Bastard Out Of Carolina

“Mama hated to be called trash, hated the memory of every day she’d ever spent bent over other people’s peanuts and strawberry plants while they stood tall and looked at her like she was a rock on the ground.”

Although it is Anney who first struggles against the pejorative label “trash,” Bone too will come to know the sting of being described as such even as a young girl. Dorothy Allison has written extensively on class, and she has noted that depictions of impoverished characters that she saw early in life were usually limited to men. In this novel she wanted to write about women in poverty and to describe the uniquely gendered experience of growing up poor and female in the American South.

“Though half the county went in terror of them, my uncles were invariably gentle and affectionate with me and my cousins.”

This passage speaks to the characterization of Bone’s uncles, but also to the importance of family within the narrative. Although impoverished and possessing limited resources, the Boatwright family is fiercely bonded. This becomes especially important in the face of class-based discrimination and the abuse that Bone survives: Although she has to contend with many obstacles, her family remains a source of strength and support for her.

“Men could do anything, and everything they did, no matter how violent or mistaken, was viewed with humor and understanding.”

This passage speaks to Dorothy Allison’s interest in feminism, gender roles, and the experiences of women. Allison became active in the feminist movement first as an undergraduate, and at that time one of the issues central to the project of feminism was domestic violence and abuse. Such acts of violence were often seen as private, family business. Here, Allison depicts how problematic and pervasive this issue is through the lens of the novel’s protagonist.

“People talked about Glen’s temper and his hands.”

Glen’s hands become a motif within the novel, and they represent the ever-present danger that he poses to Bone. He is a vicious abuser, and his serial predation will become Bone’s primary struggle during her coming-of-age years.

“The spring mama married Glen Waddell, there were thunderstorms every afternoon and rolling clouds that hung around the foothills north and west to the Smokies.”

This moment foreshadows the danger that Anney’s marriage to Glen will pose to her family. Her mother advised against the match, but Anney had insisted that Glen loved her, Reese, and Bone. He will come to perpetrate habitual abuse against Bone, and the author’s use of stormy imagery here is a subtle indicator that their relationship will bring “storms” to the household. Even Anney’s mother can see this sign and tells her daughter that marrying in a season of such terrible weather is a bad omen.

“Glenn had wanted a plot of his own, but had no money to buy one, and that seemed to be the thing that finally broke his grief and turned it to rage.”

This passage speaks to Glen’s characterization. He is less successful than his siblings and has never been able to gain the approval of his father. He turns his anger, feelings of inadequacy, and disappointment outwards, taking out his inner pain specifically on Bone.

“Daddy Glen didn’t like us listening to those stories that Granny and Aunt Alma were always telling us over and over again.”

This passage describes the way that Glen isolates Anney, Reese, and Bone from their family, both physically and emotionally. It speaks both to Glen’s characterization and to the thematic importance of abuse in the narrative in that it establishes isolation as part of Glen’s pattern of abuse. He is a controlling and manipulative partner and parent, and he becomes a profoundly damaging force within Bone’s nuclear family unit.

“Hunger makes you restless. You dream about food.”

Hunger is a motif within the text that helps the reader understand the importance of The Intersections of Class and Gender. Dreams are also a motif, and the escapism that Bone finds in her dreams becomes a source of comfort to Bone during the years that she is not able to prevent the abuse that her stepfather subjects her to.

“In Daddy Glen’s family, the women stayed home.”

This passage speaks to the theme of The Intersections of Class and Gender. Glen comes from a more affluent family than Anney, and his family looks down on her. They see her as “trash” and judge her for working. Growing up with this kind of class-based prejudice and the stigma of being poor will be a struggle for both Anney and Bone.

“He loves you, Mama was always saying, and she meant it, but it seemed like Daddy Glen’s hands were always reaching for me, trembling on the surface of my skin, as if something pulled him to me and pushed him away at the same time.”

Glen’s hands function symbolically within the narrative to remind the reader of his abuse. Bone is continually preoccupied with Glen’s hands because she knows that they reveal his mood. Bone also lives in constant fear of being touched by Glen. This climate of anxiety and worry characterizes Bone’s childhood, and it will be the source of the inner rage that she experiences and that manifests itself in how Bone begins acting toward others.

“I wanted her to love me enough to leave him, to pack us up and take us away from him, to kill him if need be.”

This passage speaks to the cycle of abuse. Anney is an enabler and is never able to protect her child. That she ultimately chooses Glen over Bone speaks to how effectively Glen has been able to manipulate and control her, and that Bone is ultimately able to stand up to Anney and Glen illustrates her own inner strength and resilience.

“Daddy Glen had said he was sorry, begged, wept, and swore never to hurt me again.”

