Fun Home-Asope

In the novel FUN HOME, the narrator who is also the main character, Alison, tells us about her life and family as she grew up. One thing that you come to understand is that her father is a very meticulous and order centered man. The narrator tells the readers that her and her father are inverts of each other. She reports that her father is a "sissy" and that he liked flowers and feminine things. IN contrast, the narrator was more attracted to masculine things, like shirts with french cuffs and dressing more like a boy. The narrator states that her and her father filled in for each other where the other lacked. On page 120 of the novel, you can see pictures of the narrator's father where he is in a female bathing suit and you also see a pose of him on a beach. In both of these pictures her father looks very feminine and lacks the masculine quality that fathers are known to have. There is also a picture of the narrator and she looks more masculine then feminine. I think these panels help the reader to see that both of these characters longed for the others anatomy, but they could only mock the others image. They truly are inverts of each other, wanting what the other has.

Fun Home (Pg 23)

On page 23 of Fun Home, it becomes clear that Alison sees her father as a figure that was always lost. When we learn that her father committed suicide, she says, ”his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him.” Her father is gone, but like the death of any parent, there is a process of grieving. When his homosexuality is revealed, it seems as through Alison is looking back at memories of her father and trying to figure out who he really was. As Alison points out some of her father’s feminine appearances, it further illustrates his hidden sexuality. Mowing the lawn, for example, is a normal thing to do. The way this book illustrates such a chore speaks volumes about the relationship between Alison and her father. The unfinished grief is visually represented as Alison is shown moving the lawn in endless circles to finish the task. It is evident that Alison and her father shared a special bond, even if it was now clear back then, in regards to their sexuality. Alison understands that throughout her relationship with her father as well as her memories of it, there were signs that “echoed” her father’s melancholy.

Fun Home Panel

On page 120 of  Fun Home we see two significant panels that portray a sense of resemblance in Allison and her father.  The top panel shows a photo that is captioned as being Allison’s father.  Her father is defying the social normal, and instead of wearing a pair of swimming trunks, he is wearing a women’s bathing suit.   Allison describes him as elegant.   I feel like this was an important discovery in Allison’s eyes because it unveiled a bridge between her father and herself that she had never seen before.  In fact, she mentions earlier in the novel that she once begged to have swim trunks instead of a bathing suit at the beach.

In the second and largest panel, we see two pictures side by side, one of Allison’s father (age 22) and the other one of Allison (age 21).  The profound similarity between the two pictures stops Allison.  The setting of the photos, the way each of them smiles, the way they positioned themselves and the angle of the photos all seemed to show Allison a side of herself that resembled her father.  It was a side she hadn’t accounted for in the past.  I believe they make her take into account what was going on in her life at the time the picture was taken, and then try to relate to what her father may have been going through at the time of his picture.

Fun Home Panel

I found the panel on the bottom of page 7 to stand out to me the most. Above the picture there is a caption that says "It was his passion. And I mean passion in every sense of the word" and inside the panel, in a box are the words "Libidinal. Manic. Martyred."
This particular panel stood out to me because of the reference (or at least I think it is) to the Passion of the Christ. The word "passion" in the caption works with the picture, of her father, with the house shadowed in the background, hunched over, looking tired, and carrying piece of wood for his house as Jesus carried the cross through the streets and also the word "Martyred." in the box works to create this image of her father sacrificing himself for his passion for historical restoration. When you think of the Passion of the Christ, it invokes a lot of deep emotions for people, tied to a passion for their religion, and by making an allusion to that the author is visually showing you how much her father loved his restoration, that he would give himself for it like Jesus did for his people.

