The Bechdel’s OCD
In Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, her father Bruce and her both struggle with OCD. Bruce has an odd fascination with renovating his home into a Victorian marvel. Alison counts the insignificant details, whether that be adding the same repetitive phrase to her diary to conceal the subject’s identity or counting the number of drops falling from a water faucet. Though different obsessions, they both show how control can affect one’s relationship with their family and identity.
Bruce’s OCD with Renovation and Organization
The beginning of Fun Home opens with the story of Bruce’s renovation hobby, showing a Victorian mansion filled with antiques and aesthetics that Bruce has spent years refurbishing and reconstructing. It seems to readers that the only place Bruce truly finds peace is when he’s renovating. Yet, renovating is not a mindless hobby to Bruce. Renovating is an obsession. Bruce Bechdel’s obsession with renovating is not just a hobby or an aesthetic pursuit, but more of a manifesto of his need to control how others perceive him.
Throughout Fun Home, it is heavily hinted that Bruce Bechdel is closeted. Whether through hidden pictures of Roy or outward court dates related to Bruce offering alcohol to underage boys, Bruce never confronts his sexuality but instead masks it with shady interactions and puzzling details. Much like his own life, his own home becomes a facade, and a place where he has to curate the way he looks to others to hide something much deeper. He is putting on a false front when he decorates, presenting his house into something it’s not to hide its true appearance. Bruce has been hiding all his life and renovating is just another way to hide.
Ironically, the only people he could not hide from were the ones closest to him. Bruce could not keep his OCD from his family. He instead projected his illness on his family, expecting his wife and children to conform to his levels of perfectionism. Allison recalls feeling like “extensions of his own body, like precision robot arms” (p.13). When she and her siblings did not meet her father’s expectations, her father expressed anger and frustration to her. To Bruce, Alison was seen as another one of his renovations, something for him to present and fix instead of love for their original being. His strive for perfection affected his relationship with Alison, as it often prevented him from enjoying time with her. A good example of this is when Bruce stops playing with Alison to vacuum the rug where they were laying. These memories deeply impacted Alison’s perspectives on love, sexuality, and (I argue) also influenced the OCD in her own life.
Similar to her father, Alison also exhibits symptoms of OCD but in a slightly different form. Allison is obsessed with numbers. Focusing on odd and even numbers, she would spend hours counting out seemingly insignificant things. Eventually, her obsessions started taking over her life, creating a substance in the air that “had to be gathered and dispersed constantly, to keep it away from my body– to avoid in particular inhaling or swallowing it” (p.136). When counting didn’t work she rejected certain phrases. Unlike Bruce, who externalized his compulsion through home restoration, Alisons OCD is internal, a never ending wave of anxiety. As she grows older, her compulsions extend beyond numbers to questioning reality itself, constantly second-guessing herself with the phrase ”I think”. This obsession with picking up the small details and patterns might extend to Alison’s obsession with her father’s sexuality as well, as she might be trying to find these little details to justify the distant relationship between them. OCD serves as a coping mechanism to her, shaped by familial trauma passed down from her father, and her coming to age with her and her father’s sexuality.
I agree with your explanations of Bruce and Alison's differing cases of OCD, and the metaphor you create of Bruce "hiding" from reality by renovating his house makes a lot of sense. Even his daughter Alison appears to him like an object to renovate, and as a result, her OCD worsens as well. It's interesting that despite the differences in their cases of OCD, both seem to go hand in hand, and you did a good job pointing this out.
ReplyDeleteYour analysis of Bruce and Alison’s OCD is really Interesting, especially in how you connect Bruce’s obsession with renovation to his need for control over his identity. I also found it fascinating how Alison’s compulsions manifest internally, whereas Bruce’s are external, yet both are shaped by trauma. The idea that Alison’s fixation on details extends to analyzing her father’s sexuality adds another layer to how OCD is both a coping mechanism and a reflection of their strained relationship.
ReplyDeleteI don't know enough about psychology and diagnosis to comment with any authority on these ideas, but I do think it's an interesting dynamic in the book, as you describe, that we can clearly see Bruce's obsession with renovating the home as a kind of sublimated expression of his repressed identity, and if a repressed identity manifests in asserting control over all these minor things in life that seemingly CAN be controlled, it makes sense that Alison's own version of OCD peaks when she is least willing to be open about her own thoughts and feelings, even in her most private writings. So one manifestation of her disorder is this strange undermining of her own authority (the "I think" symbol), which gives her this odd kind of "cover": if nothing can be really known with any certainty, then she's not really repressing these aspects of herself, because she can't really know how she feels or what her desires are. It's also interesting that in Alison's case, it seems to work itself out without any professional intervention, while Bruce's seems intact throughout his adult life.
ReplyDeleteHi Heidi! It is definitely interesting to note how Bruce and Alison's OCD symptoms are so closely tied to the consistent theme of control throughout the book. Especially since being queer (for each of them, but especially Bruce and during the time he was growing up) was such stereotyped thing. The efforts that Bruce takes to have control over his house are undoubtedly tied to his discomfort with not being able to live the life he wanted. Great post!
ReplyDeleteHeidi, your decision to write about this viewpoint to the narrative is very unique! I almost forgot about his section of the book. I like how you have analyzed both Bruce and Alison. You decision to look at their OCD-like traits makes a reader notice another bond between the two of them that Alison does not notice. Near the end of the book when Alison describes her relationship with her father as much closer than she ever realized, maybe this is one of the things she is alluding to.
ReplyDeleteHi Heidi!! Your explanation of Bruce's passion for architecture/interior design is put really well. It felt to me that he used it sort of as an outlet to express himself. He couldn't necessarily express himself directly, and I think he used his home to fill that void. The whole thing about his children being sort of extensions of his renovations was definitely something that was quite puzzling to me. I found it a bit difficult to reason out, but you put it perfectly! Great blog!
ReplyDeleteGreat blog, Heidi! I agree with what you said about how Bruce and Alison both share OCD, even if it manifests in different ways. Alison's constant use of "I think" seems to be due to a fear of being wrong or lying, which could definitely be traced back to Bruce's perfectionism. It could also be that she undermines what she thinks because she doesn't want to accidentally lie, which may because her father seems to lie a lot.
ReplyDeleteHi Heidi! I really liked how you explored the parallels between Alison and Bruce’s OCD and how it reflects their need for control in such different ways. The connection between Bruce’s renovations and his attempt to hide his true self was really strong. Your analysis of Alison’s internal compulsions as a coping mechanism was also very thoughtful. Nice post!
ReplyDeleteHi Heidi! Your analysis of both of their obsessive qualities adds such an interesting layer to the novel. Alison's obsession with understanding and almost trying to relate everything in her life to her father's past and attempt to intertwine their identities to feel that connection now that she never felt while he was alive because he was unable to open up. Her compulsive tendencies are shown as you explained through her diary entries and her obsession with words and definitions as well. You show an important layer of mental health in this narrative. Great job!
ReplyDeleteHi Heidi, this was a thought-provoking post. I like the idea that as Bruce tries to surpress himself and his OCD, it spills out towards his family in unhealthy ways. I hadn't made the connection that Allison likely inherited her obsessiveness from Bruce. I like to think that while Allison has the same damaging traits, she is able to use it in more productive ways, and that her obsessiveness is actually positively exploitable such as in the production of this book.
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