A Feminist Approach to Boatwright Women: Aunt Raylene and Mama as

Mother Figures in Bastard Out of Carolina

“I wrapped my fingers in Raylene’s and watched the night close in around us” (Allison

309). In Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, Bone is abused, and it is only her extended

family that keeps her from ending up like her friend Shannon Pearl, who kills herself. The

Boatwright women especially play a monumental role in Bone’s character development. Bone

stays with three of her aunts in the course of the novel, and the rest of the Boatwright women

make frequent appearances. At the beginning of the story Bone believes anything her Mama

says. Although the beginning belongs to Mama, the very end belongs to Aunt Raylene. Allison

invokes the concept of the definition of woman through the eyes of men with her focus on the

Boatwright sisters. It is seen through a feminist lens that Mama and Aunt Raylene become

opposites who affect Bone through their decisions. Whereas Mama does her best to conform to

the societal and male definition of a woman, Aunt Raylene is thoroughly unconcerned about

societal norms and becomes the ideal and only mother for Bone.

Although Mama’s marriage to Daddy Glen is supposed to be for the entire family, it

becomes more important to Mama to achieve the status of a socially accepted and defined

woman than what’s best for the family. At the beginning of their marriage, Mama tells the girls

“this was a marriage for all of us” (Allison 42). The marriage is to make them all safe, to provide

all three girls with a man to fill the hole in their life and create stability. Mama “embraces Glen’s

logic of possessive paternity and celebrates the legal marriage that will produce them as a proper

family” (Harkins 120). The marriage is initially to help the family survive. However, in her effort

to create a perfect family with the man she loves, Mama gets caught up in her attempts to be a

proper woman for Glen, who she feels lost without. Virginia Woolf was the first to declare that

Ruhland, 2

the male defines female by their non-maleness, and we can see how Mama craves that definition

in her relationship with Daddy Glen (Bressler 181). Courtney George explains, “the Boatwright

women—like honky-tonk angels—often let the men in their lives define them” (140). Even when

it is apparent that this relationship will hurt her child, Mama is too dependent on Glen, and that’s

why when “Glen seemingly offers Anney an escape,” she takes it, even at the cost of her own

child (Bouson 109). Mama lets her adherence to the role of a socially proper, defined-by-man

woman get in the way of her relationship with Bone.

Aunt Raylene is different than other Boatwright women and does not concern herself

with following the accepted and required norms of society. She “lives her life differently from

her sisters—alone on the river where ‘trash rises’ (180). She lets children run free, she can fix a

car like a man, she is the best cook in the family, and she encourages Bone more than anyone

else” (George 140). This description gives Aunt Raylene a seemingly ambiguous gender role.

Raylene cooks like a woman in this time period, but she fixes cars as a man would. In literature

there are two typical images of women—that of the “angel in the house”, and the “madwoman in

the attic” (Bressler 186). While Mama strives for the “angel” image, Raylene rejects it and the

madwoman idea, deciding instead to be ambiguous in society’s terms.

In spite of her image as an aunt who spoils and lets the children run around, Raylene

gives Bone the advice she needs to hear and is there for her before, during and after her mother

leaves her. Before Bone goes to her house for the first time, she says that Raylene “let kids do

pretty much anything they wanted” (Allison 178). She lets the boys smoke in her yard and even

curse. As Raylene becomes a bigger part of the story, though, the reader is introduced to her

stern, motherly side. When Deedee doesn’t want to go to her mother’s funeral, Raylene slaps her

and calmly tells her, “you’re going to her funeral the way she would want. If you don’t, ten years

Ruhland, 3

from now you’re gonna hate yourself for missing it, and I damn sure am not gonna let that go

by” (Allison 237). She isn’t concerned about what Deedee thinks about her at that moment, or

about letting her act like a child. Instead Raylene is concerned with what is the right thing to do,

and she is intent on making Deedee understand that. This scene is one of the first where Raylene

shows her motherly, forceful side.

Then, Raylene sees Bone’s backside, where Daddy Glen belted her so hard it left bloody

strips of skin that scabbed painfully. From that moment on, Raylene is determined to save Bone,

and she is there for her throughout the rest of the hardships she faces. Bone recognizes this, and

when she leaves the apartment her Mama rented, it is to Raylene’s house that she walks. Bone

says, “Aunt Raylene didn’t seem that surprised” when Bone walks up her steps, and only briefly

looks up from her plants to acknowledge her (Allison 256). Even now, Raylene understands what

Bone wants; Bone wants her presence but no mention of what has happened. When she begins to

talk to her, she’s doing what Bone needs rather than wants. Raylene gives Bone that feeling of

normalcy, the feeling that they can have a conversation that’s not about pain and what Daddy

Glen does. Raylene is not able to save Bone from the final assault of Daddy Glen, but she saves

Bone from the terror that these assaults and abuse brought about.

