Post 3

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A glaring comparison between father and daughter is the openness of their sexuality, that is, Bruce's "closeted" sexuality and Alison's openness; thus, I believe that Fun Home juxtaposes Bruce and Alison as a symmetric pair in regard to the development of their sexual orientation.  Due to the dynamics surrounding his coming of age, Bruce may have intentionally suppressed Alison's development as a result of his own experiences.

It is important to address the fact that both Bruce and Alison are very much victims to the social standards of their times. However, it is interesting to observe the differences between their sexual expressions as a result of these; for example, men are supposed to be viewed as strong whereas women were weaker and more submissive. Despite this, we see that Bruce takes a more passive approach whereas Alison is much more headstrong. One aspect that could have changed Bruce's sexual expression could have been his lack of a role model. A scene from the text shows Alison's astonishment in seeing another woman dressed so masculine without shame whereas Bruce would have been shunned and bullied for wearing too feminine of clothes.

Additionally, the author is portrayed as a “simpler” person whereas her father was "lavish", reflecting a potentially reversed masculine-feminine dynamic. Bechdel directly addresses this in the text, that she was the "Modern to his Victorian. Butch to his Nelly. Utilitarian to his aesthete." (Bechdel 15).While Bruce does have his struggles and his self-loathing, I believe that his imposition of his own struggles and pains onto Alison was inconsiderate and somewhat suppressive. Assuming that Bruce was trying to save Alison from the negatives of society, his approach from a young age to prevent a possibility of her orientation may have been of more detriment than benefit. However, it could have been his natural feminine behaviors that caused him to try to binarize Alison into the conventional girl, but I believe regardless that this projection and/or repression of Alison's behavior certainly had an effect on her identity later on.


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