Allegory In Alison Bechdel's Fun Home

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

immediate urge to purge her life of Bruce’s post-mortem influence, interestingly enough to her daughter’s girlfriend. It also adds to Alison Bechdel’s theory that her family life was a façade; the darker truth and past that lay within Bruce’s life tainted the lives of his family as well. The scene is significantly symbolic of the Bechdel family dynamic as a whole. Bechdel develops this through the use of visually significant imagery within the comic panels, a possible allegory in Stevens’ poem “Sunday Morning,” weighty language in Joan’s poetic account of the event, and a brief reference to Helen Bechdel’s Catholic beliefs.
Visually, the domestic scene just after Bruce’s funeral is ripe with symbolism. Alison and Joan sit far apart – possibly, the heavy mood surrounding Alison’s closeted father’s death causes a momentary rift between the two. Alison’s feet are up and on the table, which Bruce, the perfectionist and hypercritic, would surely object to after all of the work he put into his Victorian-style home. As Bechdel points out, there is a cockatoo painting in the library, which directly alludes to the Stevens poem. In the poem, the bird is free, but “upon a rug” (trapped within domesticity) – just as Bruce was. At least within his library, he had a sort of freedom within his façade of a life. Helen appears relaxed, “her face warm and white floating gingerly over her bathrobe.” She does not grieve, rather, she is calm and angelic, and she rids herself of the poem about the cockatoo (symbolic of Bruce’s memory).
The Wallace Stevens poem, “Sunday Morning,” is especially significant on its own if it is considered as an allegory.

Each element can be thought of as metaphoric for an aspect of Bruce’s life. “Complacencies of the peignoir” could refer to Bruce’s disinterest and lack of sexual attraction to female peignoir (lingerie) or his feigned complacency within his heterosexual marriage. “Late coffee and oranges in a sunny chair” represent the niceties Bruce treasures so: his fascination with home décor, his love for certain works of literature, and so on. The “green freedom of a cockatoo” could refer to homosexuality, as I stated before; the “cockatoo” referring to Bruce’s flamboyant ways. Helen’s quiet endurance must be the “holy hush of ancient sacrifice” – because for years, she has lived within an unhappy marriage. As the title of the chapter would suggest, “that old catastrophe” refers to the situation surrounding Bruce’s suicide. No knowledge of these symbolic elements could stop the tragedy’s “encroachment” upon the

Bechdels.
Joan, Alison’s girlfriend, has been characterized at this point in the novel but has not actually spoken until these few panels. Her choice of the Stevens book is symbolic of Alison’s life (or rather, her romantic life) superseding Bruce’s. Helen rids herself of her late husband’s memory, as Joan becomes a larger part of the Bechdel family picture. Joan herself senses the heaviness of this situation: in her poem chronicling the event, she compares the Stevens book to a “turtle shell filled with mud.” Joan senses not only the weight that the book symbolizes, but also the uncleanliness about it – Helen’s motives may not be pure when she offers Joan the book.
Briefly mentioned on page 83 is the fact that Alison’s mother is Catholic. Perhaps this is because I come from a Catholic family, but this seemingly superficial remark about Helen’s inner belief system resonates as something deeper to me. When Alison comes out to her parents (pages 76-77), Helen lightly condemns her daughter’s “choice” with the sort of “hate the sin, love the sinner”-type of rhetoric that is common among modern Catholics. However, despite her Catholicism, Helen sought a divorce from Bruce. This is highly taboo, and would not be acceptable as the marriage yielded children, and it would be difficult to legitimize its annulment. Also something to consider in context of Catholicism is Helen’s calm, angelic appearance in her white bathrobe. Her lack of grief, a “holy hush,” casts her as the angelic foil to Bruce and his life that, according to Catholic belief is dark and sinful. She embraces the very Catholic principle of sacrifice almost instinctively: she sacrifices the Stevens book, just as she has sacrificed a normal life for a life with Bruce.
Alison Bechdel weaves together a myriad of factors; visual, poetic, and religious; in order to create a succinct portrait of the main players of the Bechdel family just after Bruce’s death.

Bruce lurks in the crevices of Helen’s mind, as she begins to purge her life of his memory and glows angelically rather than grieving. There is a visible rift between Joan and Alison, potentially prompted by the storm of events leading up to Bruce’s demise. Joan senses an emotional heaviness in the Wallace Stevens book, as evidenced in her poem, and Stevens’ poem “Sunday Morning” serves as a possible allegory of the family’s current dynamic. Bechdel presents this in an innocuous fashion, but this perfect storm of allusion and imagery convene to show just how homosexuality, family dysfunction, and death have affected the

Bechdels.