How Accurate is Alison's Potrayal of Bruce's Personality?

     Although the graphic novel Fun Home is narrated and authored by Alison Bechdel, its focus is clearly centered around the father of the novelist, Bruce Bechdel. He is the centerpiece of the story and it seems Alison makes this book as an attempt to understand the meaning behind her father's actions by revisiting and illustrating them. His shady morality is already made evident when he is revealed to be a pedophile but the bizarreness and mysteriousness of Bruce's values and character in his at-home life is also evident. It's not surprising then that his daughter, Alison, would want to examine these mysteries and explore her father's identity. Although Alison is very interested in examining her own upbringing (specifically as a result of Bruce's parenting), Alison's mother, as we talked about in class, is very skeptical about Alison's public portrayal of their family's complicated history. Therefore, I thought it might be worth it to try and figure out some of the biases and inaccuracies that come through when reading Fun Home through the eyes of Alison, and how the book might be different if it were narrated by the mother or Bruce. It's also interesting to try and guess at some of the reasons why Alison's mother might've had issues/skepticisms (and why the reader should also be wary) with her singular-viewpointed attempt at trying to depict Bruce's life. 

   

    Alison's main issues with her father's personality mostly all stem from the idea that his character was in some way fake or that he was concealing his true self. To Alison, his obsession with his family's image rather than their wellbeing is nothing but a front to impress his community. This phenomenon is shown in the panel below where Bruce delays the family from getting to church all for the purpose of getting the perfect family church portrait. It shows that his priorities don't lie with christianity, but instead with his own egotistical image.

Additionally, his fixation on repairing the house/mansion, which wasn't bought but inherited, makes it seem as though Bruce has picked up some sort of facade that he didn't have before (and which he feels obligated to maintain) along with his new ownership of the mansion. With Bruce practically being defined by the house throughout all of Alison's life, it doesn't seem out of the question to assume that Bruce had an entirely distinct character before moving into the mansion. Most importantly, Bruce's consistent obsession with literature leads Alison to wonder about the influence of books on her father's personality. She watches him read classic books from authors like Tolstoy and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and believes that he begins to shape his own personalities around the characters he reads, essentially making him into one big collage of literary influence. For Alison, his clear embodiment of the country squire stereotype seems too accurate to be true, causing her to see him as fake. She believes in books' influence on him so deeply that she is quick to write off the timing of his death as an intentional suicidal homage to the similarly timed death of Fitzgerald. Whether it's to attract an image of normalcy or elevate their social status by living in an uptight mansion, Bruce's obsession with his own self-image, his authoritarian control in his family, and literature convinces Alison that her father is hiding behind a facade and compensating for his insecurities.

   

    However, I don't think it's a good idea to be so quick to assess Bruce's personality as phony. One of the most important differences between Alison and her father is that Bruce grew up in a very different time period. For Alison, paving out her identity in the 60s and 70s was a much easier task next to previous generations. For example, although coming out of the closet wasn't easy, Alison had several support systems in place. Things like her semi-supportive parents and a library which shelved books talking about lesbian history helped her find a prominent gay community to feel welcome in. If it were not for the lesbian-inclusive resources in the library (which were a relatively new product of the time), it would have made her coming-out experience much less straight-forward. By contrast, regardless of where he felt his true identity lied, Bruce and the people of his generation felt a much different pressure to conform to societal standards in order to stay accepted (or safe) in society. People in these earlier generations were not only looked down upon for straying away from these societal standards, but often punished by society as well. Thus, they are forced to abandon what they thought was their identity and adopt an identity which is deemed socially acceptable and might be tempted to seek "inspiration" through prominently celebrated figures such as authors. Therefore, it would make sense that upon being forced to conform, Bruce might turn to prominent authors of his time to shape his own personality. Influence from the values propagated in the prominent works of the pre-70s generations (such as The Great Gatsby) would explain Bruce's embodiment of the country squire and why he is seemingly such a one dimensional, walking stereotype. 

    

    Although Bruce's collage personality may seem fake to someone born in future generations, I would argue that it is just as real as any personality. Despite the fact that he may have had a more individualistic identity if he had lived in a different era, the borrowed identities and values he was forced to adopt at a young age are all he knows, and despite the unoriginality, I do believe Bruce is an honest embodiment the country squire. From a modern perspective these older generation characters may not be as genuine in nature, but it also feels harsh and potentially harmful to write them all off as illegitimate frauds and characters without depth. Nonetheless, we see Alison write-off her father in this way as she begins to see Bruce as a one-dimensional fictional character who is not his own person. She makes him the centerpiece of the novel, yet she neglects to look deeper into why he is the way he is, and instead gives us a version of events that is very matter-of-fact. So when reading this autobiography I think it's important to be critical of the fact that it is her presentation of events and that her depiction of other characters such as her father may be incomplete. 

    

    Although we don't really have a lot of choices for alternative perspectives on Bruce's character, I still think it's important to step back from Alison's potentially biased lens and her way of looking at the world to try to understand the perspectives of other characters and see characters for more than how Alison presents them to us.