The final stretch of Fun Home by AB

As I have come to the end of Fun Home, I have been thinking of a few of the topics we discussed about in the classroom. One in particular stuck to me and has been invading my thoughts as I finished this book, and the thought that keeps popping into my head is her mother. Was her mother and influence on her life? how? What did she do or did she not do in Alison's life that may have effected her nowadays? My answer to that is that I don't think the mother was as influential as her father, especially for the reasoning that her mother seems like a less important character in her autobiography. Neither her mother or father seemed to have shown affection towards Alison or her two siblings, but her mother still insisted on her "normal role" in the sense that she always bathed them or made dinner for them. When Alison tries to tell her mother that she got her period, her mother doesn't even look up from her reading and just asked if she had cramps. That role model figure is what Alison was lacking as she was growing up and that structure may have really affected her. Her mother was always there physically it seems, but never there completely intellectually because she was constantly writing her thesis. She strived for her fathers' attention as a child because he was the more aloof parent of the family, although you can tell especially from the pictures that their mother was drained, dull, and unhappy. A couple times their friends who were professors just took the kids away for a day or so to give the parents a break. At first I thought this gesture was nice, but looking at it I realize that the parents were both trying to escape the life they lead. I think that her mother and her father never wanted or expected the life that they had, and for different reasons are still in the marriage. Her mother was not mentioned a whole lot in this book, so I don't think she had a huge life impact on her, mostly because her father's influence outshines what her mother has done. Her mother is still alive and around, and communicative, as her father is the opposite so Alison may take advantage of that aspect of her mother's relationship.