Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina paints a colorful picture with words, showing what it was like to live in the south during the 1950's. The main characters are a part of a family living on the poor side of town and the society in which they live in sees them to be lazy, good for nothing trash. Most of the family could careless about what society sees them as and feel that the only opinion that should be worried over is that of other family members. .
"If Granny didn't care, Mama did. Mama hated to be called trash, hated the memory of every day she"d ever spent bent over other people's peanuts and strawberry plants while they stood tall and looked at her like she was a rock on the ground. The stamp on that birth certificate burned her like the stamp she knew they"d tried to put on her. No-good, lazy, shiftless. She"d work her hands to claws, her back to a shovel shape, her mouth to a bent and awkward smile-- any thing to deny what Greenville County want to name her"(4).
By rejecting the views and opinions of her family, for example Granny, Mama tries to change the way society looks at her. Meanwhile, jeopardizing and later abandoning her relationship with Bone and the rest of her family.
In the beginning of the book, Mama is determined to get the stamp of "bastard" off of Bone's, her daughter, birth certificate. It is obvious that she has some resentment towards her own mother, Granny and her sister, Aunt Ruth, because they had allowed the stamp to used in the first place. Thus, labeling Bone a bastard to society and labeling herself inadvertently a lose woman. .
When Mama meets Daddy Glen and starts getting to know him, she believes that she has met someone who respects her and doesn't look down upon her and her family. Mama goes against the majority of her family in order to be with Glenn, although they tell her that there is "something wrong with him"(37). Because Daddy Glenn realizes her need for exceptance he uses it against her.
