Flowers

One of my favorite chapters in Fun Home is Chapter 4, since we get to learn more about both Alison and Bruce. In particular, I really liked the first half of the chapter and its theme of flowers. Alison says that out of all the weird things that her father did around the house, the thing she disliked the most was how he loved flowers and that it made him a “sissy”. Alison would also begin to quote and talk about Marcel Proust (who I had to kinda look into). Later into the chapter, we get to see Alison’s love for a cowboy show and how her cousins thought of her as tomboy-ish.


What made me really love this segment is the relationship both characters have to femininity and masculinity. Bruce is shown through Alison’s eyes as not being a very masculine person but rather someone who appreciates more traditionally feminine things, such as flowers. Alison doesn’t like this probably because of societal-influenced ideas of masculinity and what it means to be a father. On the flip side, Alison tries to compensate for Bruce’s lack of masculinity with her own appreciation of masculinity but Bruce doesn’t like this from Alison either. You can see them arguing in the cowboy tv show panel and Bruce most likely doesn’t like this because of societal-influenced ideas of femininity and what Alison should be like. It’s interesting to see how they are both criticized for expressing themselves for pretty much the same reason. Also unrelated but Alison briefly mentions how Proust would have friendships with women but could only fall in love with men and I wonder if that was Alison’s subtle commentary on Bruce’s relationship with Helen.