Did Bruce Come Of Age?
“Is it possible to not come of age?” This was a question that was posed on the first day of class along with other debates on what coming of age means, and at the time my answer was no. I believed that because we all age, we all must come of age at some point. I would say this belief still remains in some ways, but in other ways Fun Home certainly challenged this idea for me. Up until Fun Home I found this belief to be running unopposed in my understanding of the concept of Coming-of-age. Both The Bell Jar and Catcher in the Rye affirmed this idea by showing that a coming-of-age journey was completely specific and fitted for a specific character. Everyone has a different journey, so it’s impossible to deny that somebody hasn’t already had theirs. The steadiness of my belief prior to Fun Home is really what made Bruce so interesting to me, because, when faced with the question of “Did Bruce come of age?” my immediate answer was no.
Luckily, the parallels between Bruce and Alison make it easy to fully understand where this denial of Bruce’s journey strays from, and so I want to begin by discussing how Alison came of age. We practically see Alison’s entire life play out before us, so it’s easy to assume she had to come of age somewhere within that. To pin down an exact transition, I would claim it to be a mixture of three moments. A. Alison’s realization that she is in fact a lesbian. B. Alison’s coming out to her parents. C. Alison’s joining of the Gay Union at her University. Between these moments we can see self acceptance, social growth, and finding community. This is a transition from the awkwardness, and unsureness she felt in her youth. So after events ABC, I would say, Alison comes of age. Personally, I believe it to be a reduction of a real person to claim that Alison Bechdel’s entire transition into adulthood is just finding her identity as a lesbian. However, I think narratively, Fun Home defines the coming-of-age journey as exclusively the journey of accepting a queer identity.
So! Similarly, I would not simply say that Bruce Bechdel has never come-of-age… who knows the personal journeys he could have gone on, or exactly what he would consider significant in his life. But, within Fun Home’s constraints surrounding coming-of-age, it is specifically set up to explain that Bruce never came of age. Bruce never accepted his queer identity. He never came out, he never found community, he lived an artificial life in denial of who he truly was. I find Roy another example of how Bruce never moved on from his youth, still entertaining flings with young people instead of finding stability within his queer identity. Because Bruce conforms in direct opposition to the notion of queer-acceptance, he directly opposes the coming-of-age journey in Fun Home.
All in all, Fun Home has shown me that every narrative has a specific coming of age journey, and if that journey is applicable to characters (even if they are not the narrator or main figure) and they can not defeat the challenges, they will not come of age. Fun Home purposefully uses Bruce as Alison’s foil to emphasize her journey in terms of her sexuality, and show an example of someone who was never able to complete their journey.
Hi Miranda! I think it's interesting as well that through all the coming-of-age novels that we've read so far, Bruce is the only protagonist (or at least a deuteragonist) that doesn't get to have a coming-of-age. His story is definitely one of missed potential. Great Blog!
ReplyDeleteHi Miranda, i always thought this book was focused on Alison’s coming of age that I never thought about Bruce’s coming of age. And I do agree that Bruce never came of age as he never got to be free in his queer identity and that he never got live the life he had desired of and rather tragically died without anyone knowing who he truly was. The ending of this book is mysterious as we never get to know if all of this true and we never get to hear from Bruce’s perspective. Great post!
ReplyDeleteHey Miranda!
ReplyDeleteI like how you brought us back to the themes and questions about coming of age we discussed at the beginning of the semester. I agree, this is kind of the perfect story to draw this conclusion about. I remember thinking throughout the book that Bruce would've been a much happier person if he had a friend like Alision when he was younger (or perhaps a negative example of himself in the future to warn him about the dangers of self-repression). I also like the reminder that while each of these books has a main character who is coming of age (and is typically young), the coming-of-age process isn't limited to a specific time frame, and older characters in the books could still be on their own coming-of-age journey as they navigate their own problems and relationships.
I like the idea of "self-editing" being something that people start out with (like self-conscious middle schoolers) and gradually get rid of as they become more confident and "come-of-age". I hope we see Jason's coming of age follow that pattern as well in Black Swan Green.