This passage, along with the previous chapter’s descriptions of Glen’s physical and sexual abuse of Bone, illustrates the cycle of abuse as it is observed in cases of domestic violence. Glen, who feels a deep sense of rage and shame because he is the sole member of his family to have not attained home ownership and a professional career, directs his rage first towards himself, but then at Bone. Following an abusive episode, he makes a public show of remorse, only to repeat the cycle over again. This abuse will scar Bone both literally and figuratively, and she will come of age against not only the backdrop of the poverty her family experiences in part because of Glen’s inability to keep his job, but also against the cycle of violence she is subject to because of her mother’s marriage.

“Anybody can see how Glen got bent, what his daddy did to him.”

Although Glen’s father’s mistreatment is never explicitly described, he is characterized as an emotionally withholding man with great disappointment for Glen. Glen, who is filled with rage because he cannot please his father, turns his anger and shame outwards by taking those feelings out on his own wife and stepchildren. This passage speaks to the cycle of abuse, and to the way that it reverberates through successive generations in a family.

“Listen to you. You…you trash. You nothing but trash. Your mama’s trash, and your grandma, and your whole dirty family.”

This passage underscores Dorothy Allison’s own history of stigmatization for her class position. Both Anney and Bone bristle at being called trash. Allison depicts how damaging that kind of slur can be, especially when weaponized against young women coming of age.

“Never could accept that I was a better mechanic than a mill worker.”

Raylene speaks these lines about the time she spent working at the local mill. Her mechanical skills, as well as the time she’d spent living as a man and her ability to fish and use tools, speak to the novel’s gender politics: Characters like Raylene and Bone do not neatly fit into traditional feminine roles, and part of Bone’s coming-of-age story will be coming to terms with a gender identity that is out of place in the traditional setting in which she grows up.

“I took to watching myself in mirrors to see what other people saw, to puzzle out just what showed them what I really was.”

This speaks to the novel’s interest in coming of age, gender, and class. These three focal points inform much of Allison’s body of work, and in Bastard out of Carolina they are all easily observable in the character of Bone. As she comes of age, she feels shame because of her poverty, because of her victimization at the hands of Glen, and because she does not fit the mold of what most little girls look like. Here, she tries to figure out how she is seen through the eyes of others in an attempt to understand her own identity.

“I was looking for something special in me, something magical. I was growing up, wasn’t I? But the only thing different about me was my anger, that raw boiling rage in my stomach.”

This passage speaks to the impact that abuse has on Bone as she comes of age. She feels shame accompanied by a rage that she does not understand as a result of being sexually abused by her stepfather Glen. Rage and shame become key parts of her character, and part of the task for Bone as she ages will be to process the trauma at the root of these feelings.

“I felt mean and powerful and proud of all of us, all the Boatwrights who had ever gone to jail, fought back when they hadn’t a chance, and still held onto their pride.”

This passage speaks to the importance of family within the narrative. Bone’s family is a source of strength and solace for one another, even as they are discriminated against and stigmatized by their community.

“Glen would never hurt me, Raylene, you know that.”

Anney enables Glen’s abuse through denial, and although she does object to his treatment of her daughter, she both apologizes for Glen and accepts his inevitable apologies. She is as much a part of his cycle of abuse as Glen is, and part of the shame that Bone feels is rooted in confusion about why her mother fails to protect her. This speaks to Allison’s own experiences as a child, and she has noted that it is part of why she felt compelled to write this book.

“It was my fault, everything, Mama’s silence and Reese’s rage.”

Because Bone has been subjected to abuse, manipulation, and mistreatment for so long, she has internalized Glen’s accusations that she is to blame for the problems of the household. Although Glen’s abuse and even Anney’s enabling are truly at fault, Bone cannot see that.

“After a while I cried myself to sleep. I dreamed I was a baby again, five or younger, leaning against Mama’s hip, her hands on my shoulders. She was talking, her voice above me like a whisper between stars. Everything was dim and safe. Everything was warm and quiet.”

This is an example of the way that dreams are used as a motif in this narrative. Dreams either represent Bone’s idealized memories and hopes for a better future or are rage-based fantasies in which she hopes to see her abuser punished. In each case, they represent the distance between the way things are and the way that Bone would like her life to be.

“I ain’t never wanted to marry nobody. I like my life the way it is, little girl.”

This passage speaks to Raylene’s characterization, and to Allison’s interest in gender, class, and queerness. Raylene exists outside of the boundaries of traditional norms of gender and sexuality, and as such she is a role model for young Bone, who also does not fit neatly into traditional gender categories.

“But no matter what you decide, when you go back to Daddy Glenn I can’t go with you.”

This passage marks a turning point in Bone’s development. She is old enough to have gained some agency, and she demonstrates an instinct for self-preservation and self-respect that her mother, who still loves Glen, cannot seem to access. Bone’s eventual recovery will be rooted in this first act of resistance, and although it will be painful for her to both admit that her mother will never choose her over Glen and to part ways with her mother, she has to do both in order to survive.