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How is gender represented in literature
How is gender represented in literature
How is gender represented in literature
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Breaking the Cycle: The Failures of Parenting in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home Domestic violence is a vicious cycle; one parent abuses their child, their child grows up and abuses their child, and the cycle continues until someone decides to break it. Sometimes domestic violence takes many generations before someone decides to stop the cycle. The parent who breaks the cycle wants a better life for their child than what they had. For most parents this is the ultimate goal of raising children, giving them a better world than the one you had because parents typically want the best for their children. In Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Bruce Bechdel wants his daughter to be the opposite of him. He wants her to be a heterosexual woman but once it is clear …show more content…
she will not be that girl the truth is too much for him to handle. When Alison was young, Bruce became aware that she was not behaving as normal young girls should. She didn’t show the same amount of interest in girl things as she should, she seemed more interested in manly things. Bruce having been through the same experience when he was younger, tried to counteract her behaviors. As Alison was growing up, he subtly forced her to be around more feminine things in hope that she would eventually take on the role of a heteronormative woman. In this image, Bechdel is explaining how her father was obsessed with restoration, she was proving that he cared more about decorating than what Alison actually desired. However, these frames do not represent restoration; they represent exposure. Bruce wants to expose Alison to conditions that he thinks are normal for young girls, such as pink flowery wallpaper. The wallpaper is exposure that Alison cannot escape or ignore because it is all around her room, forcing her to notice it. In addition to objects like wallpaper, he also indicated what he wanted her to be through his purchases for her. He would often buy her skirts, dresses, jewelry, and hair accessories. One would say that he had a certain imagine of what he expected her to be, and what society expected her to be. In this image, Bruce is returning to the car with a loaf of bread. Out of his choices for breads, he happens to choose the one that is advertising a young girl. The girl has round eyes, curly hair, a bow, and puffy sleeves. For Beach Creek, the girl in the advertisement is a perfect model image of what young girls should be. By purchasing this specific loaf of bread, Bruce is making a subtle statement how Alison should look, and it also acts as another sly way to expose Bechdel to Bruce’s ideals for her. Despite all of her father’s efforts, Alison still valued masculinity over femininity.
In an attempt to become more like her father she tries emulate him, as he tries to make her become anything but him. As she develops, she becomes more aware of masculinity and acutely aware that her father doesn’t fit the definition. Bechdel sees men at gas stations and on television and realizes that her father is missing something that those men seem to have. In her endeavor to counteract his femininity, she becomes more masculine. Although, even at a very young age, Bechdel doesn’t show interest for feminine things. Alison seems to be oblivious to all of her father’s attempts. In this image the reader sees Bechdel analyzing all of men at the gas station. Alison drew this frame to show her readers what it was she was noticing when she was young. The men in this image are more built than her father, they dress in more casual clothes with tattoos and chew tins. However, she doesn’t seem to pay attention to the ad of the Sunbeam Bread in the background with the image of Miss Sunbeam. It is as if Alison wants her readers to know that she was given chances to evaluate what girls her age should be like but she was more interested in knowing what men were like. She was often seen in gender neutral clothes, with a boyish haircut and as she got older, her father became more direct with his wants for her to dress like a girl; she resented having to wear skirts, dresses, or accessories and …show more content…
occasionally refused to wear them. Instead of wearing women’s clothing, she became more interested looking at men’s clothing magazines and playing dress up in her dad’s old clothes. On page 98, Bechdel states, “While I was trying to compensate for something unmanly in him, he was trying to express something feminine through me”. Bechdel argues that they were “inversions” of each other, each of them trying to express some part of themselves through the other. However, for Bruce it wasn’t about expressing himself through her, he wanted to protect her from becoming like him. He wanted her to accept the gender role given to her unlike he had. Her determination to be manly caused her father to loathe himself more than he already did, making Bechdel an everlasting reminder to her father of what he created, a child like him. Throughout the novel, the reader can sense the confusion Alison feels which is shown through her lack of gender identity. In most frames, Alison’s gender is hard to distinguish, from the way she dresses and her hair, she could just as easily be a boy as she could a girl. The imagines on page 116, best display this vagueness. In the first frame, Bechdel interrupts the image with one sentence, “The serpent is a vexingly ambiguous archetype”.