DeleteMIranda Isaacs, the whole subject of "did someone come of age" is interesting because coming of age has to be defined in just one aspect of someone's life (like, as you point out, one's sexuality), or there isn't a very convincing argument. Like, who knows how Bruce developed IRL. All we see is this one side of him. And even if he did, what would that tell us? Does it "count" for anything if he developed in other areas? I agree, though, that in the context of Fun Home, Bruce was never really able to "come of age." Gut gemacht!
ReplyDeleteHi! I agree that I don't think Bruce came of age, however I think that's been a running trope in all the books we've read-- not everyone comes of age. Joan for instance, killed herself before she could pass the mental sanity test, James Castle died before he could grow. It seems as though those left in the past are entirely relevant into the pushing forward of our protagonists. However, I agree that this is the first time it has felt so central to the narrative. Perhaps her reflection on his death was her coming of age.
ReplyDeleteHi Miranda! You pose a really interesting question, and I definitely agree that Fun Home defines the constraints of coming-of-age such that it seems Bruce never does come of age. I think a great example of this is Bruce's relationships with younger men. The fact that Bruce chooses to continue sneaking around and having secret flings with underaged boys implies that he is unable to accept his identity and display it outwardly. Unlike Alison, Bruce never "came-of-age," in the sense that he never accepted his identity and shared it with others. Great blog!
ReplyDeleteHi Miranda! You do a good job unpacking the parallels and differences between Alison and Bruce's coming out stories. One aspect of the novel that I think complicates this topic is the photo of Bruce in a women's swimsuit, as it shows that, at least at one point he was comfortable in expressing his femininity, and potentially his sexuality (though there's no way to know). Also the fact that he knew about the gay bar in town shows that he at least had some connection to the community at home. With these bits of evidence that he was at least somewhat comfortable with his identity at some point, it's hard to say how his coming of age journey went (or didn't go). Did he come-of-age and then un-come-of-age? Is that even possible? I'm not sure.
ReplyDeleteHi Miranda! I never really thought about Bruce's point of view throughout the book, because it was obviously focused on Alison's coming of age. But your blog does a really great job of explaining how Bruce never really getting to be himself and share it with others didn't allow him to come of age. And even though he was an adult well into his 40s, he didn't ever get the opputunity to be himself and feel free.
ReplyDeleteHi Miranda, I think this makes a ton of sense! Because the whole novel is comparing Alison to Bruce and how his experiences affected her, it's even clearer how much of a box he had been stuck in from the beginning. I thought that the example of him still liking younger men, while disgusting, was a really good point in that he wasn't really able to let go of things and accept himself, even if the society around him changed. Also, I might add he created this repressive environment of a house for himself too, to trap himself in it. We know a lot less about him, we just know about how Alison had viewed him-- so really we have no idea. But an awesome question indeed!
ReplyDeleteI do wonder if we would ask these same questions about Bruce in terms of his coming-of-age if it weren't for the juxtaposition to Alison's "journey"--his life story might only look like a "failure to launch" when compared to Alison's more conventional coming-out/coming-of-age arc, which maps pretty closely onto the hero's journey paradigm. Looked at on its own, we might not view his repression of his sexual identity and his secret life in terms of coming-of-age--we might just see them as tragic character flaws. But once the author compels us to consider his "antihero's journey," it points us in this direction.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of people "never" coming of age, I used to teach a version of this course at the U of I a number of years ago, and we would read the novel _The Remains of the Day_, by Kazuo Ishiguro, as an example of a potentially "failed" coming-of-age novel. The narrator is a butler at the end of his career (he's probably 65 or 70 years old), looking back with apparent pride and satisfaction at the choices he's made and the services he has rendered, but the more time we spend with him, the more we start to question the ways in which he has lived his life (entirely in service of "Lord Darlington" while neglecting all aspects of his own personal development, and Darlington turns out to be a somewhat problematic character in terms of his collaboration with Nazis during WWII and other stuff . . .). By the end of his narrative, as he starts to get more and more candid about his "regrets," we start to entertain the possibility of an elderly man who has never come of age.