Breaking The Silence of Abuse and Poverty: Mother / Daughter Conflict and Abandonment in Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina
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Dorothy Allison, as a poor Southern working class woman, may not be a typical American woman. However, she presents a woman/mother character in her novel, Bastard Out Of Carolina (1992), who selects her man over her daughter because she is trapped by the delusion that the man is more important to her than her daughter. Also, she creates a daughter character who is silenced and abused by her mother's own needs. Even though the daughter, Bone, is abused by her step-father, Glen, she wants to protect her mother, Anney, because she knows that her mother needs Glen. Bone considers that she does something wrong and deserves to be punished, so she tries not to make Glen mad, and she is guilty over her masturbation. Yet, when Bone realizes that her mother cares about Glen who plays the role of her "boy" rather than cares about her daughter's desperate needs, she finally gets angry with her mother and turns away from her. Through this novel, Allison voluntarily speaks out about the previously indescribable and unspeakable conflicts in her own mother/daughter relationship in the capitalist and patriarchal society. Writing about her own life means to her the ending of her silence. Also, it means that the author is confident in herself. She becomes brave so that she can explore and explain to the public the memories of her miserable and shameful past. This confidence and courage are the result of the fact that she establishes her own identity and subjectivity. By gaining her own voice, Allison creates the character which represents herself in her fictionalized autobiography, and further she re-creates the character to be her new, and better self.
Abstract
Dorothy Allison, as a poor Southern working class woman, may not be a typical American woman. However, she presents a woman/mother character in her novel, Bastard Out Of Carolina (1992), who selects her man over her daughter because she is trapped by the delusion that the man is more important to her than her daughter. Also, she creates a daughter character who is silenced and abused by her mother's own needs. Even though the daughter, Bone, is abused by her step-father, Glen, she wants to protect her mother, Anney, because she knows that her mother needs Glen. Bone considers that she does something wrong and deserves to be punished, so she tries not to make Glen mad, and she is guilty over her masturbation. Yet, when Bone realizes that her mother cares about Glen who plays the role of her "boy" rather than cares about her daughter's desperate needs, she finally gets angry with her mother and turns away from her. Through this novel, Allison voluntarily speaks out about the previously indescribable and unspeakable conflicts in her own mother/daughter relationship in the capitalist and patriarchal society. Writing about her own life means to her the ending of her silence. Also, it means that the author is confident in herself. She becomes brave so that she can explore and explain to the public the memories of her miserable and shameful past. This confidence and courage are the result of the fact that she establishes her own identity and subjectivity. By gaining her own voice, Allison creates the character which represents herself in her fictionalized autobiography, and further she re-creates the character to be her new, and better self.