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Kimberly Harris

Professor John Casquarelli

English 24

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Allison Bechdel and Family

The standard family is a family that is willing to do whatever it takes for each

other, even if that means suffering for one another. But the majority of families in

general are not what is consider to be a standard family. However in reality most

of the time that’s far from the truth. Most people like to put up a phasud for the

world, because the actual state of the family is not a perfect one .So rather then be

judge people hide the truth. Sometimes you hide the truth so well that you start to

believe it yourself. However no matter how much you hide the truth or lie or even

try to get around it,your family will always be your family and you or no

alternate reality can change that .Alison Bechdel's Biography Fun Home analyzes

family coalescing in the belief that family whether good or bad is stuck with you

for life simply because they are family and they are you and to deny them is to

deny who you truly are .Bechdel Touches on a lot of issues which most families

go through but are very secretive about . Bechdel puts the issues sexual abuse

homosexuality and depression in the family out in the open .As well as shining

light on gender roles and how it effects the life of her family.

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In many families, the individual feels alone, isolated, and misunderstood from the rest of the

household; the characteristics that define individuality arise from our families however, therefore

we are never really alone. Some trace of personality paces from generation to generation.

(Bechdel118) Bechtel explores a scene where Alison and her father Bruce witness a mannish-

woman entering the luncheonette they've stopped at on a business trip. In the first frame, Bruce

and Alison are both curiously peering at the truck driver. Alison's face is full of wonder and

identification yet her father also recognizes the woman in a similar way. Bruce, firstly, identifies

this woman as being like him in certain ways. Secondly, he recognizes that what he views in this

woman he sees in his own daughter, not only because this woman, but because what he sees in

his daughter he knows in himself as well, “I recognized her with a surge of joy. Dad recognized

her too” (Bechdel118). Behdel’s father Bruce asks her a question, “is that what you want to look

like?'(Bechdel118). Bruce is seeking out confirmation of his daughter homosexuality so that it

may qualify his own.

Bechdel relationship with her parents seems to be what caused or at least had some effect on her

sexuality. Bechdel seems to be consistently rebelling from her father throughout the book. This

is shown in multiple occasions including: when her dad is picking out new, flowery wallpaper for

her room and she says she wants to decorate her house like a submarine, when she wants to wear

boy clothes after being constantly pestered by her father to wear girly garments, and when she

decides to stop taking English classes in college because of Bruce’s annoying tendency to

analyze the books for her. It seems that Bruce’s obsession with interior decorating and dressing

Alison the way he wishes he could dress, annoys his daughter and leads her to rebel. The scene

where Bechdel goes to kiss her father goodnight, but uncertain how to perform such an act, she

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kisses him on the hand, shows that she had an odd, distant relationship with her father. Alison

feelings toward her father are clearly expressed when she says, “I grew to resent the way my

father treated his furniture like children, and his children like furniture.” It appears that she did

not feel like Bruce’s daughter, but an inanimate object in his carefully manicured house.

Some people believe that people are gay by choose or they believe that a person has to be

sexually abused. Others believe it is a genetic trait, passed through our DNA. However in

Bechdel, case it is safe to say it was her family life... Bechdel was a somewhat neglected child

because her parents were always following their own artistic pursuits. She followed her parents’

example and started doing the same by reading, writing in her journal, or drawing. Bechdel

forced independence is shown when reminiscing about reading the Dr. Spock books, she says she

enjoyed it because she felt like her own parent and child and comments that “Our selves were all

we had.” The loneliness she felt may have contributed to her homosexuality. Bechdel’s

individual relationships with her mother and father affecting her, so did the relationship between

her mother and father. In the book the children are shown hiding at the top of a staircase as they

listen to their parents screaming at each other below. A great example to support the theory that

bechdel‘s parents falling marriage contributed to her homosexuality is revealed when, bechdel

says “my parents seemed almost embarrassed by the fact of their marriage.” Bechdel’s mother

and father almost never showed affection towards each other, had screaming matches, and argued

frequently. Having such a depressing example of marriage before her it’s no wonder that Bechdel

says “I cemented the unspoken compact with them that I would never get married, that I would

carry on to live the artist’s life they had each abdicated.” Marriage was a failure that she often

seen through her parents. Bechdel’s lacking of a mother-daughter relationship, mad the influence

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of her father’s stronger. Bechdel’s mother was always busy rehearsing for a play, constructing

her thesis, playing piano, or working around the house. It seems as if Bechdel had even less of a

relationship with her mother than with her father. Their lacking relationship is told when she

talks about her period and how she wanted to keep from talking about it with her mother, forever.

Since bechdel’s mother was mostly preoccupied and her dad was always the one telling her what

chores to do or how to dress. Her annoyance with her father, led to her homosexuality because

her father’s femininity made it feel unappealing and foreign. If her mother had provided a more

conventional picture of femininity to counterbalance Bruce’s, then she might have recognized

more with it. She learned from their mistake, however, and realized she did not want to be like

them.

Alison may not have had the most loving relationship with her parents but it is unmistakable

that they both played part in shaping who she is. In the end, Alison’s being pushed away by her

father led to the one similarity that allowed them to have a shred of abnormal and beneficial

relationship. Alison is grateful to have the parents she did, despite their faults because her

homosexual father, and her mother knowingly being married to age person, knew what she was

going through and were accepting of who she is. Maybe the more important point is not why or

what made Alison gay, but that her dad was thereto father her when she needed him most.

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