Category: 2016 Blog Post

Each time I read Fun Home, I become more and more aware of Bruce’s complicated relationship with gender, both within himself and through Alison. Much like how Riki Anne Wichins describes how gender policing and cissexism/cisnormativity affected her childhood, we can see how Bruce, who is not only a closeted gay man but one who has expressed interest in crossdressing (in the photo Alison finds of him in a woman’s bathing suit) and in the possibility of being trans (in the car with Alison on the way to the movies), struggles to balance his gender and sexual identities along with being a “normal” undertaker and family man in central Pennsylvania. Not only do we see gender dysphoria in Bruce, but we see him trying to squash it (or at least brush it off) with Alison, who is fascinated by a butch trucker in a diner, abhors wearing dresses and barrettes, and rues the day her breasts start developing. It seems as though college was Bruce’s time to explore these hidden parts of his identity, as on page 120 Alison first believes the swimsuit getup to be some sort of fraternity prank, and then wonders if the photograph taken on the top of Bruce’s frat house was possibly taken by a (presumably male) lover. College is also the place where Alison meets other gay people her age, starts being able to dress herself without her father’s scrutiny, and eventually has her first relationship with a woman. One can see how Bruce became part of a cycle of gender policing, as he himself was probably policed by his parents, and how Alison breaks out of the cycle and is able to live more freely as not only a lesbian but as a butch lesbian.

“the troubling gap between words and meaning” (143). This passage of Fun Home really made me think of the relation between the signifier and the signified, that is the connection between a word and the notion to which it refers. In terms of retelling a story, as it is the case in Cereus Blooms at Night and Fun Home, do words interpret accurately acts and feelings? Is the narrator trustworthy?

In Cereus Blooms at Night, Tyler – the narrator – tells the story of Mala Ramchandin. Throughout the novel, he succeeds in giving form to his patient’s story thanks to a first source, Mala herself, but also through various second sources, such as Cigarette Smoking Nana or Otoh. In this case, we have a third person narrative and it seems legitimate to question the veracity of the facts reported. However, even when dealing with an autobiography written at the first person narrative, one can wonder about the relation between the words and the facts that they describe. Why deciding to choose this adjective in particular to translate this feeling? How come that there exists a word that expresses a precise idea in one particular language and not in another? “How did I know that the things I was writing were absolutely, objectively true?” (141) wonders Alison in Fun Home. It is undeniable that words and language set boundaries. This is what she comes to realize: “the troubling gap between word and meaning” (143). In Fun Home, Alison tells her story through a comic book. Although drawings are as subjective as writings – in terms of the choice of angles, colors, shape of the speech balloons, etc. – the fact that there are both text and drawing may be a way to make up for the limitation words set.

But in the end, one can ask whether the sincerity of a narrative is essential in the process of conveying the message(s) of a text.

While reading Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, I was struck by the prominent role that geographic location plays in the process of identity formation, sexual identity specifically. Because Bechdel’s graphic novel describes the process of both Alison’s and her father’s separate experiences of identity formation, we get two perspectives on how geographic location affects this process. Bruce’s process of identity formation is curtailed by his limited geographic location, while Alison, who moves more freely from place to place, is able to develop her sexual identity with fewer restrictions.

Bechdel emphasizes how her father’s geographic location curtailed his process of identity formation through two key illustrations. The first illustration maps significant places related to her father’s life (his grave, the place where he died, her family’s house, the house where her father was born) within a circle a mile and a half in diameter (30). The illustration marks these points with the letters A, B,C, and D and places them within a shaded circle with a thick black line bordering it. In addition to emphasizing the smallness of the geographic location in which Bruce Bechdel lived his life, the dark border and shading suggest that the geographic circumference enclosing Bruce Bechdel’s life was unbreachable, and that if Bruce were to cross that thick black line, there would be serious consequences. Overall, the visual that the illustration provides echoes what we learn from the narrative: that Bruce had to enclose all instances of sexually transgressive behavior or desire within a similarly delineated border of privacy.

The visuals in Bechdel’s narrative also illustrate how geographic location affected the development of her sexual identity as the character Alison. Unlike her father, Alison crosses geographic borders more frequently. As she crosses and recrosses these geographic borders, the expectations governing her sexual identity change. When the Bechdels go on a family trip to Europe, Alison is allowed to wear boys’ hiking boots, an experience that she describes as “intoxicating.” When she leaves home for college, crossing over the geographic boundary that circumscribes her father’s existence, Alison becomes intoxicated in a different way; she describes herself as “seduced completely” by the experience of being able to express her sexuality freely with Joan (80).

