Triggers. Spoilers.
In “Where Moral Authority Begins: Part II,” I am curious about what truth costs a child and her family in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina. I have obsessed over this novel for years, not only the story but also the language—authentic, textured, defined in place and socio-economics to which I am particularly drawn having grown up as a young girl in northern Appalachia. I am also in love with my paperback copy. French flaps and deckle edges. I have written about my love of French flaps. The French flap and deckle edge makes this paperback Bastard something more than a book. It is really an experience.
Allison set the novel in South Carolina but the textures are familiar to me, the way Cincinnati chili tastes of cinnamon and southern chili Tex-Mex. The spices are different but the feel is home. And so is the trauma.
Bastard reveals brutal truths through its young narrator, “Bone,” thirteen years old and a survivor of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Glen, Bone’s stepfather, but we don’t know this in the beginning. Bone introduces her story, taking us back to when she was still inside her mama, Anney, who is fifteen:
I’ve been called Bone all my life, but my name’s Ruth Anne. I was named for and by my oldest aunt—Aunt Ruth. My mama didn’t have much to say about it, since strictly speaking, she wasn’t there. Mama and a carful of my aunts and uncles had been going out to the airport to meet one of the cousins who was on his way back from playing soldier. Aunt Alma, Aunt Ruth, and her husband, Travis, were squeezed into the front, and Mama was stretched out in back, sound asleep. Mama hadn’t adjusted to pregnant life very happily, and by the time she was eight months gone, she had a lot of trouble sleeping. She said that when she lay on her back it felt like I was crushing her, when she lay on her side it felt like I was climbing up her backbone, and there was no rest on her stomach at all. Her only comfort was the backseat of Uncle Travis’s Chevy, which was jacked up so high that it easily cradled little kids or pregnant women. Moments after lying back into that seat, Mama had fallen into her first deep sleep in eight months. She slept so hard, even the accident didn’t wake her up…. (1)
In the opening pages, we quickly learn that Uncle Travis is driving drunk when the accident sends Mama flying through the windshield and put in a coma for three days. Bone narrates her traumatic birth and Uncle Travis’ negligence so nonchalantly that the reader passes through the moral threshold as swiftly as Mama flies through the window, void of moral judgement. A similar technique discussed in “Where Moral Authority Begins: Part I: Beloved.” Allison, like Morrison, allows her readers room to judge or not judge individually, even if the weight of the accident and Anney being fifteen and pregnant sits heavily on the shoulder, Allison gives it little more emotion than narrating a bologna sandwich. A fantastic tenor, as Bone allows moral authority to develop within the context of the reader’s moral compass. The reader is now invested.
Moral Authority in Shifting Points of View
Where Allison opens Bastard in first person, she makes an unconventional shift to third-person omniscient within the first chapter, a technical awkwardness that is arguably jarring, though, rewarding as we see Glen’s propensity for violence early, raising dramatic tension and stakes for both Bone and Mama:
Yes, Glen thought, oh yes, but he kept quiet and took another drink of tea. The gravy in his stomach steadied him, but it was Anney’s smile that cooled him down. He felt so strong he wanted to spit. He would have her, he told himself. He would marry Black Earle’s baby sister, marry the whole Boatwright legend, shame his daddy and shock his brothers. He would carry a knife in his pocket and kill any man who dared to touch her. Yes, he thought to himself, oh yes…. (13)
Interestingly, the omniscient narrator reveals the violence with no judgement, again allowing the reader to contextualize moral authority independently. A predator would read this paragraph very differently than a survivor, and so where Allison delivers the would be impetus, the mechanism for moral authority exists entirely outside the work, itself, and in the reader’s own judgements. Allison does not even allow Bone an opinion on Glen’s violent tendencies in this moment.
I do often think on how Allison might have otherwise structured this moment. If, for instance, she had stayed in Bone’s first person narrative, she would still have had the benefit of Bone’s opening narrative style, apathetically charming, and avoid the moral hammer. Perhaps the choice was made due to the level of detail in this omniscient moment. How can a girl know the details of a man’s mind? But where other readers have suggested that the shift was surprising, I’m not convinced it is as surprising as suggested. Allison already hints at the shift to omniscience three pages prior:
No one knew that she cried in the night for Lyle and her lost happiness, that under that biscuit-crust exterior she was all butter grief and hunger, that more than anything else in the world she wanted someone strong to love her like she loved her girls…. (10)
These lines signal an emotional closure and beginning for me as a reader. Bone is giving us interiority into Mama’s sadness and desires and setting the stage for a man like Glen to enter, a terrible irony given Glen’s sexual abuse of Bone. When the next section and scene opens with what feels more immediate, in real time, which might feel like third person but for Bone’s “Mama” perspective, I am already sensing a narrative shift in the storytelling. We’ve gotten the history of the family, Mama and Bone, and now we are getting to the main point of the opening, the main conflict, and it most certainly centers on Glen.
“…more than anything else in the world she wanted someone strong to love her like she loved her girls….”
I struggle with the point of view shift and Glen’s interiority, technically, while at the same time valuing Glen’s interiority. It draws me close to the predator’s impending strike, like watching a lion stalk its prey. It would feel much different through the eyes of the prey. And herein is where I feel the push and pull of my moral judgements on Glen. Anney certainly desires partnership and protection, as does Bone, and so my judgements of Glen and his violent interiority may have utility, a lion protecting its pride. This is not the outcome, of course, Glen is no one’s protector, but the possibility makes me an early accomplice to his violent tendencies, and therefore, I am more invested in him as a character. Allison wields moral authority surgically, manipulating my judgements with dexterity.
Perhaps this point of view shift in Bastard is one of those “break the rules” moments that work for Allison because the moment is so emotionally gripping and foreshadowing central conflicts. I’m in awe of her skill.