Alison and masculinity

I don't have page numbers on my Kindle version, but its at location 34 (out of 81) when Alison is sitting in front of a shelf full of books, looking at an image titled "The Rifleman." This image depicts a man wearing a cowboy hat, holding a rifle over his shoulder. The caption for this panel reads, "Indeed, I had become a connoisseur of masculinity at an early age." Sitting by her side on the floor is a handgun. What is interesting about this image, though, is that on the shelf below "the Rifleman" is what appears to be a Dr. Seuss book, reminding us that she is, in fact, a child - even though there is a gun on the floor right next to her. Another difference in this image is the fact that she is actually made to look a little feminine. She has a clip or pin holding her hair back, and it is slightly longer than it is in most of the other images. It is clear in this image that she is female, whereas in many other panels her sex is ambiguous at best. This images plays games with the reader, contrasting the young femininity with the mature masculinity.

Fun Home Page 98 - I feel pretty

In the top panel on page 98 of Fun Home, Alison and her father are shown preparing to go to a wedding. The panel really shows Alison and her father's opposing characteristics. The caption says, "Not only were we introverts, we were inversions of one another." If only they could pull a "Freaky Friday" and switch bodies then everyone would be happy. That being impossible, they were each struggling against the personality that was expected of them. To go against the grain was not something that should be done. Yet, in their outfits, you can see her father's desire for things to be pretty with his velvet jacket and striped tie, expressing his desire for his daughter to look more womanly. Alison was jealous of his suit and hated being forced to wear a dress and nice shoes as opposed to sneakers. The gender norms in this case are brought to a complete comparison in this one drawing. This is especially noticeable because the mother is also in the panel. She tells the father that he will "upstage the bride." The fact that everyone is dressed more casually, and he is spending time primping suggests his desire to be pretty which we are taught is not many at all. Whereas his daughter, wants to get out of her fancy clothes and dress like she normally does. We rarely see her in a dress or with her hair done. She is the anti-thesis of the girly girl. Her father picks up her slack in this case as she does with his masculinity. It could be said that they were "inversions" of one another, but also that they complete each other as what one is lacking the other has. This may be one more reason why above the bottom panel on page 86, Alison says that she is "reluctant to let go of that last, tenuous bond" when her father dies. They were bonded in the way that they were able to somehow live vicariously through one another. This is why Alison drew the connection of her "coming out" and his death. As she had finally decided to embrace herself, she no longer needed to live through her father.

Fun Home pages 22-23

On page 20, Alison begins to talk about the quality of parenting that she received from her father. More specifically Alison mentions his presence throughout their relationship and her life as he was living. We see that her father was always around and this is told to us by the text provided along with the images. Her father constantly puts her and her siblings to work with him doing various chores and tasks. While Alison and her father are physically close, we also see that they could not be further apart as far as a conventional, “proper”, father/daughter relationship goes. On page 22 and 23 the images and the text work in perfect harmony to show us how truly self-absorbed her father was even in their private moments where they would be expected to be bonding. Right off the bat we see her father enter the scene riding on the back of the mower shirtless. He is constantly working to model his concept of perfection while excluding his own family from his life even as they are present. While he may be teaching her to mow and complete lawn care tasks, he is also trying to appear as an icon of perfection as he leans on the mower positioning his body in an appealing way for whomever it may interest. Her father goes as far as wearing cologne to work I the ward because he needs to be able feel better than your average father who works in the yard and ends up stinking, naturally, later on. The bottom line is that her father was always there but no matter how close they were, he was never really present in the moment. A powerful example of this is the image that goes along with the text reading like so, "amputees feel pain in a missing limb", as her father is front and center while she is nothing but a shadow in the background as she has always been during the course of her  childhood. 

Fun Home Blog: Jeremy Edmonds

On page 95 and 96, the images and experiences that she has show a very conflicting situation.  Allison is constantly surrounded by masculinity.  Whether it is the men at the gas station that she is measuring her father against constantly because she see her father as a "pansy" or it is her older cousins, she is always overly aware of masculinity.  To conflict that, there is her father who wants her to appear more feminine.  This is shown with her father making her wear the barrette in order to keep the hair out of her eyes and make her appear more like a girl.  He goes on to threaten her to do so as well.  These images all go together to demonstrate the constant confusion in her life.

