Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Houses are symbols of the prototypical nuclear family. Bechdel interrogates this symbolic portent throughout Fun Home. While the Bechdel family suffered a great deal of internal dysfunction, Bruce’s eye for “impeccable” outward presentation obscured their troubles from their friends and neighbors. This propensity for fixating on outward appearances also serves as a symbol of Bruce’s emotional sterility. Bechdel refers to her childhood home as a “still life with children” (13), suggesting that her father regarded his children as ornaments. Bechdel also presents messy and lively scenes from her childhood in contrast to the museum-like cleanliness Bruce pursued. The importance of houses as symbols of Bruce’s perfectionism is particularly pointed because he died in the middle of restoring a house while his home life was crumbling.

Bechdel grew up in an unaffectionate home. The lack of affection among members of the Bechdel family takes on symbolic portent throughout Fun Home. The lack of affection between Helen and Bruce is caused by their collapsing marriage—a problem which itself springs from Bruce’s repression of his sexuality. He is, in fact, consistently presented as deeply repressed in myriad ways outside of his sexuality, which in itself perpetuates his unhealthy stoicism and artificiality.

Bechdel only depicts physical affection between her parents two times. These are the only times she recalls ever seeing affection between them, and both instances were quick and chaste. Likewise, she has few memories of affectionate touch between herself and her father. The rare exceptions to this rule took place when he bathed her as a young child, played airplane with her, or caught her when she jumped into the pool. These sequences emphasize the power of moments when Alison’s father cares for her and shows her paternal affection.

Bruce’s emotional and sexual repression is contrasted with Alison’s sexual and emotional experiences. While she too struggles to feel and express negative emotions like grief or horror, she has a much healthier relationship with her sexuality. Bechdel includes several sequences and images of herself engaging in masturbation and sex throughout Fun Home. This presents a stark contrast to Bruce’s on-frame interactions with his family and lovers, which are sterile and distant. Bechdel’s willingness to portray herself in these moments also draws a metatextual comparison between herself and her father. While her father hid his sexuality and poured himself into artifice, Alison grew up to write a bluntly confessional memoir.

Flowers are polysemous symbols in Fun Home. They reoccur over the course of Alison Bechdel’s memories simply because her father was an avid gardener. Bechdel associates her father’s affinity for flowers first with his penchant for artificiality because gardening and floral arrangement tied directly to his efforts as a restorative artificer. Flowers are also typically regarded as delicate and feminine in broader culture. For this reason, Bechdel employs flowers as a symbol of her father’s sexuality. His imposition of floral designs upon the young Alison (e.g., in the form of floral wallpaper in her bedroom) therefore represents his attempts to “express something feminine through [her]” (98). Her hatred of these designs emphasizes her own gender nonconformity and burgeoning sexuality.

Bechdel also alludes to her father as a flower. This comes in the form of “pansy” (a type of flower) as a double entendre for an effeminate gay man: “If there was ever a bigger pansy than my father, it was Marcel Proust” (93). Bruce’s status as a metaphorical flower also connects to reoccurring language around him being buried or stuck in mud like a plant. This relates to the anecdote from his childhood where he literally got stuck in the mud. It is also connected to the fact that, after his death, he was buried in a grave: “My father was really down there, I told myself. Stuck in the mud for good this time” (54). Bechdel also writes, “My father was planted deep” (145), in reference to his strong ties to his hometown.