“Like a Comic Book by Virginia Woolf”: Alison Bechdel’s Dialogue with To the Lighthouse in Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama
“Like a Comic Book by Virginia Woolf”: Alison Bechdel’s Dialogue with To the Lighthouse in Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama

Summary/Abstract: : The purpose of this paper is to discuss Alison Bechdel’s second graphic memoir, Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama (2012) in order to analyse theAmerican cartoonist’s interest in myth, and her dialogic relationship with Virginia Woolf’s autobiographical writings, in particular To the Lighthouse (1927).Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? is first introduced via its brief comparison withBechdel’s debut memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006), devoted to herfather. Then, the paper traces the parallels and differences between Bechdel’sand Woolf’s works and quests to examine their respective relationships withtheir own mothers. In both daughters’ autobiographical writings, the mothersappear as mythical figures, who are subjected to demythicisation necessary forthe daughters’ liberation as artists. In addition, the paper discusses both authors’ reflections on the process of artistic creation seen in Woolf’s depictionof Lily Briscoe’s painting and in Bechdel’s own self-portrait. Finally, the paperdemonstrates Bechdel’s postmodernist intensification of Woolf’s modernist, already self-reflexive model of writing, made possible thanks to the medium of thegraphic narrative itself.

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