Gender Identification

Alison, in the novel, grows up in a small town in which she described as a provincial hamlet. This meant that it was a really small town where most the community members contained the same views. Many members of the community she lived in possessed the same views of society and how people should be, but throughout the novel we see that Alison's family does not follow this "provincial" point of view. With her father having some gender identity issues, her mother being resigned and off in the background, and also herself having some gender identity issues, we can see that they did not fit in with their societies views of how life should be. Helen (the mother) was not very present throughout the novel, she is barely spoken of. Alison has a greater connection to her father then her mother which could be a reason behind why she has some gender identity problems throughout the novel. When a women doesn't have that connection with her mother it can cause some distance between their feminine side. on the other hand, Alison's father almost forced her to become a "feminine" women instead of the person she wanted to be.  He would tell her what to wear and that she had to wear the certain things and act a certain way because she was a girl.  This definitely contributed to the gender identification difficulty that Alison faced. Also, with her mom not being in the picture as much as she should, Alison was never really able to have that feminine connection with her. As we can see, throughout the novel Alison really only has good connections with her masculine side being her brothers and her father. No other women in her life were really spoken upon, which is some of the reason in which she has the gender identification issues and is almost a direct resemblance of what her father has been going through over the course of the story.