#Pre-Adulting

            Alison Bechdel begins and ends her graphic novel Fun Home with the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus. Her perspective of the myth changes, however, as she grows older.  In her early childhood, Bechdel is only a spectator of her father’s struggles as she depicts him as both Daedalus and Icarus. Daedalus was a builder; he created the labyrinth for the minotaur and Icarus’ wings. In similar fashion, Bechdel’s father is building the family house, and she calls him “a Daedalus of decor” (Bechdel 6). Bechdel also gives him the title of “artificer.” It implies that unlike Daedalus, her father’s creation is not just a project but a camouflage. Her father is unable to come out as gay because society was not as receptive at the time, so his painstaking work on the house is how he artfully tries to cover his identity. The house is not only how he expresses himself, but it is also his attempt at creating the image of a normal family where he is a ...

    When Esther spends the night with Constantine, she imagines what it would be like if they were married. She says, “ This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A’s, but I knew that’s what marriage was like” (Plath 84) . She also recalls the time she was visiting the Willards when she saw a rug that Mrs. Willard had made with Mr. Willard’s old suits. Esther describes how she would have hung it on a wall to be admired, but Mrs. Willard uses it as a kitchen mat, and “in a few days it was soiled and dull and indistinguishable from any mat you could buy for under a dollar…” (85). This is a particularly important memory because it’s an insight to Esther’s perspective of marriage and the life of a housewife. For her, marriage is something that changes women for the worse. Mrs. Willard had spent weeks making this rug, and Esther says how she “admired the tweedy browns and greens and blues patterning the braid” (84). The rug represents both women ...