While Bone is dealing with Daddy Glen she begins to create stories, listen to gospel

music, and becomes friends with Shannon Pearl. She is “’looking for something special’,

‘something magical,’ stories which can transform her and her world” (King 134). Bone creates

stories from the start of the book. Her first story is innocent and is a way to stop her sister from

hitchhiking. As she becomes more upset and abused by Daddy Glen though, they become more

violent and, also, freeing for a woman of her status. This reflects “her attempts to create stories

(read identities) that will provide her with what Allison describes as ‘the hope of a remade life’”

Ruhland, 4

(King 124). As her stories get more violent, they become more hopeless, with Bone only being

able to identify with the outsider, the outcast.

It is during her stay with Raylene that Bone begins to understand that she can heal. That

magic she was looking for is not found “in gospel music, in the mean-hearted tales she shares

with Shannon Pearl, in her violent sexual fantasies, or even in her reading” (King 134). It is

Raylene who offers her a chance at the magic. Her dreams and stories begin to change after she

walks to Raylene’s from the apartment. Her stories morph from morbid and hopeless. Instead,

she “began to imagine the highway that went north…only the stars guided me, and I was not sure

where I would end” (Allison 259). When she moves back with her Mama, Raylene still stays

with her as a guiding mentor, teaching her the lessons that her Mama has failed to realize.

To continue her motherly role, Raylene visits after Bone moves back and it is in one of

these visits that Raylene offers Bone another lesson on her stories. Raylene “teaches [Bone] how

to create a different kind of story, one based on something more than hate” (King 135). Bone

tells Raylene that she hates the kids in the bus, who she says stare hatefully. “They look at you

the way you look at them,” Raylene says clearly (Allison 262). Raylene is trying to make Bone

understand that there are stories other than the horrible ones she imagines. She asks Bone to step

in their shoes, imagine what they might go through. Even when Bone gives a rude response, and

even mentions painful gossip, Raylene never deserts her.

As Aunt Raylene begins to replace Mama as the mother of Bone, she begins to become

more than just the opposite of Mama’s attempt to the angel-figure. Instead, Aunt Raylene is what

George describes as a “honky tonk angel free of patriarchal constructions…Raylene’s

perceptions of love and tolerance are central to her worldview” (141). She isn’t just the

‘madwoman’ in the attic. Raylene is there for Bone, offering Bone a place to live after her

Ruhland, 5

mother leaves her, and being there for her. While Bone is staying with Raylene, she “decides

never to live again in the same house with Daddy Glen” (King 134). She gains confidence and

although she is still assaulted by Glen, “Raylene…is there to pick up the pieces” (King 134). She

refuses to leave Bone’s hospital room until she can leave, and she protects her against men like

the Sheriff who, although they want to help her, are making Bone uncomfortable and scared

(Allison 298). The Sheriff is kind, but not understanding of how to deal with a twelve-year-old

child who has been through an abusive childhood. “Right now she needs to feel safe and loved,

not alone and terrified” Raylene reprimands him (Allison 298). Raylene gives her the enduring

love that Bone might not want, but that is what gives Bone the chance to heal and take advantage

of the “blank, unmarked, unstamped” beginning of a new chapter in her life (Allison 309).

Bastard Out of Carolina ends with Mama deserting Bone for Daddy Glen. It seems a

gothic, miserable end to the story, but the audience needs to realize that Bone’s story isn’t over.

Bone is left with her Aunt Raylene, a woman who may not be her genetic mother but is

nonetheless the ‘real’ mother for Bone. Raylene doesn’t allow societal conditions to cloud her

judgment and unconditional love of Bone, nor does she let Bone’s behavior—which Raylene

understands is the result of her abused childhood—get in the way of raising Bone in the best way

possible. Bone is given the best chance she can to heal from her past and continue to grow from

it, becoming a woman that Dorothy Allison—as well as the audience—would be proud of.

Ruhland, 6

Works Cited

Allison, Dorothy. Bastard out of Carolina. New York: Dutton, 1992. Print.

Bouson, J. Brooks. "'You Nothin but Trash': White Trash Shame in Dorothy Allison's Bastard

Out of Carolina." Southern Literary Journal 34.1 (2001): 101-123. EBSCO. Web. 15 Oct

2012.

Bressler, Charles. "Feminism." Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. 2.

Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1999. 178-209. EBSCO. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

George, Courtney. ""It Wasn't God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels": Musical Salvation in

Dorothy Allison's "Bastard Out of Carolina"." Southern Literary Journal 41.2 (2009):

126-47. EBSCO. Web. 12 Oct 2012.

Harkins, Gillian. "Surviving the Family Romance? Southern Realism and the Labor of Incest."

Southern Literary Journal 40.1 (2007): 114-139. EBSCO. Web. 15 Oct 2012.

King, Vincent. "Hopeful Grief: The Prospect of a Postmodernist Feminism in Allison's Bastard

Out of Carolina." Southern Literary Journal 33.1 (2000): 122-141. EBSCO. Web. 15 Oct

2012.