive actions, we get this passage with Laura’s fiddling fingers. But before I get into that, let’s just unpack this a little bit. The word choice in the first sentence proves that it’s not Laura that has a restless habit, but her fingers. In this way, although the audience knows that they are a part of her own body and actions, they are somewhat disconnected. In fact, they almost serve a purpose to distract her from what’s going on around her and more specifically the conversations that she has. Freud would highlight upon the idea that she has been doing this since childhood, and would see this repetitive action as a symptom of some repressed trauma. What that trauma could be, I don’t know, but it’s definitely something that she would have to constantly distract herself from.

However, this repetitive act is a little different because of the object she’s drawn to and what that represents. She moves to the little album of water color drawings that Mr. Hartwright had left, and implicitly we know what’s going on. She misses and loves him. And the fact that her face “deepened with melancholy” proves that. She’s not absentmindedly playing with the thing like she usually does, she’s overwhelmed with emotion.

Finally, Laura consistently gets characterized with child-like associations. Her innocence and pureness radiates throughout the novel, and then with the words in this passage like “restless”, “toyed”, and “playing” it sends the message home.

Because of Laura’s need to distract herself, and her common associations with being a child, it proves that “pure” women need both of these things: to keep themselves busy while also being protected. The Women in White does a good job at implicitly showing this sentiment throughout the novel.

 

“The notion that my sordid personal life had some sort of larger import was strange, but seductive.” (Bechdel, 80)

At this point in the narrative, Allison has begun to explore her identity through literature available at her college. Unlike the literary texts she’d been reading in her household as a child, she is able to find texts that articulate parts of her identity yet to be examined. In this space, Allison finds power in her new found visibility. In the confines of her home, her experiences were never centered, but this different sphere offers new literary realms that counter her feelings of isolation. In addition to finding literary comfort, Allison finds physical spaces on campus that offer networks of support and friendships. In this same time frame, Allison is simultaneously exposed to feminist theory. In this particular panel, Allison is at a “Gay Dance,” where she overhears the comment “Feminism is the theory. Lesbianism is the practice,” (Bechdel, 80) bringing up the conflation of political affiliation with sexuality in terms of feminist ideologies and lesbian identity. Although this is problematic, it made me think about Adrienne Rich’s “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” and the negation of lesbian existence in these circles as a way to combat stereotypes about feminists. This is problematic because it not only renders lesbian identities invisible; it undermines the importance of women loving individuals and their possible contributions to feminist theory.

Fun Home draws on both literary and visual elements to express a story. Without one or the other, the story would not be the same. The text and the visual draw on each other to enhance the story. In several instances, particular scenes contain sexual innuendos regarding to the homosexuality of Alison Bechdel’s dad. In one scene, for example, Bechdel’s dad is described as being passionate, and amongst the passion are several phallic symbols. Had the image not been present, the inference would not be as strong or subliminal. Further, if the text was not there, an inference could be made, but it would not be as blatant as if the text was there.

Judith Butler said “gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts” (140). Alison’s well-furnished Victorian house seems like it is another manifestation of such “an exterior space” with “repetition of acts”. Alison describes her home as “an artist’s colony”, where all the family members were “absorbed in our separate pursuits” which consisted of “compulsion” (134).
Alison’s compulsion shows how people willingly start to police themselves. First, it seems like they became a dictator of autonomy. Tedious rules are all set by themselves. As her father was ‘autodidact’, ‘autocrat’, and ‘autocide’ caught up in compulsive furnishing, Alison learns the fantasy of autonomy from ‘autobiography’ his father gave her in which she writes “I think” obsessively (140-141). As what the phrase says, Alison delves into herself just like what his father and other family members did.
However, the phrase “I think” was a deception. By attaching the phrase on every sentences, it scales down all the perceptions and ideas into mere murmuring that has no chance of empathy and approval. The autobiography which was first expected to be a space ruled by herself, now became a display of pretense that ruled out her real feelings and thoughts. But the compulsion cannot be stopped and the repetition of practice consolidates such façade.
The counterparts of façade that conceals what is real are Alison’s autobiography, the father’s Victorian style house, the mother’s play and also the gender identity according to Judith Butler. Therefore, various compulsions of Alison’s and her father’s are not just symptoms of anxiety of disapproval, but actually symbolizes the identification of their gender. Doubts about her father’s house thus well corresponds to the question of authenticity of her self-identity.