The contrast between Bruce’s and Alison’s processes of identity development is striking. While Bruce must constrain his non-normative sexual behaviors and desires to strict privacy, Alison is able to more freely express her sexual identity. The difference in the way that Alison and her father occupy geographic locations mirrors the way in which each is able to express their respective identity. While Bruce must contain his “deviant” behaviors to the private sphere in the same way that he lives his life within a limited geographic range, Alison is more able to publicly express her sexual identity, similar to the way that she more fluidly transitions between geographic locations.

The relationship with her father that Alison Bechdel reveals in this memoir is extremely convoluted. His death by questionable suicide only exasperates her futile attempts to comprehend all of his complexities. About his death she admits, “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. 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, protracted fashion” (195). This passage is extremely telling because it reveals a common pattern of thoughts shared by individuals who have lost a close friend or family member to suicide. In just two short sentences she has clarified so many of the unresolved feelings toward her father that circulate through this story. By admitting that she couldn’t imagine her father living past when he died, and by thinking up other ways for him to have lost his life, Alison is expressing an indirect form of acceptance over her father’s decision to take his own life.

This is a powerful sentiment that provides a lot of clarity to a very intricate dynamic. In this confession, Bechdel is realizing that her father was not able to reveal his true identity as a “closeted fag…in this small minded small town” (125), and she accepts his decision to escape it. Alison doesn’t have any proof that her father’s death was a suicide, but I believe she wants it to be. She wants to know that if nothing else, he had autonomy in at least one thing in his life. His identity may have been stolen by a society that could not embrace queerness, and his self-worth may have been diminished by institutionally impure thoughts of homosexual desire, but his death was his own. Suicide is the only way Alison is able to come to terms with losing her father; anything else would have been just another travesty to further strip him from any opportunity at sovereignty. To Alison, suicide was her father’s best chance of escaping an undesirable lifestyle on his own accord. It was this interpretation of his death that helped her relinquish the fear of exploring her own queer identity.

I find Alison’s discovery of her identity really interesting because it comes to light in many different ways. She realizes it through her interior differentness from most young girls, the the ways in which she and her father connect, but I’m going to focus on the literature she reads. Her constant allusions to books, and trying to frame her narratives in said ways shows her grappling with the idea of her own identity, and trying to frame it for herself. We continually see her trying to categorize why she is the way she is, and it is not until she realizes that there are similar narratives out there, that she finally comes out. She says, “…in that spirit of marvelous megalomania I came out officially July 1st in the voice in a piece titled ambivalently from a line by Colette ‘of this pure but irregular passion'” (207). I love how she comes out in the voice of a piece. This literature she reads provides her with a safe space to internalize and project her identity. She gets this marvelous sense of megalomania, or power, within herself and is able to be who she is. I also love the line of “pure but irregular passion” as it suggests that homosexuality is a completely valid identity although it may deviate from typical norms. Now, so what? Bechdel could be adding to the conversation and adding to the number of spaces used to find identity. By framing her own life in this graphic novel, she’s providing another safe, yet slightly different space for others to figure out their own identities. She creates, like many other writers, a feeling of common ground and inclusivity.

 

Riki Ann Wilkins writes that, “[o]ne’s body continues to display a multitude of information through nonlinguistic signs, the language of gesture, posture, stance, and clothing”(Wilkins 153). The language that surrounds the body is core to gender presentation. As gender is so often treated as constant, so too is the language assigned to a body. But what then of the narrator of Winterson’s novel, Written on the Body. While their body is present, and core to the narrative, that same body is given no descriptors that might gender it. The narrator’s actions still display information, but the body itself is an empty space in the narrative. Perhaps, by removing those gendered signs, Winterson is allowing the reader to examine a body devoid of the very signs we use to shape gender.
Perhaps, on this ungendered body Winterson creates an alternative manner of analyzing gender, more in line with Wilkins’ theory. Winterson writes, “[w]ritten on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights; the accumulations of a lifetime gather there”(Winterson 89). The narrator’s gender is part of this code, inscribe on the body, but Winterson only shows the reader the narrator’s body under a light that ignores the gendered signs. The body we are shown is covered in signs without the context of gender. Thus the body symbols are separate from the gendered symbols. Winterson uses this divide to hint at the difficulty in interpreting actions without a gendered form. As gendered signs can limit the interpretation of gendered actions, the interpretive framework for other symbols expands in the absence of gender signifiers. Thus the narrator’s symbolic form is rendered more complex once freed from the interpretive limitations of gender.

Throughout the novel, we learn more about Tyler’s internal struggle to define who and what he is. He says that he is “not a man and not ever able to be a woman, suspended nameless in the limbo state between existence and non-existence” (77). Rather than just existing as he is, he feels that he needs to label his identity. When Tyler first meets Mala Ramchandin, he is immediately drawn to her, and sympathizes with her. In one of their first encounters, Tyler says “I brought my face inches away from hers and whispered, ‘If I were strapped like that, I would hate it, too.’ And then I felt foolish, for what was the point of empathizing without taking more positive action?” Though he is not talking about Mala being trapped in her identity like he is, I think it is an excellent physical representation of how Tyler feels. Mala physically cannot move because she is tightly strapped to her bed, while Tyler is trapped in his “in-between-ness” of identity. He says he “would” hate being strapped down like Mala, which he is, in a different way. Perhaps Tyler realizes this after, as he asks what was the point of “empathizing”, rather than just sympathizing. This shows that he knows how she feels in his own way.

