Alison’s first girlfriend whom she meets at Oberlin. Joan is a poet, feminist, and activist, and has one glass eye because when she was young a boy shot it out with a defective toy arrow. She is dating Alison at the time of Bruce’s death, and Helen gifts her a book of Wallace Stevens poems from Bruce’s library shortly after his death.
Joan Quotes in Fun Home
The Fun Home quotes below are all either spoken by Joan or refer to Joan. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2
Quotes
Joan drove home with me and we arrived that evening. My little brother John and I greeted each other with ghastly, uncontrollable grins.
Related Characters:
Alison Bechdel (speaker), Bruce Bechdel, Joan, John Bechdel
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Fun Home LitChart as a printable PDF.
Joan Character Timeline in Fun Home
The timeline below shows where the character Joan appears in Fun Home. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2: A Happy Death
...to her apartment from work, cried genuinely for about two minutes while hugging her girlfriend Joan, and that was it.
(full context)
Chapter 3: That Old Catastrophe
...into her new lesbian sexuality and identity. Over an image of Alison in bed with Joan, her first girlfriend, Alison narrates that by midterm she’d ingratiated herself completely. Joan was a...
(full context)
...the news from home became increasingly unsettling about the erratic behavior of Bruce. Soon after Joan and Alison moved in together for the summer, Alison got a call about her mother’s...
(full context)
Chapter 7: The Antihero’s Journey
Over an image of Alison’s face near Joan’s pelvis, Alison narrates that going toward her peers felt like the safer route. Like Odysseus...
(full context)
Alison returned to school and her relationship with Joan. A letter from Bruce followed expressing his excitement at reading the Kate Millett book. In...
(full context)
