Stability of "Creative Solitude"

    Every member of the Bechdel family household lives in their own world.  Alison's father lives in a trapped world--living in the same town and hiding his true sexuality--though he seeks stability in restoring their Victorian home and expressing himself through literature.  For instance, on page 13, there is an image of her father recording his voice to describe the influences on the house's design: "This owner changed the roofs, the porches, the chimneys, the fireplaces, the walls, the woodwork, until it became a stylish town house suitable for a prosperous lawyer's family."  His focus obsessively draws his attention and focus to the past, as he attempts to piece together the home's story.  This also alludes to his obsession with literature, as he chooses to live in a world different from his own reality, in order to escape his trapped life.

    In addition to Alison's father, her mother, too, has her own sense of "creative solitude" (p. 133) in which she is excessively focused on completing her thesis and graduate degree, as well as studying lines for theatrical performances.  Alison does not even share with her mother when she got her first period because she noted her mother's stressful distractions that exist in her own realm.  On page 132, readers are brought in to understand her separation from the real world that is her family, since she could not hold conversation with Alison while playing the piano: "No. Don't bother me now."  Being immersed in her creative world and dissociated from her reality as wife and mother contributes toward her stability, since her creative passions are unaffected by the instability of her marriage and home life.  Within their separate realms, however, we can see their deepest desires: "...Rub her back for her, kkkklick...And small, mullioned windows..." (p. 133), which suggests that she longs for her husband's affection, while he is sexually divided like the window he describes.  Within the stability of their creative worlds, therefore, readers are also able to see their instabilities poke through.

Lastly, as seen in her experience with OCD compulsions and journaling, Alison's escape/creative solitude is found in reading and writing.  On page 139, she writes, "The explanation of repressed hostility made no sense to me. I continued reading, searching for something more concrete," to introduce a scene in which her parents are arguing and she is reading.  The position of her parents in a smaller frame shows that she is distanced from them, but is still affected by their hostile relationship.  She and her book are in the front of the scene, which represents her own world immersed in reading.  Additionally, when trying to overcome her obsessive-compulsive behaviors, which was her only stability amidst the chaos/instability of her family, she still admits to being in her own world in response to her anxiety: "My recovery was hardly a joyous embrace of life's attendant chaos--I was as obsessive in giving up the behaviors as I had been in pursuing them" (p. 149).