In other words, Bechdel is claiming that the serpent is an original symbol of disturbing uncertainty. This sentence, is written in such a way that it takes a second to decipher. She uses the words “serpent”, “vexingly”, “ambiguous”, and “archetype” as if each word is part of puzzle and the reader has to figure out how they connect and determine what they mean. Also this sentence is full of negative connotations. “The serpent” could also stand for the “liar” or “cheater; “vexingly” meaning to displease or anger someone or something. “Vexing” is also only a letter away from the word “hexing” to curse someone, subtly priming the reader to think about evilness. This sentence is symbolic for Bechdel’s gender identity, exposing Alison as the serpent. She claims that the serpent is a phallic symbol but from first glance, its gender is unknown; the snake could just as easily be female. She goes on to say that maybe its “undifferentation” and “nonduality” that makes the snake “so unsettling”. As to say that her gender, the serpent, is uncomfortable for others because it is hard to distinguish. In the second frame, Bechdel is standing in line with her brothers but without previous knowledge it would be hard, if not impossible, for one to separate Bechdel from her brothers. Despite the fact that her parents tried to conform her into her gender role, Bechdel didn’t fit
in. Fortunately for her parents, gender roles don’t determine sexuality. For Bruce Bechdel there was a chance that Alice would grow up to be heterosexual. Bruce’s suspicions of Bechdel sexuality were just that, suspicions. Although, this uncertainty made him uncomfortable. Seeing Bechdel behave as the opposite gender reminded him of the side he hated most of himself. His own sexuality and gender identity made him uncomfortable, but it was something within him, something he could try to hide. When Bechdel left for college, it became clear to Bruce that Bechdel hadn’t changed, she still seemed more masculine than feminine but he wasn’t certain until her letter came. Alison coming out was all the clarity that Bruce needed. At first he tried to accept it, after all if gave him something in common with Alison. But this acceptance didn’t last long. Yes Alison being homosexual was something he had shared with Alison but while she was open with her identity his was still hidden. Alison made attempts to talk to him about his sexuality but for him it was still too uncomfortable. This discomfort was something that he couldn’t get rid of, nor could he forgive himself for passing his genes onto Alison. Unable to forgive himself for what he perceived as his fault, Bruce committed suicide. The truck driver said he looked as if he had seen a snake. The snake he saw wasn’t there, instead was the moment he saw Alison for who see really was, the ambiguous serpent. This realization was followed by another that his ideal for a feminine daughter, like Miss Sunbeam, would never come true. Alison acknowledges that her sexuality could have been the cause for her father’s sudden death. “If I had not felt compelled to share my little secual discovery” she states, “perhaps the semi would have passed without incident four months later”. In the following frame she shows the Sunbeam Bread truck passing her father, as if this would have been the outcome if she would have let her father keep his ideals of a feminine heterosexual daughter. Bruce realized just as he couldn’t change himself, he also couldn’t change his daughter. He had imagined a life better for her, being that she was his first born, he felt as though he had failed her. Somehow passing on, what he saw as a shame, a burden, a dirty secret that needed to be hidden to his only daughter. Already filled with self-loathing, he wasn’t able to handle the thought, that it was his fault, by genetics, that she turned out like him. Furthermore, seeing Alison as a serpent is symbolic for more than just her gender, it’s also symbolic for creation and destruction. She was Bruce’s creation, but she also lead to his destruction. It’s possible that he felt he had started a cycle of having homosexual children. This thought would have destroyed him because he despised of himself. Most parents are just like Bruce, they imagine better worlds for their children. Parents feel that in some ways, they have let their children down and others feel that their children inherited the worst of their genes. Some parents learn to accept their children for who they are and others are unable to handle what they feel they’ve created, like Bruce Bechdel.
On page 113 she tells her brother to call her a man's name instead of her name so that she could fit in as a boy, not a girl. “Call me Albert instead of Alison” (Bechdel 113). Whenever her brothers were looking at a naked women calendar Alison had the curiosity and need to look at it. That may have helped her realize that she was actually interested in women, not men. When she left for college she started to experience and putting in place her sexual orientation. She got a girlfriend which actually supported her during hard times in her life like her father’s
Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, documents the author's discovery of her own and her father's homosexuality. The book touches upon many themes, including, but not limited to, the following: sexual orientation, family relationships, and suicide. Unlike most autobiographical works, Bechdel uses the comics graphic medium to tell her story. By close-reading or carefully analyzing pages fourteen through seventeen in Fun Home one can get a better understanding of how a Bechdel employs words and graphic devices to render specific events. One can also see how the specific content of the pages thematically connects to the book as a whole. As we will see, this portion of the book echoes the strained relationship between Bruce Bechdel and his family and his attempts to disguise his homosexuality by creating the image of an ideal family, themes which are prevalent throughout the rest of the nook.
