Bastard Out Of Carolina

Anney is Bone’s mother. Barely 16 when she gives birth to Bone, she is first introduced through her desire to have the word “illegitimate” removed from Bone’s birth certificate. She is thus immediately viewed through the lens of class, and that will continue to be an important aspect of her characterization throughout the narrative. Anney is hardworking, but like many women of her background during the 1950s when this novel is set, she struggles to make ends meet and is not able to make the transition from working poor to working class, let alone to middle class. And yet, like Bone, she is rooted in a strong family system, loves fiercely, and wants a better life for her children than she had at their age. She is also a deeply problematic character, for it is in part through her enabling that Glen is allowed to continue to abuse Bone.

Anney hates to be called “trash,” and feels acutely the stigma of having been born poor. She is the victim of class-based prejudice from the families of both of her husbands, although Glen’s family in particular judges her for her lack of money, education, and success. Her fixation with Bone’s birth certificate is the most overt evidence of Anney’s class awareness, for she knows that the mark of “illegitimate” on a birth certificate will mark Bone for life. This is why, at the end of the narrative, she provides Bone with an emended birth certificate instead of choosing Bone over Glen, which Bone would certainly prefer. In Anney’s mind, the new birth certificate is a greater gift than even her own presence in Bone’s life.

Anney is closely bonded with many of her family members, and they all comment on their shared facial features and dispositions. Anney’s particular bond with her sisters is best observed through the frequent hair styling sessions that she and the other Boatwright women have: They all get together to cut, color, and curl one another’s hair. This is surely done in part out of necessity: None of the women can afford professional cuts or styling. And yet, there is a happiness and an ease to these get-togethers that shows the depth of their bond: Nowhere are the Boatwright men and women happier than with one another. Here, too, Allison presents the nuance of class: For women with more resources, a trip to the salon would be possible, and probably quicker than an entire afternoon spent with her sisters. And yet, spending an entire afternoon in the company of one’s sisters is surely a more renewing and affirming experience than receiving a hair cut from a stranger. The family bonds that typify working-poor and working-class families in the South that Dorothy Allison grew up with have a strength and a character not always observed in other social classes, and Allison shows that growing up poor is not always a detriment.

Anney also must be understood as an enabler. She perpetuates the cycle of abuse because, although she is often the one to find Glen in the act of physically abusing Bone, she always forgives him and concludes that her daughter was in some way partially responsible for the abuse. In this way, she not only enables the abuse, but perpetuates the damaging narrative that the abuser creates for the victim: that they in some way caused the abuse. Although she often bore witness to physical abuse, at the end of the novel Anney catches Glen in the act of sexually abusing Bone. Her response, although not out of character, is deliberately difficult to stomach, for she forgives Glen and the two disappear together. She chooses Glen over her own child, even though she knows that he has raped her. Although she is shown to try her hardest to provide for her children, moments like this figure her as an antagonist, because she values the love of an abusive man more than the love of her daughter.

Glen is the novel’s central antagonist. He is Bone’s stepfather, and he subjects her to both physical and sexual abuse over the course of many years. There is more attention given to his physical description than there is to the other characters, and this is because much of it is symbolic. Glen is a small-framed though muscular man who has unusually large hands. He does not drink or fight, although there is an anxious energy to him and he has a reputation for having a temper. He is highly emotional and cries during his marriage proposal to Anne, but also beats his fists against the car when he thinks that she might not accept. To the Boatwright men, hard-drinking and violent although only in the context of bar fights and other more “understandable” disagreements, Glen stands out because he is emotionally volatile and “nervous.” They all disapprove of his marriage to Anney.

Glen is the only unsuccessful child in an affluent family, and his siblings all have professional careers. Because of this, Glen’s father dislikes him and Glen tries constantly to gain the man’s approval. Although it is never specified, it can be inferred that in Glen’s own upbringing, there was emotional if not also verbal abuse. This has created a hyper-sensitivity to criticism in Glen, feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, and the tendency to form unhealthy, codependent attachments. This is the “nervous” volatility that the Boatwright men notice and find strange.