Fun Home

The panel about the photographs on page 120 is a really strong one. It shows the pictures of Allison and her father when they were both the same age. You can see the resemblance and although they are different sexes you can’t really tell. They both have almost the same haircut, their pose and gesture is almost identical. It almost seems as if they were one person. It is very strong because as we know by now, Allison’s father was most certainly a homosexual but his life turned out differently than hers. You would have guessed that two people who almost share the same story would get along but as we know the relationship between Allison and her father was not as we would expect.

Fun Home; pp. 95-95: images of masculinity

In these pages, we're allowed to see the stark contrast of whats considered typically male and female attributes Alison notices between her father, Roy and the cowboys she watches on the television. Roy is the classical masculine male with noticeable muscle definition, openly looking at the picture of the naked woman on the record, kicked back and drinking beer. Compared to Roy, Alison's father is very feminine, as he doesn't have muscle definition and tends to toy with decorating and taking care of the house and the home's appearance in a meticulous fashion as shown when he rearranges the flowers in the vase on the table. That's seen as a feminine thing to do, coupled with the fact that Alison is watching TV with cowboys shooting guns while she watches her father adjust the flowers conveys some confusion with Alison, trying to understand how her father could be so feminine since he's a man like Roy and the cowboys, yet not conform to the masculine standards society has dictated.

-Kasandra Allen

Fun Home

Page 95 – In this overall section, and continuing on to page 96, we see Alison figure out alike she is to her father. They are both playing at their genders. She develops into the dual role of daughter and son, in order to make up for the lack of masculinity of her father. She “became a connoisseur of masculinity at an early age.” We see her openly comparing her father, as he observes and corrects the flowers on the table, to the cowboys shooting their guns on the television. One act is considered highly feminine and one is supposed to be very masculine. She is trying to understand how her father is the same sex as the males on the television, but does not exhibit the same styles, or habits.

            The image of Roy, the babysitter sitting amongst them, is a great contrast to her father. Roy is masculine, drinking a beer, reclined back looking at a record with a naked woman, and has muscle definition in his arms. Alison is insistent on him making a muscle, as if she has never seen one before, because her father does not have that masculine form.
            The different panels are established to show the contrasts between her father and these other masculine figures. It is clear, based on her expression that she is more in awe of the masculine forms, than her father’s rather feminine one.

- Meghan Shearer

Jenny Wu - Fun Home Blog

Looking at the panels on page 125 from the father's funeral, we can see the duality of Alison's life and conduct. Throughout the first five chapters,  we see her struggle. She battles her positive and negative feelings of her father and she battles her expected and demanded behaviors as a daughter and her internal desires. The first panel is what she wishes she could say at the funeral: the release of the secrets she holds for her father. Like her sexuality, personality, and individual expression, she restrains herself. She keeps the outside world from glimpsing into her private life and her family's truths. In the second panel, we see how she actually behaves when receiving condolences. Very little changes between both other than her expression and her words. The contrast of both shows how incompatible the two sides are. Alison is extremely out of sync with her environment and the people around her. The last panel of the page shows a newspaper article and the text emphasizes the geographical location of his death. This final piece shows the bare physical facts of the death. Here, we remove the emotional conflicting elements of his daughter and illustrate how dry the death truly was. Regardless of why he died or who he was, this last panel (plain text) is the fact. This is ultimately what happened. He is now passed on, and Alison's life, experiences, and emotions will continue.

Blog # 5: Fun Home, due Thursday April 24 11 am

Take a significant panel or a couple of panels and explain how they create meaning: how do the different elements work together or complicate each other? Look at any relevant aspects of the panel: image, inset image & dialogue  (as in the TV screen  of It's a Wonderful Life). You can use anything in Chapters 1-5.

