Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall…Why Dad Controls It All
In the graphic memoir Fun Home, we see Alison Bechdel and her complicated relationship with her father, Bruce Bechdel. An aspect of the book that caught my attention from the very beginning were the expectations that Bruce places on Alison as she grows up. Bruce tries to control and shape Alison’s behavior and identity through control and criticism. But this is not simply parenting or disciplining her; I believe Bruce attempts to shape Alison's behavior and identity because HE is unable to fully express himself.
From an early age, Bruce controls how Alison presents herself AND how she should present herself. He often criticizes her appearance and pushes her to look more traditionally feminine. Alison describes her father as someone who paid close attention to appearances. This can be seen in the family home. She writes, “My father could spin garbage into gold” (Bechdel 6) highlighting his obsession with perfection and presentation. Alison, however, prefers a more masculine style and feels uncomfortable with the feminine clothing her father encourages her to wear. When Bruce tries to make Alison wear barrettes or dresses, she resists, showing the conflict between his expectations and her personal identity.
A deeper reason behind Bruce’s attempts to shape Alison becomes clearer as Alison begins to understand her father’s hidden life. Alison gradually realizes that her father struggled with his sexuality for most of his life and was forced to hide it. Because of this, it seems as though Bruce projects some of his own desires and frustrations onto Alison. Alison reflects on their similar experiences, writing, “I had recently discovered that I was a lesbian just as my father was beginning to reveal that he was gay( Bechdel 58)” This moment highlights the contrast between them: Alison is beginning to express her identity openly, while Bruce had spent years repressing his own. Because Bruce cannot live openly as himself, he appears to focus intensely on shaping Alison’s appearance and behavior.
Despite all of Bruce’s attempts , Alison gradually begins to form her own identity. As Alison grows older, she realizes that she is a lesbian and begins to accept this part of herself. Unlike her father, she is able to openly acknowledge and explore this identity.
Bincy: first of all, baller title. I love the image of Alison asking a victorian mirror that she hung up herself why her father is so controlling. I agree that Bruce's pushiness of Alison being traditionally feminine could be an indirect way of crossdressing, through his daughter. But it's also a strange narrative because he knew Alison wanted to dress in a more traditionally masculine manner, but Bruce doesn't want his daughter to experience the same enjoyment he did from doing so in his youth. I wonder if that's because of his fear that Alison will turn out just as discontent as he did? Either theory makes sense to me, and I kind of feel like they work in tandem. Great blog post, Bincy!
ReplyDeleteHey Bincy, this was a very fire blog! I especially enjoyed your title. I think your observation that Bruce often controls Alison's appearance because he wasn't able to fully express himself as a gay man is very insightful. It seems that her, the house and the literature he reads is a way to indulge himself despite his repressed identity. I also believe that he might've pushed Alison to be feminine because he feared that she would face backlash if she chose to dress masculine, similar how he chose to hide his identity to avoid very harmful actions taken against him.
ReplyDeleteHe is a very authoritative parent in Fun Home. It demonstrates that he is the head of the household and a controlling person. In a way, he treats Alison like a piece of furniture, something/someone that he gets to decide what it/she looks like. I agree that this is mainly due to repressing his sexuality. Good job!
ReplyDeleteHi Bincy! First of all, I like your title, it's really clever. I agree that Bruce shows a lot of controlling moments throughout the book, but controlling the way Alison dresses, is the biggest example we see. Especially when she plays basketball with her cousins and takes out her beret. Bruce is very upset by her appearence without it, and I think part of him just wished he could have what Alison had.
ReplyDeleteHi Bincy! This was a really interesting blog to read through! I like how you bring up that Bruce is forcing his restrictions on Alison mainly because he was repressed about his sexuality growing up and he just came to accept it. But on the other hand I think it can also be interpreted in a way that adds onto Alison's guilt for not seeing these secrets about her father after he passed because maybe she feels that she could have really connected with him about this issue. Really good post!
ReplyDeleteHi Bincy, I really like how you focus on Bruce’s control as something rooted in his own inability to express himself rather than just strict parenting. Your connection between his obsession with appearances and the way he tries to shape Alison is especially strong, since it ties his behavior to a deeper internal conflict. I also think your point about projection is really effective, particularly when you contrast Alison’s growing openness with Bruce’s repression. Overall, you did a great job showing how Alison’s independence develops in direct response to his limitations. Great post! Side note, awesome title!
ReplyDeleteI like the connection between Bruce's art and talent for "spinning garbage into gold" and his control-freak behavior when it comes to his daughter and her fashion choices, which he thinks are "garbage" that need his expert eye to transform them into "gold." (We see a similar dynamic when he "revises" her coloring book of _The Wind in the Willows_ to make it more "correct," or when he picks up her couplet and writes the rest of the poem "for her.") But do we also see this tendency start to evolve or shift near the end of Bruce's life? It's true that his obsessive recommending of books to Alison reflects the same kind of control-freak tendencies we see earlier ("you HAVE to read this, then THIS next," etc.), but at the same time, he does give her that Collette memoir, which centers on the queer communities in Paris in the 1920s, telling her she "needs" to learn all about that scene. And he does seem to know what she's getting at when she asks whether he "meant it" when he gave her that book. So in a way, while _Ulysses_ doesn't really hit with her the way she expects (similar to the barrettes and dresses), at the same time he does take part in the "call to adventure" that leads to her hero's journey of self-realization.
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