Are You My Mother?

The topic of anger comes up a few times in Are You My Mother. One of the therapists suggests that Alison harbors anger towards her mother, an analysis that Alison is reticent to accept as truth. Early in the novel, on page 21, Alison worries that her mother will perceive the book about her as angry. I tend to think that the focus of this book on psychoanalysis could very well be an attempt on Alison's part to mask the anger that she feels towards her mother by appearing to have undertaken a search for some truth, or the root of the complication surrounding Alison's relationship with her mother. The focus on the process of memoir, too, is a means for distracting Alison from the anger at hand. Alison's compulsion for keeping records and accounts of life, both of her mother's and of her own, seems more like a coping mechanism, than anything else. A great deal of her recording, I think, has to do with proving her mother wrong, that memoir is not a "suspect genre." Alison's mother believes that memoir is "narcissistic," "inaccurate," and "fake," (22) and in saying this, Alison's mother is indirectly accusing Alison's work of exhibiting these negative qualities. She indirectly accuses Alison near the end of the book of caring more about the story, than the real facts. The "observer effect" that Alison refers to illustrates the extent to which Alison's mother is bound up in and indeed inextricable from Alison's writing process. Alison's mother's judgments cloud her brain every time she picks up the pen.

On page 39, Alison brings up Virginia Woolf to demonstrate the capacity for fiction to pose deeper truth than fact. This thought seems to be a direct response to Alison's mother's belief that memoir denies the truth, is self-centered, and resembles fiction more so than it does non-fiction (conventionally aligned with truth.) The differentiation between an account of life and an account of the soul is also drawn, and the reader is left to evaluate which mode better promotes truth. The answer is foggy. This brings me back to the first page of the book, before chapter one even begins. On the page opposite the dedication, a quote by Virginia Woolf reads, "For nothing was simply one thing." Two kinds of truth govern Are You My Mother. There are the empirical facts. There are also attempts to understand the soul. These attempts are constituted by breakthroughs, which typically occur in therapy, or through reading psychoanalytical texts, particularly those of Winnicott and Lacan.

I find it very interesting that both Fun Home and Are You My Mother? end in much the same way- that is, with either parent in some way setting Alison free. Alison's mother offers her a "way out" (298). Alison's father gives her the confidence to embrace her sexuality as an example of someone who couldn't bring himself to do the same. Interestingly, neither instance of being set free occurs at the point in Alison's actual life when she feels liberated from her parents, which arguably comes when Fun Home and Are You My Mother? are individually published. Instead, the moments Alison chooses to depict as symbolic for her being set free are situated in her childhood. Moreover, is Alison's insistence on being free an indicator that maybe she isn't so free after all? Doth the lady protest too much? By giving the reader a glimpse into her writing process, Alison Bechdel sets up graphic memoir as a tool for separating herself from her parents.  So my question is, does Alison use memoir to suppress her anger towards her parents, or is it legitimately a cathartic process that enables her to become free, whatever that might mean?