Some possibilities:
pp. 100-101: the Centerfold
p. 12-: the photographs
pp. 22-23: Alison on the lawnmower
p. 125: the father's funeral
pp. 95-95: images of masculinity (any one or any combination)

Or a choice of your own.

okay this is getting old

      Edna walks into the sea to escape her life.  Kind of in the way Rose Dawson thinks about jumping off the Titanic. From the outside, there is nothing wrong with Edna's life. She has a loving husband and children, she is affluent and well liked. I think, for Edna, the sea is something that is so vast and unknown that it is alluring.  the way it ebbs and flows is mesmerizing and that entices her.  Even though Edna has this great life, she is unhappy.  So unhappy that he takes her own life.  But not in a violent of messy way because that isnt proper and that isnt Edna.  This way her husband can say "she drowned" instead of "she shot her brains out" when explaining this mishap to the kids and friends.  
     There is something about the word 'folded' that we talked about in class.  It sounds warm and comforting and not dangerous at all. It is a peaceful passing in thought.   The reader can take away that this was not a spur of the moment decision for Edna.  She has thought of how to kill herself before and she admits to always loving the ocean.  Drowning yourself is not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of suicide. The thing that i took away most from her death was how simple it sounded.  It was so easy to walk into the ocean and choose not to swim.  In a way it was passive, that this is happening to her, she is not doing it herself. That is what i took away from her death.  - taryn wise

Why Edna took a gander into the sea.

Why did Edna walk into the sea…? For the duration of Edna’s adult life she has been trapped in a marriage with a man who considers her as on would a common housemaid. She has had no opportunity to do more than play house, yet, inside her existed a desire to break free and experience all that was unknown to her.  In the novel we see that the sea has a sort of grip on Edna’s soul and she longs for it. She wants to break free, to tear away from others expectations of her. She no longer wishes to live the routine laid out for her. She may enjoy being a mother but she does not wish to be seen as nothing more than a mother. Given the opportunity, Edna chooses not to enter the same cycle and lifestyle that marriage offers, but instead, she looks to free herself from the bounds of marriage and men. By walking into the sea she meets herself. She awakens herself to the reality that she can live a life her own, a life where she is free to fulfill her OWN wishes.  She shakes off the shackles of a life she has always known by walking into the water and chooses to live her own life, not the life of a stranger, a stranger who finds joy in being subordinate to another human being in the name of love. 

Edna as a mother

Edna is a very interesting character in The Awakening. She is a woman who knows that she is supposed to be a "good mother" and wife to her husband, but she so yearns to be free and do as she desires with no regard to anyone else. In chapter XVI, Edna claimed that she would give anything for her children but she would not give herself. By saying this, Edna knows that she would do every thing in her power to help her children, but there is a certain part of her own being that she won't give, her inner freedom and curiosity. She has a love for her children that most mothers have, but there is still more that she wishes to discover. In the end of the novel, Edna walks into the ocean, something the audience saw coming, to escape a world where she realizes she will never be free. Edna doesn't want to have to obey social norms, and be the woman who is at home ready to receive visitors, like the good wife, but instead she wants to move as the waves do, she wants to be comforted by the water, she wants to be free forever. So in the end she freed herself, and allowed the water to embrace and clam her, unlike any human being could ever do.

lets blog it out... again

      Edna walks into the sea to escape her life.  Kind of in the way Rose Dawson thinks about jumping off the Titanic. From the outside, there is nothing wrong with Edna's life. She has a loving husband and children, she is affluent and well liked. I think, for Edna, the sea is something that is so vast and unknown that it is alluring.  the way it ebbs and flows is mesmerizing and that entices her.  Even though Edna has this great life, she is unhappy.  So unhappy that he takes her own life.  But not in a violent of messy way because that isnt proper and that isnt Edna.  This way her husband can say "she drowned" instead of "she shot her brains out" when explaining this mishap to the kids and friends.  
     There is something about the word 'folded' that we talked about in class.  It sounds warm and comforting and not dangerous at all. It is a peaceful passing in thought.   The reader can take away that this was not a spur of the moment decision for Edna.  She has thought of how to kill herself before and she admits to always loving the ocean.  Drowning yourself is not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of suicide. The thing that i took away most from her death was how simple it sounded.  It was so easy to walk into the ocean and choose not to swim.  In a way it was passive, that this is happening to her, she is not doing it herself. That is what i took away from her death.  - taryn wise