Bechdel addresses some points that we see in today’s world regarding fatherhood and homosexuality, and Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, does a very good connecting those points with today’s society. Overall, she was able to understand and come to conclusions about things that she never understood while growing up. It was not until Bechdel was a little older and her father had passed away, that she realized that her father had a funny way of showing love. “But in the tricky reverse narration that impels our entwined stories, he was there to catch me when I leapt.” (Bechdel 232) The fact that that Alison’s father, Bruce, and herself were hiding their homosexuality and living a life that was far from normal, she was able to realize that the way her father was present in her life at that time, had to do a lot with gender role confusion, not knowing who he really was or accepting the truth leading him to his death. Besides the fact that her father never really showed much affection towards her, she still knew that her father cared in his own
In her graphic novel tragicomic, Fun Home, Alison Bechdel considers a broad range of subjects such as her and her father’s homosexuality, her parents’ often-volatile relationship, and the harsh reality that her fondest childhood memories may be a sham. On pages 82 and 83, Bechdel relays a scene that took place shortly after Bruce Bechdel’s funeral. Alison and her girlfriend, Joan, are relaxing at the Bechdel home when Helen offers Joan her choice of one book from Bruce’s prized library. Joan chooses a collection of Wallace Stevens’ poetry, which Helen reads and appears to have a deeper connection to. When Joan redacts her request, Helen insists that she take the book. This scene is microcosmically significant because it symbolizes Helen Bechdel’s
Bruce, an “Old Father, Old Artificer,” uses his art form as a way of whitewashing his past memories and faults. The exclamation of the woman shows the extent her father has covered up the truth. He has put many unneeded items and decorations in the house, distracting people that visit. Alison likes things functional, while Bruce likes things very elaborate and over the top, not needed. These decorations have made people confused from what is there and what is not.
In Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Bechdel uses the theme of appearance versus reality to highlight her relationship with her father. Bechdel utilizes her illustrations and short sentences to reveal these things about herself and her father. Bechdel opens her memoir with a chapter entitled “Old Father, Old Artificer”. Bechdel refers to her father, Bruce Bechdel, as an artificer because she sees him as a skilled craftsman. Bechdel describes, “His greatest achievement, arguably, was his monomaniacal restoration of our old house.” (Bechdel 4). Her father restored their old house to make it look like a huge mansion. Bechdel knows that this is just the appearance of their household because it is not an accurate representation of their family life inside the house. Bruce created an appearance that was the opposite of reality to cover up the actual wealth of their family. He hides the fact that his family may not be as wealthy and perfect as they appear to be. In this case, Bruce reveals he believes that appearance is more important than the reality of a situation. Appearance is also important on the inside of the home as well. Bechdel mentions, “Sometimes, when things were going well, I
In Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel entitled Fun Home, the author expresses her life in a comical manner where she explains the relationship between her and her family, pointedly her father who acts as a father figure to the family as she undergoes her exhaustive search for sexuality. Furthermore, the story describes the relationship between a daughter and a father with inversed gender roles as sexuality is questioned. Throughout the novel, the author suggests that one’s identity is impacted by their environment because one’s true self is created through the ability of a person to distinguish reality from fictional despotism.
...within her household. Within her own household, Alison was uncomfortable of being herself; in fact, at times she felt that she almost had no say in the selecting items such as clothes. This was also quite complex when it came to her subjectivity as well. Instances such as the time Bruce wanted Alison to wear a particular dress to a wedding, or when he insisted for her to were a particular set of pearls, would play a pivotal role in her sexual self development. Other factors such as her relationship with her girlfriend and the news she would find out following her fathers death seemed to also play an important part. Alison Bechdel’s battle in her sexual self-development was one full of anguish and pain because of all of its complexities but she now presents the confidence in herself and her sexuality to present in her eloquent and impactful graphic novel, Fun Home.
Domestic violence has been plaguing our society for years. There are many abusive relationships, and the only question to ask is: why? The main answer is control. The controlling characteristic that males attribute to their masculinity is the cause to these abusive relationships. When males don’t have control they feel their masculinity is threatened and they need to do something about it. This doesn’t occur in just their relationships, but rather every facet of life. Men are constantly in a struggle for power and control whether it is at work, home, during sports, or in a relationship, this remains true. So the only way for them to get this power is for them to be “men”; tough, strong, masculine, ones that demand and take power. Where is this thirst for control coming from? Is it the natural structure of a man or is it a social construct? The answer is that it’s the social construction of a patriarchy that results in this thirst for control due to fear. The fear is being emasculated, whether it is by gayness, or femininity. Men use the fear created from domestic violence to gain control, but yet women do have some control in a relationship it is this vague boundary of how much control that leads to domestic violence.