Glen is highly controlling, and although he would prefer to have Anney all to himself, he does enjoy being the “man” of the house, and he dictates many aspects of household life after he marries Anney. Glen would like to be a strong, stable provider, but he struggles against the weight of that task, and cannot keep a job or contribute financially to the family with regularity. It is in part because of that failure that he grows so angry, and rather than see his failure to provide for Anney and her children as a personal failing, he develops something of a martyr complex, and blames his lack of success on everyone from his father to his supervisors at various jobs to Bone. He complains that it “eats a man’s heart out, knowing no one trusts him” (81). In spite of his pathological urge to control everything in his life, there is actually very little that he does control, and this fact increasingly fills him with rage.

Glen turns that rage outwards, primarily towards Bone. He both sexually and physically abuses Bone, and the abuse begins early in his relationship with Anney. Although the physical abuse is perhaps more frequent, he watches Bone in a way that makes her uncomfortable, and often grabs her and holds her closely against his body. He is always behaving in a way that Bone cannot quite identify as sexual abuse, but that still makes her uncomfortable. Of course, all of this behavior is sexual abuse, and he creates a climate of fear and hyper-vigilance in Bone, for every time she comes into contact with him (and they live in the same household) she worries that he will touch her.

He lies, he blames Bone for the abuse that he subjects her to, and he repeatedly manipulates Anney into forgiving him, starting the cycle of abuse all over again. Glen is a near-perfect embodiment of the cycle of domestic abuse, and although his character is modeled after Allison’s own stepfather, he places this novel in dialogue with much of the project of second-wave feminism. Allison has stated that it was in large part because of becoming involved with the feminist movement that she had the courage to write this novel, and part of the second wave was the movement to have domestic violence recognized as crime. It had always been seen as private “family business” and even when called to the scene of domestic abuse, it was not uncommon for law enforcement officers to encourage the abuser to “calm down” and then leave to let the family sort things out. Allison’s depictions of the horrors of domestic abuse are rooted in feminist theory and activism.

Raylene is one of Bone’s aunts. Although Bone’s family is large and many of the characters lack in-depth development because their function within the narrative is to reinforce the thematic importance of family bonds, Raylene is an important and more-developed character than most.

Raylene is solitary and unmarried. She lives alone and is the only member of the family to maintain a permanent residence in one place throughout the entirety of Bone’s childhood. Unlike her siblings, she is not forced to move because of financial difficulties. Although she is a skilled gardener and cook (her preserves and canned goods are the talk of the family), she does not live neatly into traditional gender stereotypes. She is just as comfortable fishing as she is in her garden and provides for herself in many of the ways typically associated with men. She had a career at the mill, although she had not been allowed to be a mechanic, which was her true talent. Bone knows that as a young woman, Raylene had run off to work for a carnival, where she had lived as a man, fooling everyone with a short haircut and masculine clothing.

Raylene is one of the novel’s most overt interrogations of traditional gender identity and sexual orientation. Although Raylene’s sexuality is not openly discussed until the end of the novel, she does come out to Bone as a lesbian. Because Bone herself is struggling to define her sexuality and because Bone is modeled on Allison, whose coming-of-age story was marked by coming to terms with her identification as a lesbian, Raylene becomes an important role model for Bone. Although gay sexuality is a subtle, background issue rather than an overt theme within Bastard out of Carolina, Bone is an archetypal tomboy who does not feel comfortable in traditionally feminine dress or spaces. Raylene is thus an important figure for Bone because she is a happy, successful (perhaps not in financial terms, but in other ways) adult who does not conform to stereotypical notions of femininity. She shows Bone that it is possible to live one’s own truth, even in opposition to norms and expectations.

She is also the mouthpiece for some of the difficult-to-hear pieces of wisdom that Bone will have to come to terms with, including the fact that Anney cannot be expected to choose her daughter over Glen, even after she finds out about the years of sexual abuse. Learning hard lessons is a key part of many coming-of-age narratives, and Bone has to learn some exceedingly tough ones. Raylene’s explanation of Anney’s extreme shortcomings will become part of the body of knowledge that Bone relies upon when she makes her decision to break with her mother. Bone is able to refuse to return to Anney and Glen and to accept Anney’s inability to leave Glen in part because Raylene has encouraged her to see the truth, ugly as it might be, about her mother.