I’m not sure what kinds of feelings are felt after a parents’ death and I can’t ever try and pretend to channel what those feelings might entail. When thinking about Bechdel and her recollection of her father’s life, and the life that they shared, I am still left with the idea that Bechdel has, like me, many questions that are still unanswered. Questions pertaining to her father’s sexual orientation, whether or not the allegations of sexual abuse to a minor were true, and if he was, even to say, happy. However I am making the claim that it is within those unanswered questions that Bechdel was able to navigate her own identity, while still struggling with that fact that she never honestly knew his identity. It is his death that brings about this complexity, this speculative persona that she didn’t think to expect from herself. Bechdel does not know how to interpret her father’s death, “What’s lost in translation is the complexity of loss itself” (Bechdel, 120). In this scene that Bechdel says this, she is looking through a box filled with old pictures and in that box she sees a picture that stands out: a photo of her father in a woman’s bathing suit. Bechdel had the question of why, but ends with her statement that “he’s lissome, elegant” (Bechdel, 120). It is as though Bechdel is letting her father exist as himself without feeling the need to identify him. The idea of being “lost in translation” is Bechdel’s outcry to deconstruct her feelings of grief toward her father’s death. The “complexity of loss itself” is the grief. How is Bechdel supposed to interpret her father’s death, when she knew almost nothing about him, as he was barely nurturing and only took interest in Bechdel once she was in college. What does it mean to lose someone who barely revealed a persona of themselves that had encapsulated most of his adult life? “Lost,” meaning “no longer to be found,” (Dictionary.com) is Betchdel’s inadequacy to find her place on the spectrum of grief, as she is no longer able to see herself as being a griever but sees herself “lost in translation.” “Lost in the translation” over her father’s identity, “lost in the translation” over her father’s absence of emotion, and “lost in the translation” over her inability to fully accept that her father was gone. To see someone as tangible, is the idea that their physical presence exists among you. In the scenes that we see leading up to her father’s death, there is a connection starting to form, although slow, and the tangibility of them being together gave the father a sort of contentment. The tangibility is then lost with his death, and it is in that loss that Bechdel begins to find herself.

 

Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Print.

Lost [Def. 2]. (n.d) in Dictionary.com, Retrived: April 26, 2016,

from http://www.dictionary.com/browse/lost?s=t

 

 

 

 

 

At the end of the novel there are two frames one with a letter that Bruce sent to Alison where she says, “I think of his letter, the one where he does and doesn’t come out to me” (Bechdel 230). Then there is frame with a passage from James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. In his letter he is talking to Alison about her keeping her options open with her sexuality and it being a cop out, he says, “Taking sides is rather heroic, and I am not a hero.” Then in the next frame it shows Stephen Dedalus saying, “You saved men from drowning. I am not a hero however” (Bechdel 230). Here Stephen denies responsibility by saying he is not a hero and in the frame above Bruce uses this characters line to deny responsibility of choosing a side in terms of his sexuality. This is his way of coming out to Alison through a character of a novel’s words. In Autobiography of Red Geryon is able to express himself through his photographs because of his disconnect with language. He feels certain ways on the inside but isn’t able to express those feelings with language so he uses photography as a way of brings those feelings out. Similarly to Geryons use of a tool to represent himself and his feelings, Bruce uses literature and their characters to represent himself and his feelings. Unlike Geryon it is not because of his disconnect with language it’s because of his disconnect of his own sexual identity. He knows how he feels about his sexuality on the inside but he can’t expresses himself, so he uses the characters in the books he has read to connect with and be able to express himself.

In Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home it is apparent how profoundly her parents influenced the way that she understood and portrayed herself. A lot of Bechdel’s understanding of herself derived from her father posthumously. One particular similarity that Bechdel and her father, Bruce, shared was their coming into their sexuality during college. Alison, at the age of 19, labeled herself as a lesbian and understood her own sexuality. The pictures that she found of her father wearing a women’s bathing suit when he was in college did not strike her as being a fraternity prank. Instead she saw says “He’s wearing a women’s bathing suit. A fraternity prank? But the pose he strikes is not mincing or silly at all. He’s lissome, elegant” (Bechdel, 120). When she and her father are at a diner, they see a butch truck driver who Alison immediately identifies with, though she hides this fact from her father. He asks her if she wants to look like the truck driver, to which Alison immediately replies “no”, because she could not answer him honestly. Bruce passed down to Alison his own struggle with identity, forcing her to feel like she should reject part of herself so as to conform to heteronormative society. Kate Bornstein’s piece Gender Outlaw also discusses this rejection of identity as a way to avoid criticism, scrutiny, or worse. She says that to stay safe, one must bury themselves deep within the closet. Bruce does this more or not successfully, but in doing so he shows his daughter to do the same. Whatever the case, Bruce’s influence on Alison had such a profound effect on her even into her adulthood. She chose to write a memoir and centralize the plot on her relationship with her parents, and more specifically on her relationship with her father.

Fun Home creates an immediate and obvious dissonance between the narrator, Alison, and her father. Alison is consumed with creating a masculine image for herself, both in appearance and activities. Her father, on the other hand, spent his days consumed with culturally deemed feminine tasks, such as interior design and fashion (even going so far as to attempt to dress his daughter in more feminine clothing that he appreciated.) Their relationship was doomed to fail from the beginning; both were closeted homosexuals just trying to fit into the family dynamic they found themselves in, but both identifying in very different ways. The similarities in circumstance were glaring, but their dissonance thrived on their lack of communication and openness.

By the end of the book, their similarities reveal themselves. We learn of their similar transgender childhood experiences, as well as their attempts to both continue on with and hide their homosexual experiences from their family. While different in personality, their experiences were nearly parallel. The sudden realization for Alison, however, is that the main difference in their experiences was in acceptance amongst peers. At her school, she had the opportunity to join with a group of peers who shared her experiences and identified openly in similar ways. Her father, on the other hand, had no shared experiences and had to hide and suppress his alternative sexuality. By the time it surfaced, it was no longer a point of pride in the same way that Alison had found it to be, but of shame.

In a way, as implied by Bechdel, Alison’s father was dead long before his (possible) suicide. “Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death” (Bechdel 228), and her father met an untimely death both socially and personally as a result of it. While their experiences were undoubtedly similar, if not nearly identical, the difference in interpersonal experience was the difference between life and death, success and tragedy.

The troubles with societies acceptance on queer identities has been an issue for a very long time. One of the consequences of unaccepted queer identities is the commitment of suicide. In Fun Home, Bechdel uses the suicide of her father to understand how outcast individuals end up taking their life because they are not accepted socially and emotionally. For Bechdel, her fathers suicide is comprehensible. Who will be happy in a life where one’s identity is not acknowledge and furthermore not accepted by you. Bechdel states that “When I try to project what Dad’s life might have been like if he didn’t die in 1980, I don’t get very far” (195). Her Dad’s life had no meaning because he was suffering to come out as his true identity, that he was gay. Hiding one’s identity is eventually having a sickness inside of you that is hard to take off or to explain. Years and years pass and hiding your identity can eventually lead to a breakthrough that could lead to a relief or death. If he would of continue, he will be hurt both physically and emotionally. This is because he was not able to express who he was, his true identity. Bechdel will rather see his father dead then “If he’d lived into those early years of AIDS, I tell myself, I might very well have lost him anyway, and in a more painful way” (195). She accepts that in order for him to escape his true identity he needed to escape from this world, he needed to escape from himself. Bechdel accepts her fathers death in order to understand one decision that he was able to make. A decision that was hard but nonetheless he committed to it.