Bastard Out of Carolina by Allison Dorothy - Essay Example

?Bastard out of Carolina: a study Deborah T. Meem in her discussion of Dorothy Allison's literary career in Feminist writes, "For Allison, writing is a dramatic, life-affirming act in a world which consistently threatens death. A storyteller since childhood, Allison chronicles her discovery how … writing them [her most terrible stories] down gives her power of the experiences." Dorothy Allison has seldom shyed away from discussing or affirming to the autobiographical elements in her intensely powerful first novel Bastard Out of Carolina. Allison much like Anne Ruth Boatwright was born to a poor, "white trash" Southern family. She was regularly sexually abused by her stepfather from the age of five years, and the only person the young Allison could turn to, her mother was incapacitated to deal with this issue.  This is backbone of her famous novel where Allison unfolds the life story of Ruth Anne "Bone" Boatwright, who is daughter of a fifteen-year-old uneducated waitress, out of wedlock. As is evident the protagonists mother is little more than a child herself when she gives birth to her first born, much in need of love and stability herself which as the story unfolds we come to know she never experienced. From the very beginning the family comes across as cramped into a tiny space for example in the incident where the family goes to the airport. There is a picture of four people squeezed into the front of a car and this image never escapes our mind to suggest anything broader. The family is wide as Anne Ruth names a few aunts and uncles and considering an aunt was pregnant with her eighth child when Lyle Parsons dies we understand that was the general trend, that of multiple births so that the woman looks all frail and decayed and much older than her age from a very young age. It is almost the family pride of the Boatwrights as Aunt Ruth tells Bone’s mother on the death of Lyle Parsons “"Now you look like a Boatwright, ...Now you got the look. You're as old as you're ever gonna get, girl. This is the way you'll look till you die.”(Allison 6). This very look had been described by the author in the previous paragraph as “Her blond hair looked dark and limp, her skin gray, and within those few days fine lines had appeared at the corners of her eyes”(Allison, 6) The men in the family are however of a different breed, strong, hardworking and as can be suspected from the account of Earle Boatwright, dangerous; “The man was a Boatwright, after all, and he and his two brothers had all gone to jail for causing other men serious damage. Rumor told deadly stories about the Boatwright boys, the kind of tales men whispered over whiskey when women were not around. Earle was good with a hammer or a saw, and magical with a pickaxe.” This is the core out of which the character of Bone developed. However there was also the larger context that of being ‘white trash’ “We were the they everyone talks about--the ungrateful poor,” asserts Dorothy Allison, referring to her childhood experiences in Greenville, South Carolina (“Preface” 12).  In the stories collected in Trash and in her stunning first novel, Bastard Out of Carolina, she offers an uncompromising vision of the ugliness and injustice of poverty.  Incandescent with grief, rage, and pride, her fiction also affirms the complex subjectivity of persons who must endure the contempt of a society that affords them one of two mythologized positions:  “the truly worthy poor” or “white trash.”  In Bastard Out of Carolina, Allison critiques not only two of the most damaging bourgeois myths about so-called “white trash”--their characteristic illegitimacy and incest--but also the ideology of motherhood underpinning a sex/gender system that cuts across social classes.” (Baker) Amidst all this, the only person that a young girl, whose ideas about her own sexuality has not developed could turn to is her mother. But the repetition of Anne’s forgiving her daughter’s harasser shows the extreme need for love that Anne had which was consistently being pitted against her own offspring’s well being. And her earlier assurance to Glen “"I know you worry, but trust me, honey. I know where Bone is every minute. I wouldn't let nothing happen to my little girl” later hits back as a sorry irony when Anney leaves her daughter for her personal need for love. While reading this story what strikes the reader is the very personal tone of the novelist. The language is that which befits a young girls vocabulary yet in between there are streaks of the adult analytic reflective authorial voice. It is this very style of narration that makes it all the more poignant for the reader as the narrative style requires participation. The reader must surrender complete attention and empathy towards the Boatwright family no matter their shortcomings because to the narrator, the young girl it is her family despite everything. The issues that shape her character are etched into the readers mind as something very real: the suffering of Aunt Alma, the changing father figures sometimes loving sometimes tormenting and torturous surely affect her worldview. Amidst her nightmare of a childhood she too longed for love and appreciation which she seeked from her dream of becoming a performer “Even if I didn't get to be the star, I might wind up singing background in a "family"—all of us dressed alike in electric-blue fringed blouses with silver embroidery, traveling in a big bus, and calling home from different cities” This shows that the family that she had was not fulfilling for her. Her idea of a family was located outside in a bus full of gospel singers whose songs could demand love and appreciation. There is a sense of peace in belonging to such a family which she lacked herself. This novel definitely helped shape and question my personal understanding of mother-daughter relationships. The autobiographical angle to the novel in fact makes it impossible to neglect the gnawing feeling inside by considering it as a mere work of fiction. It changes one’s perspectives about human affections which have been codified by society as being a concrete body. It opens out newer avenues of understanding human relations when placed in different contexts. Works cited Allison, Dorothy. Bastard Out of Carolina. New York: Penguin Books New York, 1993. Print. Baker, Moira P. "“The Politics of They”: Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina As Critique of Class, Gender, and Sexual Ideologies." N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Mar 2011. . Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2001. Print. Read More