This novel went into how she and her father both were similar in how they expressed and experienced their own identification in gender roles. Either it being shown in their own way or even it is being through one another, they did not realize how close they were until she understood herself at the end. This then became the opening to them discusses their life experiences that involved identifying with another gender, which made them gain a better understanding about each other. The reason why the readers gain this perspective was how she used this graphic novel technique to become concise and obtain a mutual understanding in what she was expressing and explaining throughout the novel. With this mutual understanding of how she made this graphic novel, then the readers can focus more on how in the beginning they thought they were very different people, but later on grew to understand that both choose different gender roles. This gave them many similar outcomes, which help them grow even closer than they were before. With that Bechdel stated at the end, “ He did hurtle into the sea, of course. But in the tricky reserved narrative that impels our entwined stories, he was there to catch me when I leapt.”, which suggest that even if he is gone in real life he is still a part of her life’s
It is common knowledge that Ray Rice used his wife as a punching bag in the elevator of an Atlantic City casino. What is truely remarkable is that his fiancé became his wife after that vicious left hook to the face left her unconscious. Why do women stay with men who beat them unconscious? Domestic violence is a serious and complex plague of society that affects all, but women make up the largest number of victims in most case studies. In the United States alone, '1.5 million women are raped or physically assaulted by an intimate partner each year. More than 500,000 women victims require medical treatment, and 324,000 victims are pregnant at the time of assault' (Berlinger, 'Taking' 42). Numbers like these show how intense the situation of domestic violence truly is. 'Two women a week are killed by a current or former partner and domestic violence accounts for 22% of all recorded violent crimes' (Jamil 70). Domestic violence takes such a large number in percentages regarding violent crimes, yet often is dismissed by many with the idea that 'this won't happen to me'. Somehow, somewhere, domestic violence will touch everyone whether by someone they know or by televised publication. Though domestic violence affects men as well, the female subject is more often the victim. Domestic violence has a continuous cycle that has been influenced since birth and can be stopped with intervention but each victim's reason for staying will vary.
In chapter one, “Old Father, Old Artificer”, of her graphic novel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, the young Bechdel generated her identity through the tensions and mysteries that engulfed her family the home. Masculinity, physical strength and a modern outlook were her personality traits as she grew, becoming the “Butch to [her father’s] Nelly” (269) and his opposite in several aspects. A conscious effort was made on her part to set her own pace from what her father expected of her. He was a strong, influential figure within her life. Expressing emotions towards her father was strictly not allowed in the home. Bechdel was left “rushing from the room in embarrassment” (273) on the one unforgettable occasion that she went to kiss him goodnight. She...
Domestic violence is defined as the aim of one partner in an intimate relationship to exert control over the other partner in a violent behavior. Children may be exposed to or experience domestic violence in several ways. Many children are affected by threats between the parents/caregivers, observing a parent who is out of control and full of anger, seeing a parent/caregiver assault the other, or living with the aftermath of a violent assault. Children who live in a household with domestic violence have a high risk of becoming direct victims of child abuse. “Domestic violence poses a serious threat to children’s emotional, psychological, and physical well-being.” (2007)
The young girl in the story is struggling with finding her own gender identity. She would much rather work alongside her father, who was “tirelessly inventive” (Munro 328), than stay and work with her mother in the kitchen, depicted through, “As soon as I was done I ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my mother thought of what to do next” (329). The girl is torn between what her duties are suppose to be as a woman, and what she would rather be doing, which is work with her father. She sees her father’s work as important and worthwhile, while she sees her mother’s work as tedious and not meaningful. Although she knows her duties as a woman and what her mother expects of her, she would like to break the mould and become more like her father. It is evident that she likes to please her father in the work she does for him when her father says to the feed salesman, “Like to have you meet my new hired man.” I turned away and raked furiously, red in the face with pleasure (328-329). Even though the young girl is fixed on what she wants, she has influences from both genders i...
“Domestic violence is a violent confrontation between family or household members involving physical harm, sexual assault, or fear of physical harm” (Stewart & Croudep, 1998-2012). In most places, domestic violence is looked at as one of the higher priorities when trying to stop crime. Domestic violence cases are thought to be influenced by the use of alcohol, drugs, stress or anger, but in reality, they are just learned behaviors by the batterer. These habits can be stopped as long as one seeks help (Stewart & Croudep, 1998-2012). For instance, a child is brought up in a household that is constantly involved in criminal acts.