Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama

Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama is a graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel and the winner of the 2013 Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction. It is the follow-up to Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, which focuses on Bechdel’s sexual awakening and her relationship with her closeted bisexual father. Are You My Mother? interweaves memoir, dream interpretation, psychoanalysis, and literature to examine Bechdel’s complicated relationship with her mother.

Plot Summary

The non-linear narrative of Are You My Mother? moves throughout Bechdel’s life to examine her relationship with her mother, columnist, actress, and retired teacher Helen Fontana Bechdel (NOTE: For clarity, this guide uses “Alison” to refer to the author as a character and “Bechdel” for creative decisions). The memoir is divided into seven chapters, each starting with Alison describing a dream she had. The dreams are then interpreted within the context of events that happen during Alison’s life, including the creation of the book itself. Bechdel also compares events to Virginia Woolf’s autobiographical writings and the work of Donald Woods Winnicott, a pioneering child psychoanalyst. She explains his ideas about how children separate themselves from their mothers and his concept of a False Self, a type of compliant behavior meant to please others that develops if this process falters.

During the 1960s in Pennsylvania, Helen’s stressful marriage to her domineering husband, Bruce, drains her energy. When Alison is seven years old, Helen abruptly stops displaying signs of affection, including helping Alison write her diaries and indulging in a childhood game where Alison pretends to be disabled. Alison struggles in vain to win back her mother’s love, creating a self-loathing False Self. Bruce dies in an apparent suicide after Helen divorces him and Alison reveals she is a lesbian.

In the 1980s, Alison moves to Manhattan and pursues a career as a cartoonist. She meets Eloise, an anti-war activist, and forms a passionate-but-tumultuous relationship due to their inability to commit to each other. Helen supports Alison financially but believes her lesbian comic strips will damage the family’s reputation. Eventually, Alison recognizes that Helen cannot provide the affection she desires and cries.

Alison moves to Minnesota with Eloise and enters therapy. Her motherly therapist, Jocelyn, breaks through Alison’s defenses until she cries in session. Jocelyn hugs her afterward—an ethically gray act. Alison studies Winnicott’s research along with Sigmund Freud’s ideas on dream interpretation and Alice Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child. Helen also reveals her own history of depression.

Alison’s fixation on Jocelyn and her therapy sessions takes her attention away from Eloise, who sleeps with a mutual friend. The two have make-up sex, but Alison stops to kick a hole in the wall, and she ends the relationship after Eloise cheats again. Jocelyn refuses to hug Alison afterwards and leaves her alone—a necessary act for Alison to avoid dependent relationships. Shortly afterward, Alison moves to Vermont and finds a new therapist specializing in psychoanalysis, Carol. She tells Alison that her anxiety, professional envy, and emptiness are redirected forms of aggression.

Helen allows Alison to write about Bruce in Fun Home, but warns against appearing too angry. During the book’s seven-year production period, Alison experiences vivid dreams, financial troubles, karmic injuries, and criticism from Helen. Carol suggests that Alison is writing the book to heal her mother. Before Fun Home’s release, Alison learns of Jocelyn’s death from cancer.

Helen approves the new draft of Are You My Mother? Alison feels she now has a better understanding of herself and that she has achieved Winnicott’s goal of the child separating from the mother without destroying her. She considers the disability game she played with her mother was a way for them to fix each other’s wounds and believes that teaching and encouraging creativity is Helen’s way of expressing love.