Bastard out of Carolina

The second question being considered during this unit is: What does the way women are depicted in contemporary fiction say about our culture and identity? Evaluate the purpose of presenting women in this way in your novel.

 Women in Bastard Out of Carolina are strong willed and tough. Bone says at one point something to the effect of the Boatwright women being just as strong as the men. In this way, she means not that the women have the physical strength of the men, but that the women are shrewd and clever, using their minds to outwit the men around them. In that way, they are just as strong as the men.

Bone’s family is poor. To society, her family is seen as a bunch of criminals and drunks, barely able to make ends meet. Maybe they’re right. Bone sways between hating her family and financial situation to being immensely proud of her family. She knows that he family is not normal or perfect. However, they are her family, and since Bone has little friends, they turn out to be the only people she has, even if she can’t always count on them.

Also, the women in the Boatwright family do not embody the ‘perfect’ example of women. They are loud and rambunctious, spitting and yelling as well as the men do. Boatwright women are made long and lanky; “…born to be worked to death, used up, and thrown away” (206). The ideal woman is the one Bone reads about in stories, with pretty pink cheeks and wispy hair. Boatwright women are hard. They could be considered pretty back when they were young, but they age fast and lose their beauty. After their babies are born and their husbands gone away, they settle into that Boatwright look. “‘Now you look like a Boatwright,’ she said, ‘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’” (8).

Society’s women are pretty and proper. They don’t mess around with boys, make babies, and leave their husbands for days before coming back. Bone’s family is unconventional. She knows she’ll end up being just the same. There’s no way around it. When she grows up, she’ll be just like them; just like she is at the end of the novel. That was why she had a desire to be a boy when she was younger. For them, at least, they have freedom. A woman has her tongue and her wit, but she’ll be used up anyway and tossed aside.

You have made some interesting comments about the narrator of this novel. I am wondering what you think of the author’s reasoning for choosing to create the narrator in this way. The narrator’s feelings are obviously signficant – the challenge of feeling like a tom boy while knowing that she will ultimately grow up to be what the men are making fun of – strengthens the message being delivered to readers. Why did Allison create such a narrator? How can readers connect to the narrator at this stage in her life?

Stories move forward by conflict. In this story, much of the conflict is between the narrator and herself. This type of conflict is subtler and harder to portray through a story as opposed to other types of conflict, such as a fast paced action story.

With this narrator, Allison wished to portray the conflicts of growing up. Bone is a perceptive child and understands much more of the world than she lets on. Allison is not just telling the story of Bone’s family, but how Bone interacts and learns from that family situation.

Bone works as a narrator because she is torn between thinking like a child and thinking like an adult. With her mother working all the time, Bone was forced to grow up faster on her own. However, she still retains some childlike qualities which make her view of the world seem at times to be both naive and insightful. When Daddy Glen begins to treat her in a way that makes her uncomfortable, she understands the situation, but at the same time denies that it anything like ’sex’ as she has learned from her aunts and uncles.

The readers can connect to the conflicts of growing up, because everyone experiences it at some point. Although the circumstances may be different for Bone, the process of growing up is still very similar.

One of the questions being considered during this unit is: How are women depicted in contemporary fiction and media? During your reading of the novel, comment on the ways in which women are being portrayed. Consider relationships, experiences, situations, etc.

In the novel Bastard Out of Carolina, there is a stark contrast shown between men and women. Through the perspective of Bone, a child trying to understand her own place in the world, this difference is most evident. At the beginning of the novel when Bone is younger, she laments not being born as a boy. She sees the toughness and brashness of her uncles and attempts to be just like them. For her efforts, they laugh and poke fun as she dresses like them and mimics their movements.

However, as time goes on, Bone begins to observe the subtleties that the women in her family embody. They don’t display an outward toughness like the men do, but instead an inward fire and deifance that puts them on a wholly different level than men. Over time, Bone moves further from the boyish ideal she idolized and towards wanting to understand the nature of women in her family.

“A man has needs,” they’d laugh every time they got together. “So what do you suppose a woman has?”

“Men!” one of them would always answer in a giggling roar. Then they would all laugh till the tears started running down. I wasn’t at all sure what was so funny, but I laughed anyway. I liked being one of the women with my aunts, liked feeling a part of something nasty and strong and separate from my big rough boy-cousins and the whole world of spitting, growling, overbearing males.

- Pg. 91

It is through observing her own family, a mix of aunts, uncles, grandmothers, and cousins, that Bone is able to sort out and understand these differences. The men fight and yell at each other to sort out their problems, while the women make comments at each other and fight with their words and tears.

Bone is torn between her childhood of wanting to be a boy and her growing perspective that being a woman has its own advantages as well. As the novel continues, it is likely that Bone will grow into her role as a woman, because she will learn that it is nothing to be looked down upon at all.