Edna as a mother

Throughout the novel, Edna expresses that while she does have children, she doesn't identify herself by them. She remarks with wonder at how Adele so easily takes on the role of mother, completely devoting herself to her children. Edna does not hate her children, but she refuses to let them define her as a person. She has to be her own person, in whatever way that may be. Throughout the time the novel encompasses, Edna's identity changes, evolving through many different things : wife, lover, artist. She even leaves her home in order to play out this search for herself, leaving her husband and children behind. I believe that by saying "I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself," Edna is telling the readers that even though she loves her children, she does not find her identity in them. She is also telling the readers her priorities: her identity, her children, her life. If she cannot be herself and decide her own identity, she would rather die. She sets herself apart from other mothers in this rearranging of priorities.

Edna

 "I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself" (Ch. XVI)

I think what Edna means by that is that she is willing to give up her life, her physical being, to protect her children from the type of person that she is, so unyielding to societal roles and so uncaring about what she is supposed to be doing, but she couldn't live a long life being something other than who she is. To her, giving herself meant giving up her freedom and basically living the rest of her life in suppression of her true self and being depressed. If her every day was filled with being someone else and living with depression, I think it would be a type of torture. So forced to choose between being a shell of a person for her children or not being around, also for her children, she chose the latter.

Motherhood According to Edna

What does Edna mean when she says  "I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself" (Ch. XVI)?

When Edna makes this statement I believe that she is taking claim of her life.  She knows that society expects certain things from women who are mothers, but she does not want to be defined by these norms.  In the first part of the statement Edna is simply saying that she will care for her children in all of the physical ways that she can such as, food, clothing, and shelter.  However, she is not willing to give up the things that make her the person that she is and was before she was a mother.  She wants to maintain her own idea of what it means to be a woman.  When she says that she, "wouldn't give up herself," she is making it clear that just because she is a mother, does not mean that she no longer has wants or needs as a woman.  She was not willing to give up personality or the things that make her happiest just because society tells her that she should.

Blog 4: Edna

What does Edna mean when she says "I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself"? When Edna says this particular quote, she also mentions that she would give away anything unessential, including money and her life. Edna further explains to Madame Ratignolle, "but a woman who would give her life for her children could do no more than that--your Bible tells you so.” As foreshadowing as this quote is, it is also quite telling of Edna'a character. Edna is willing to sacrifice her life for her children, but not herself as a person. Edna is willing to die as a mother but not as a woman. Personally, I do not believe that Edna is being selfish. Edna is being honest, brutally so. It is clear that Edna has already given parts of herself for her children, husband, and even society. The reason I agree with this statement is because no one should have to give up who they are for anyone else. Edna's life has become a routine and she doesn't get the basic pleasure of doing things for herself. When Robert leaves, she is able to understand that she has been a prisoner in her own life and that it's time she focuses on herself. Unlike the other women at this time, Edna is standing up for her identity outside of being a wife and mother.

Blog #4 Why Edna walks into the sea

Throughout the novel, we see the recurring image of the inviting sea that speaks to Edna’s soul. When she first goes to the sea in Chapter 6, the sea is described as a seductive and powerful force that allows Edna to think about her place in the world. In this environment, Edna is able to delve deep into her soul and contemplate on the desires of her heart without letting the image of the “mother-woman” define her character. The decision to go out into the sea at the end was made as a result of Robert leaving her. In their last scene together, Edna’s remark of “giv[ing] myself where I choose” made him turn white with incredulity at the brashness of this statement. This shows that he is quite conventional with respect to societal norms; he would rather marry her than become involved in a passionate, immoral affair, although he is clearly tempted by this latter option. When Edna finds his note, she stretches on the couch and falls into a sleepless daze, which represents an awakening to the truth: though Robert loves her, he will never fully understand the inner longings of her soul. By leaving her husband and marrying Robert, she realizes that she will enter into the same cycle of being a subordinate wife with no agency of her own. Rather than returning to her normal life with Mr. Pontellier and her children, she goes into the sea because for her this is the only place where she can truly be free with herself. Although this suicidal act could represent a weakness in her character, it may also symbolize one last act of asserting her free will.