A Brief Foray into the Bruce and Helen's Relationship
We get our initial look into Bruce and Helen’s relationship on page 13 of Fun Home – or shall we say, Alison gives an initial look into their relationship, through her perspective. The lines “in theory, his arrangement with my mother was more cooperative… In practice, it was not” follow panels depicting Bruce showing Helen a chandelier in a magazine, to which she says “Bordello,” meaning “brothel[like]” (Bechdel, 13). Of course, he buys it, and the subsequent page shows Helen disdainfully saying “whorehouse,” as he hangs the chandelier up. This introductory chapter paints Bruce as an architect, an artificer, and a Daedalus. For our first impressions of Helen to be that she is abjectly against Bruce’s architectural decisions –the very extensions of his identity– within their home, very distinctly shows that she and Bruce are utterly incompatible. Bruce is even worse: he purposely dismissed her input. Why doesn’t she make any act of resistance in the face of this disrespect? We don’t see...