Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Analyse two heroic women who find ways of being that go against the patriarchal grain and subvert the stereotype of the 'weaker sex'.

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Analyse two heroic women who find ways of being that go against the patriarchal grain and subvert the stereotype of the 'weaker sex'.


Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne are two pieces of work in which a heroic woman is depicted. Both the memoir and the novella portray their female protagonists as going against the patriarchal grain – within a familial home and a Puritan society respectively – and subverting the stereotype of the 'weaker sex' through displays of great emotional strength. As a result the protagonists of both works could be considered as female literary heroes.

The Scarlet Letter is set in Puritan New England, and the first chapter of the novella immediately depicts a strict, grey society: "sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats ... beetle-browed and gloomy" (Hawthorne, 1992, ch.1). This setting is furthered with descriptions of a heavy, spiked door and general use of pathetic fallacy to convey a sense of severity (Chapman, n.d.). When Hawthorne contrasts this colourless society with the scarlet shade of the "ignominious" letter 'A', that is forcibly emblazoned upon Hester Prynne's chest due to her conviction as an 'adulteress', Hester is seen to instantly be placed against the grain of the patriarchal Puritan society (Hawthorne, 1992, ch.2). Hester furthers this rebellion by staying in the town which has condemned her – she could easily have fled the oppressive society in search of a new life elsewhere, but instead chooses to live out her public humiliation and raise her daughter in the outskirts of the small town: on the edge of society, but still within its borders. Therefore, as she does not allow the Puritans to drive her from her home, she stands in direct opposition to their patriarchal society.

In Fun Home, one could argue that Alison Bechdel's realisation that she is a lesbian is the ultimate rebellion against a patriarchal society as she subverts traditional gender stereotypes by embracing her homosexuality. However, she quickly discovers that her own father has had affairs with various men and therefore, whilst Alison goes against patriarchal society in the customary view, her homosexuality is in a way conforming to her father's own beliefs. Bechdel uses an interesting mythological metaphor throughout the graphic novel whereby she compares Alison and her father Bruce's relationship to that of Icarus and Daedalus'. In some ways, both characters represent both parts of the Greek myth. We see Alison escaping Beach Creek as Icarus wishes to escape from Crete, and Bruce also longing to escape from his small home town; we see Alison's personality being shaped by her father as the prominence he places upon aesthetics influences her own distaste for the ornamental; Alison's coming out gives Bruce the 'wings' with which to admit and begin to accept his own sexuality; Bruce plays the part of the craftsman within his elaborate home, as Daedalus did. Bechdel herself describes these parallels between the four characters as "a tricky reverse narration that impels our entwined stories" (Bechdel, 2006, p.232) and it is clearly seen here that Alison is both conforming to and rebelling against the patriarchal society within her familial home.

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In both Fun Home and The Scarlet Letter much emphasis is placed upon traditional feminine ideals. Both characters have their 'femininity' suppressed, the difference being that Alison chooses to shun her femininity whereas Hester's is forcibly silenced. In Fun Home Alison rebels against both the wishes of her parents and the expectations of society by shunning "girly" clothing in favour of masculine styles. Her hair is cut short, she refuses to wear pearls, and instead admires masculine tailoring – but where her father admires the man in a sexual sense, she admires the power and strength of masculinity (Bechdel, 2006, pp.98-9). ...

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