“Not a man and not ever able to be a woman, suspended nameless in the limbo state between existence and non-existence” (MooToo 77). In this sentence from Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani MooToo, Tyler is trying to explain how he feels about his struggles with his sexuality and society. Before this sentence Tyler is trying on the dress because he knows even though at first it felt peculiar that it is right but he knows that he will get harassed for his ideas of his own sexuality. There is a difference between “feeling weird” with others vs. himself. He feels as if he doesn’t exist because he can’t be himself but with Miss Ramchandin he feels a type of existence. This is shown by her acceptance towards Tyler when tries on the dress. She didn’t act like she had to compliment him or that she had to say it didn’t look right. As he had the dress on he was internally conflicted compared to being pressured by the outside because Miss Ramchandin was the outside and her reaction of Tyler in the dress was that it was nothing out of norm. The feeling that Tyler is expressing is internalized homophobia. He is letting the negative views society has on homosexuality make him feel like a less of a person or that he should hate himself for feeling the way he feels in the dress. External homophobia is the pressures that society put on homosexuals about the prejudice against them but internalized homophobia dwells deeper. It takes the ideas society puts on homophobia and makes a homosexual person feel like they shouldn’t express what they really feel is right inside because its not what society thinks is right and this is why Tyler says that he’ll not ever be able to be a woman. As long as Tyler lets the internalized homophobia overrule him he will consistently be in this state of existence and non-existence.

In Gender Trouble,  Judith Butler articulates the ways in which gender is constructed and the ways heteronormative structures of gender and sexuality are maintained through socialization and surveillance. Visual signifiers of gender consist of presentations and absences, the recognition of non-heteronormative characteristics. Those who perform gender in a non-normative way are challenged and punished by those who recognize these differences through “intelligible grids of an idealized and compulsory heterosexuality” (Butler, 135). As a result of gendered socialization and the processes of being rewarded and checked for either conforming or nonconforming to one’s gender assignment at birth, the frameworks of heterosexuality are maintained.    

The gardener, Hector,  draws a parallel between the experiences of his brother, Randolph, and the ways Tyler is treated by the community. He states, “He was kind of funny. He was like you” (Mootoo, 73). Through this statement, Hector acknowledges certain visual signifiers of Randolph and Tyler’s gender expression that cause them to be coded as different.  In Cereus Blooms at Night, the treatment of Nurse Tyler exemplifies the ways in which gender and sexuality are conflated. At Paradise Alms House, Tyler is isolated socially due to his gender expression and performance; he is coded as a cis gay man by the other nurses in the home due to his perceived feminine qualities and attraction to men. These assumptions are complicated by the fluidity of Tyler’s gender in the beginning of the novel. Throughout Cereus Blooms at Night, Tyler increasingly becomes more comfortable in his gender expression with the help of Mala and Otoh as they ease the looming presence of constant surveillance.

Our understanding of sexuality has historically established the existence of labels such as male, female, feminine, and masculine. These historical social constructions have implied the non-exigence of anything in between those two primary gender labels. According to Judith Butler, we consider gender as a “corporeal style, an act, as it were, which is both intentional and performative..where performative suggests dramatic and contingent construction of meaning” (Butler 139). We are historically constructed into a gender, an identity, which we have obeyed through historic time. Eventually, it has become a lifestyle, a sustained and repeated “corporeal project”. Individuals became accustomed to such labels and identities, however, from the beginning of the 20th century this labeled identities began to question who they identity as, or if their are any labels that will be able to identify them.

Furthermore, author Shani Mootoo creates a novel that brings up the topic of unordinary gender identities. Mootoo presents characters that fit neither side of the gender binary, but rather presents us to the continuum of gender and sexual roles and behaviors. For example, Tyler, the narrator, is biologically male, has a sexual affinity for man, and engages in cross-dressing. Indeed, he felt that “there was something delicious about about the confinement of his hairy legs in stockings” (Mootoo 83). By using the character of Tyler, Mootoo is able to renegotiate gendered roles of and its impact of labour (jobs) based on ones gender. Not only does he like the stockings, but he also likes being a nurse and a caregiver. In my opinion, Tyler is a symbol of uniqueness, an unknown gender identity that he is able to portray but not identity. In my eyes, he embraces a man who breaks the constituted rule that only women ought to be nurses, caregivers, or any motherly symbol.