Themes: Child Abuse

From almost the beginning of his relationship with Anney, Glen starts abusing Bone. His first act of sexual abuse happens shortly after marrying Bone's mother, during a period where he is eagerly awaiting the birth of their child. This event is crucial as it contradicts claims made by other characters in the novel that Glen's abuse stems from frustration. Instead, it reveals that Glen has an intrinsic inclination to harm Bone, who is only about...

Themes: Family

The importance of family is vividly depicted in Bastard Out of Carolina. Most of the extended Boatwright family lives in or around Greenville. The Boatwright sisters provide support to one another, look after each other's children, and often take on roles more akin to surrogate mothers than aunts. Bone spends a significant amount of time with her aunts Raylene and Ruth. However, Glen manages to create a rift between Anney, her daughters, and the...

Themes: Poverty and Illegitimacy

Bone's family, along with their extended relatives, live in poverty and exhibit the typical characteristics associated with a low socio-economic status: an excess of children, rundown homes and clothing, alcohol abuse, and violence. This environment fosters instability. As Daddy Glen frequently loses his jobs, the family moves so often that Anney stops bothering to unpack completely. Bone and her sister often experience hunger, and Anney once...

Themes: Love

The Boatwright family members harbor a deep and pervasive longing for love, believing in its power to transform lives. Anney, who found herself as an unmarried mother at fifteen and a widow by nineteen, only agrees to marry Glen because she believes he will be a caring father to her children while also meeting her own emotional needs. As Alma succinctly puts it, "She needs him like a starving woman needs meat between her teeth." Both Anney and...

Themes: Sexuality

Bone is introduced to human sexuality early in life due to her family's values and Daddy Glen's actions. Around the age of eight or nine, Glen sexually abuses her for the first time by masturbating against her. Although Bone "knew what it was under his hand … this was a mystery, scary and hard," she is aware that Daddy Glen and Anney often have sex, a fact known to Anney's young daughters. Bone shares Reese's sentiment that it is "mushy," yet she...

Themes: Child Abuse and Poverty

The central theme of Bastard out of Carolina focuses on how child abuse and poverty influence Bone's development. This theme highlights the vulnerability of the women and children in the family, as well as the impact of losing family members to death and imprisonment, which disrupts the growth of Bone, her sister, and her cousins. In an article for the New York Times Book Review, Allison writes, "We are the ones they make fiction of—we gay and...

Themes: Mental and Physical Abuse

The mental and physical abuse Bone endures from her stepfather severely damages her self-esteem. She feels fundamentally flawed, guilty, and unworthy, fearing that disclosing the abuse will lead others to see her as valueless. After the initial beating, she overhears Glen deceiving her mother, and Bone comes to realize that her mother will not believe her. Consequently, she chooses to remain silent about the abuse. From then on, Glen finds...

Themes: Female Sexuality and Violence

Some psychologists propose that early curiosity about gender differences arises from a desire to uncover hidden truths. Deborah Horvitz, in...