A recent webcomic titled âYou Shouldâve Asked,â by French cartoonist Emma , illustrates the pressures of the âmental load â that is commonly carried by the female partner in a heterosexual household, whose manager she often becomes.1 When children are added to the domestic sphere, Emma suggests, this burden becomes even heavier, as mothers often have to remember, organize, and accurately describe a large number of chores and appointments for both the children and their partner. This often leads to mothers fulfilling these tasks themselves. In Emmaâs story, the father is present in the domestic space, but only performs the chores his female partner indicates, while remaining oblivious to the additional âinvisible workâ she has to do.2 By depicting the father as a sort of polite guest in his own home, only willing to complete those tasks that are explicitly assigned to him by the wife/home manager, the comic suggests the simple fact that the fatherâs mere presence in the home is not a guarantor of equal domestic labor, including child-related responsibilities. That the English version of âYou Shouldâve Asked â went viral, even though it ostensibly describes a situation pertinent to France, speaks to its wider cultural relevance and indicates the timely manner of its publication.3 The cartoonists I discuss in this book draw attention to some of the same issues raised in Emmaâs viral comic, and attempt to identify ways in which fathers can better themselves both as parents and as partners. The definition of adequate paternal conduct is, thus, not only an important part of feminist discourse, but also, as this book will show, a key subject of autobiographical writing in comic book form.
In this book, I look at representations of fathers and fatherhood in North American autobiographical comics that explicitly attempt to define good paternal conduct, both from the perspective of the child and that of the father himself. The selection of autobiographical comics I discuss here includes authors whose work is preoccupied with answering the question âWhat is a good father ?â by examining the quality and impact of paternal behavior from early childhood onward. This question prompts authors to present evidence of the quality of the fatherâs presence in the domestic space by focusing their attention on mundane everyday gestures and activities such as feeding, changing, playing, reading, telling stories, doing household chores, and other educational moments. This allows cartoonists to depict various levels of physical proximity ranging from affection to violence , and ponder the gendered dimension of parental conduct. These comics are also a good testing ground for the consequences of decades of feminist struggle to overcome the overwhelming identification of men with the public sphere, while the private/domestic space, particularly parenting , was for a long timeâand in many cases still isâassigned primarily to women.
Paternal Presence in Autobiographical Comics
The figure of the father is by no means recent in autobiographical comics, particularly considering that the genre often requires authors to examine their family background and revisit past moments when one or two parental figures are present. However, not all autobiographical comics where fathers play a significant part also prioritize fatherhood itself as a subject of contemplation, and instead of focusing on parental conduct as it occurred throughout the childâs development in the domestic space and elsewhere, they select other areas of narrative focus. Perhaps the most memorable paternal figure from the North American autobiographical comics scene is Holocaust survivor Vladek Spiegelman , whose quirky and captivating voice vies with his sonâs over the readerâs attention as he âbleeds history.â4 In Art Spiegelmanâs Maus (1986, 1991; complete version 2003), the fatherâs wartime experiences dwarf his son, who prioritizes them over a representation of his own childhood or adolescence. Maus starts with a two-page story from Artâs childhood that appears to promise that it will pay special attention to the relationship between father and son as it plays out in the domestic space: rejected by two friends, who skate off without him after a strap on his skate breaks, Art, who is 10 or 11 years old at the time, runs to his father for consolation and finds him doing some woodwork. Vladek , however, immediately deflects the subject toward his own experience in the camps, providing an incongruously grave perspective on Artâs complaint about his friends while also showing himself to be indelibly marked by his trauma. The Holocaust looms so large over the familyâs story that very little narrative space is provided to Artâs upbringing or various events that might help define the Spiegelmansâ domestic space. Even when it is depicted, as in the introduction to Spiegelmanâs re-edited Breakdowns collection (2008), the information is scarce and generally relevant to Artâs formation as an artist and the making of Maus . In fact, Anja Spiegelman , Artâs mother , is featured more in these comics, while Vladek only makes brief appearances. In the introduction to Breakdowns, we catch glimpses of the Spiegelmansâ domestic life and Vladekâs paternal conduct becomes less abstract: Vladek accidentally contributes to his sonâs future career when he buys cheaper older horror comics that the Comics Code had made otherwise unavailable; later, in a panel framed like a family photograph and ironically titled âLooking up to Dad,â we see him whipping young Art with his belt with a determinate look on his face as the narrative box provides the explanation that âit was just called child rearing in his generation â (Spiegelman 2008). In the same segment, whose title (âPop Artâ) proposes a reading of Vladek through the lens of his contribution to his sonâs work, we see Artâs failed attempt to escape his fatherâs larger-than-life shadow. That Vladekâs statue, built by his own son, is cast in the shape of his animal representation from Maus reinforces an understanding of Vladek through his trauma as mediated by his sonâs vision. In Artâs version of him, Vladekâs most important heritage is, in fact, his testimony of Holocaust survival, a transgenerational trauma that Spiegelman portrays himself passing on to his son Dash.5 We come to know more about Vladek the mouse than about him as a man; even his role as a father is overshadowed by his sonâs interest in the experiences from before his birth and the way that they, through a combination of the work of memory and postmemory (Hirsch 1997), come to dominate the memorial space of the entire family. While Art and Vladekâs collaboration for Maus indicates that they had a difficult relationship (one that may have been both examined and mended somewhat by their dialogue), fatherhood itself remains only a link in the chain of transmission that transfers the trauma of the Holocaust to future generations.
Aside from Vladek Spiegelman , the North American autobiographical comics scene is home to quite a few other fathers, depicted from both sides of the parental experience, as they play either episodic or more significant roles. However, I have not included them as subjects of close readings in subsequent chapters of this book because, as in Spiegelmanâs case, in these comics the father is central, but fatherhood itself is not. In other words, it is not their main purpose to produce comprehensive examinations of fatherhood by attempting to define good paternal conduct and/or observing how it plays out in different time periods and in a variety of settings, from the domestic to the public. While they are all important comments on different aspects of fatherhood, they tend to single out specific issues, such as abuse , abandonment, mourning , or racial inequality. For instance, in the collection A Childâs Life and Other Stories (2000), Phoebe Gloecknerâs alter ego, Minnie, is abused by a paternal figure, her motherâs boyfriend; her own father is absent throughout this troubling...