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1-Page Summary of Are You My Mother
Overall Summary
Are You My Mother? is a comic drama that focuses on the author’s relationship with her mother. It uses various methods, such as memoir and dream interpretation, to examine their complicated relationship.
The non-linear narrative of Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel moves throughout her life to examine her relationship with her mother, a columnist and retired teacher. She compares events in the book to Virginia Woolf’s writings about herself as well as Donald Woods Winnicott’s work about separating from one’s mother.
During the 1960s in Pennsylvania, Helen’s marriage to her domineering husband drained her energy. She stopped showing affection toward Alison when she was seven years old and began to hate herself. When Bruce died, Helen divorced him and revealed that 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, who is also unable to commit due to her own fears about relationships. Eventually, Helen realizes that she can’t be supportive of Alison’s lesbianism and breaks up with her.
Alison moves to Minnesota with Eloise and enters therapy. Her therapist, Jocelyn, is a motherly figure who helps her open up about her childhood trauma. She also cries in sessions, which is ethically wrong as she’s paying for this service. However, Jocelyn hugs Alison after the session—another unethical act by a therapist but it helped Alison feel better so it can be justified. Afterward, Alison studies Winnicott’s research on child development along with Freud’s ideas on dream interpretation and Alice Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child. Helen also reveals that she has suffered from depression before.
Alison is obsessed with Eloise, and her sessions take away from Jocelyn. She stops seeing Jocelyn but continues to see Eloise, who cheats on Alison again. After they have sex, she kicks holes in the wall and breaks up with her. The two don’t hug after the breakup because it’s a way for Alison to avoid relationships that are too close or dependent on each other. She moves to Vermont and finds Carol as a new therapist specializing in psychoanalysis.
Alison, the author of Fun Home, allows her mother to read the book before it’s released. However, Alison is afraid that she’ll be too angry in the book and worries about how her mother will react. In addition to writing Fun Home, Alison experiences vivid dreams and financial troubles along with criticism from Helen (her mom). It seems like she’s writing Fun Home because she wants to heal herself after all of these things happen.
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. She considers the disability game she played with her mother was a way for them to fix each other’s wounds, so teaching creativity is Helen’s way of expressing love.
Chapter 1: “The Ordinary Devoted Mother”
Alison begins the book by describing a dream she had where she was in a basement. She couldn’t get out because there were sheets of plywood on the only way out, so she decided to jump through a window. On that window was a spider and then Alison noticed that there was also an open door with water behind it. Without hesitation, Alison jumped into the water and experienced “a sublime feeling of surrender”.
Alison is worried about her mother’s reaction to Fun Home, a novel she wrote based on her father. She compares this worry to the anxiety she felt when preparing to tell her mother that she was gay or waiting six months before telling Helen that she got her first period. A near accident with a truck mirrors Alison’s father’s apparent suicide and calms Alison down. Her mother allows the book to be written but refuses to help and hopes it isn’t too angry.
