Trauma and Survival in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, or the Power of Alternative Stories

Abstract

‘[I]n the wake of women’s writing on domestic violence, and specifically over the last fifteen years’, Monica Michlin claims, ‘the sexual abuse of children has become a major literary theme, particularly in LGBT fiction.’ (2008, p. 265).¹ The lesbian-feminist author and incest survivor Dorothy Allison partakes in this trend in American literature. In her semi-autobiographical trauma narrative Bastard Out of Carolina, she lifts the veil on child abuse, as she draws the portrait of Bone Boatwright, a little girl who suffers repeated physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather Glen. The novel is narrated by the child-victim herself, a narrative form which allows the reader to enter the mind of a traumatised child threatened by disintegration. A strong link is established between abuse — sexual, physical or psychological — and the question of self and identity. Faithful to the queer notion that identity is not a given and stable characteristic of the individual, Allison describes identity as ever-changing and enriched by experience. The author’s feminist views inform her treatment of the abused child’s development, as Bone eventually embraces a sexual identity shaped by abuse, and finally overcomes male domination and the violence it implies. In this chapter, I shall study how tales and fantasies influence the child’s perception of herself and others, and how they help her cope with the horror in her life.