Two different types of men: Bone's uncles and Daddy Glen in Dorothy Allison's "Bastard Out Of Carolina"

Résumé ou Introduction

In Dorothy Allison's novel on the growing up a of an illegitimate child in South Carolina
and her being abused by her step-father, men are not really the main and acting figures.
They are rather minor characters, even Daddy Glen who causes so much pain. The actual
"sovereigns" are the women. But the depiction of men in this novel does not only tell
about the nature of men in this family but a lot on the values of society and the critique
the author expresses and shall thus be the focus of this work.
First there are Anney's brothers, Bone's uncles. They are all very much alike in their
behavior and attitudes, but Earle is clearly the one who is closest to Anney and Bone and
so he is the most often mentioned one of the "Boatwright brothers". And this points to
the first phenomenon of male characters in this novel: even if the brothers are partially
married (like Nevil), they are always referred to as the "Boatwright brothers"; they seem
to be an inseparable unit. What is being said about one of them always refers to the
others as well: "Your uncle Beau is a drunk. You know that, but so is your uncle Nevil,
and so am I, I suppose", Earle tells Bone1. But mostly the brothers are being talked about
as "they" anyway. Of course this also indicates the importance of family bondage in the
Boatwright family, but if one looks at the way Bone's aunts are mentioned and spoken
about in the novel, the unity of the brothers is exceptional. Bone as the I-narrator does
talk about her aunts in a collective plural some times, but mostly the aunts are being
referred to as single persons and are also clearly different from each other in their
character and conditions of living. This phenomenon of the brothers only being referred
to as a group has other reasons too, but this would lead us very deep into the novel and
shall be postponed to a later part of the interpretation. [...]
1Dorothy Allison: Bastard Out Of Carolina. Flamingo, London 1993, p. 125. All of the following quotations will
refer to this edition