Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama

After reading a section on the mother archetype in Carl Jung’s Four Archetypes, Alison dreams of Carol visiting her office, massaging her, and leaving with a torn pair of pants for mending. In therapy, Alison considers the dream as healing, while Carol questions the role reversal and suggests that she is writing Fun Home as a way to heal her mother. Both Jung’s book and Winnicott’s “Ego Distortion in Terms of True and False Self” discuss how patients project feelings about one person to another in an act known as Transference.

While raising her children, Helen often watches the television adaptation of The Forsyte Saga, a series of books by John Galsworthy detailing the lives of members of a wealthy family in Victorian England. Alison notices that Helen gives more emotional support to her two younger brothers and tries to rectify this by displaying more polite behavior, such as calling her “mother” and apologizing on any occasion. One night, Helen directly asks her daughter if she loves her. Alison carefully says “Yes,” though in hindsight “no sincerity or alacrity on my part would have sufficed” (87).

Alison respects the clear guidelines of Catholic doctrine and the elation that communion provides.