Alison as Bruce's Final Masterpiece
From the very first chapter of Bechdel’s Fun Home we understand Bruce’s role as an artist. Alison writes that “his greatest achievement, arguably, was his monomaniacal restoration of our old house” (Bechdel 4). While many artists allow their personal experiences to bleed out into their art as inspiration, others allow their work to express the things they cannot say themselves. As the book continues, we understand the secrets Bruce hid from the world and his daughter. I believe that his artistry amid his house, however, was not his only form of expression for his hidden identity, but also his treatment and modeling of Alison herself.
The first example of Bruce reflecting the identity he masks onto Alison is in her childhood bedroom wallpaper. She responds to the pink, flowery wallpaper he selected by exclaiming: “But I hate pink! I hate flowers!” (Bechdel 7). Alison’s rejection of the wallpaper indicates that the choice was solely determined by Bruce’s desire to pour femininity into a conventionally appropriate setting: his daughter. This displacement of femininity is further explored in chapter four as Alison fights her father’s resistance towards the masculine apparel she finds herself drawn towards. She articulates these emotions vividly on page 98: “As I was trying to compensate for something unmanly in him…He was attempting to express something feminine through me” (Bechdel).
Throughout this book, Alison is still discovering herself, her sexuality, and what her “masculine” draws mean in actuality. Her father, however, has already seemed to accept who he is, reject public acceptance, and rather chose to reflect his buried truths through his daughter. The significance here is that Alison was sort of toying around with masculinity and the hole that she found her father left unfilled. Ultimately, Alison came out as lesbian and publicly accepted the subtle adaptations she’d been making her entire life. Bruce, however, never came out and never planned to to our knowledge. Thus, that makes his reflection of femininity onto Alison all the more important because that was the closest he would ever reach to expressing his hidden identity. Though he could tell friends, neighbors, and society about his house renovations, he could never admit that his greatest work of art was not expressed in wallpaper, but his daughter.
I haven't considered that Alison was indeed his work of art, rather I took it initially as her being a product of his own internalized homophobia. I think this is another good interpretation or even a double meaning throughout the story. The wallpaper scene is especially a good example. Well done!
ReplyDeleteHi Julia!
ReplyDeleteI really love your title. The concept of Alison as "Bruce's final masterpiece" drives home the point you make about Bruce controlling Alison and trying to force his own repressed femininity onto her. It makes Alison seem really dehumanized, and more a "work of art" than a person, which perfectly reflects the line in Chapter 1 about Bruce treating his "children like furniture, and his furniture like children" (p14).
Hi Julia, I never really thought about how Bruce decorating his house put these expectations on Alison. I overlooked the walls, and I think it is a good example of Bruce trying to live his feminity through Alison but also maybe a way of protecting her from society which would at the time judge her for being more masculine as a women. Great blog post it made me think more about Bruces addiction to decorating his house and how it affected Allison.
ReplyDeleteHi Julia, I thought your blog was really interesting! I especially liked your point about how Alison was Bruce's "final" masterpiece. I agree with that, and I think that it kind of fits in with Alison's hypothesis that her father committed suicide. Once he has finally "created" Alison, he feels that his life is no longer worth living because his want to live openly has been "carried on" by his daughter.
ReplyDeleteHello Julia,
ReplyDeleteI really like this analysis of Bruce's view of Alison as an embodiment of the femininity that he was never able to express himself. But, as far as projecting femininity goes, Alison is probably not the best medium. Everything about the plot of Fun Home makes it clear that whatever attempts Bruce made to boost Alison's feminism fell flat in the end. Although Alison benefited greatly from listening to her true feelings, she may have inadvertently hurt Bruce by cutting him off from one of his major outlets. The issue of Bruce having so few outlets in the first place, however, is more complicated and serves one of the core aspects of Fun Home's narrative.
Hi! That's a really interesting take. I'm not sure I agree that Alison was his greatest artwork, but here's a point to support your theory: later in the book when Alison was taking english classes in college, Bruce sort of took them over, expressing his sentiments through her. On the other hand, these movements later could be seen as him attempting to be closer with his daughter.
ReplyDeleteI love your interpretation of the Alison-Bruce dynamic regarding femininity and masculinity. However I'd also argue that as much as Alision's rejection of femininity was a reflection of her sexuality, so was Bruce's acceptance of it (both in urging his child to be more feminine and his other "feminine" qualities like being obsessed with house decor, fashion, and crossdressing). Great blog!
ReplyDeleteHi Julia, it's interesting how many ways you can analyze their father-daughter dynamic. With the Daedalus-Icarus story, you could see her as the son, the father, the minotaur, or in this example, the maze itself
ReplyDeleteHi Julia! This was a great blog! I agree with you that Bruce was trying to live his femininity through Alison because he never got to fully express that part of him throughout his whole life. Although I am still not sure whether or not he was aware that this was hurting Alison and the fact that they could have talked this out before he passed. I think it could have been better for the both of them as a way of bonding and closure for the ways he tried to restrict Alison while growing up. Great job!
ReplyDeleteWe often tend to interpret Bruce's bossiness when it comes to young Alison's fashion choices as an attempt to limit her gender exploration and ultimately inhibit her evolution into self-acceptance as a lesbian. But as often happens when parents try to control their children's development in various ways, the child often reacts AGAINST the parent--in all of these frames where young Alison butts heads with her father over her less feminine proclivities, there's never a sense that she is truly accepting his reprimand, or eager to change herself to conform. She is outwardly defiant, and we see her haircut get progressively shorter over the course of the book--it's one way to gauge the approximate age of Alison, as she moves closer to her distinctive crew-cut that she begged for as a young kid.
ReplyDeleteAnd I have to note that the idea of Alison as Bruce's "creation" maps nicely onto the Daedalus/Icarus intertext, which the book opens with: If "old father, old artificer" is Daedalus, then Alison would be the offspring who is able to fly (which means, here as in James Joyce, fleeing the place of birth and forging one's own identity elsewhere). Bruce remains "grounded" in the labyrinth of Beech Creek (and his labyrinthine home), while Alison flies all the way to Greenwich Village, which seems like another universe.
Hey Julia! Great post! This post really made me think about how Fun Home is kind of like Alison's house. Her father expressed his femininity through her and through his house, and she expresses her struggle through her art and writing (I think it is note worthy that her art style is not very flowery or feminine. It is another way in each they both mirror each other.
ReplyDeleteHi Julia, nice job noticing Bruce's projection of femininity on Allison. Bruce selected a flowery pink wallpaper. Allison also says she thinks Bruce was trying to express something feminine through her. Bruce can be considered a artist literally by the housework he does, but also in the sense of projecting his views through Allison.
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