The Space Between: A Narrative Approach to Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home

The juxtaposition of graphic memoir with post-classical narrative theory reveals ways in which narratological analysis can complicate current models of graphic narrative, and ways in which the graphic memoir, or “autography,” challenges narrative theory. Autography, by adding the visual element, multiplies the diegetic levels or story-worlds beyond those recognized by theorists of traditional prose autobiography. This multiplication of story levels complicates the “dual” model of graphic memoir’s being comprised of a verbal layer and a visual layer by taking into account a third layer, the division of the verbal between voiceover narration and dialogue. The multiple levels introduced by comics art and intertextual references in Fun Home draw in the reader of autography through means that are not available to traditional autobiography. Bechdel’s text also breaks the dual structure of “story” and “discourse” by using “the space between” words and pictures to extend possibilities for the representation of consciousness..