Even though my attention is drawn first to the oversized text in One Hundred Demons, Barry's drawings often allude to what isn't said. One particular image, a depiction of an older Lynda in panel 172.2, makes a connection between her and her mother quite clear (see 173.1). The caption in the first panel reads into this juxtaposition, as well, as it points out that her "response, of course, is the wrong one. I yell at them. Loudly. Repeatedly." Barry doesn't need to say that she disapproves of her upbringing for the reader to understand her feelings towards her mother's repeated reprimands.
But Barry isn't satisfied with this kind of semi-subtle connection. In this particular story of Dogs, Barry then explicitly makes the connection between her treatment of Ooola [the dog] and her mother's treatment of her as a child (for instance, panel 175.2 directly compares Lynda to Ooola saying, "But I also grew up in a violent house.") By the end of the story, the reader has been coralled so deeply into the extended metaphor that he or she falls easily into the last frame - one depicting Lynda, her husband and pets sleeping happily and soundly (180.2). The text in this frame reads, "All she needed was to find the right home. But that's true for all of us, isn't it?"
Yet this mini happy ending doesn't just appear in this story. Almost every story in One Hundred Demons lands on a positive or grateful or, at worst, neutral frame. Where a few last frames beckon for her specific past to reach back to her, Barry uses other last frames to make universal statements like that in Dogs or in Hate, where she's grateful for "the feeling every child craves, the feeling of finally being understood." (84.2) And it's in this universality that Barry's Autobifictionalagraphy shines. While Barry's story structure often is repetitive and overbearing and, dare I say, gimmicky, Barry's method of universalizing her experiences allows the reader to identify with her childhood. Barry is not trying to alienate her reader from her awkward experiences growing up; rather, Barry wants to unify her childhood and her adult-self with the world of her reader. In this way, I uphold Barry not as an elitist or pretentious author obsessed with self, but as a down-to-earth writer who is more concerned with benefitting the reader than telling her life story for self-therapy (a self-therapy that Bechdel largely exhibits in Fun Home). And while it might not need to be said that doilies aren't pretentious, I think it's necessary to point out the overly accessible and genuine attributes of the text.
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I like how you brought up the connection between Lynda, her mother, and her dogs. While Lynda repeatedly provides us with the relationship she has with her mother, she never provides us with any insight into the relationship she shares with her father. Her absent father almost seemed like a character in the text. After I finished the graphic novel, I couldnt' help but wonder why she never alludes to a relationship or even a non-relationship.
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