A study of how Kate Atkinson’s style and use of characterisation in ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’ explores the theme of alienation.
...” All the parts in the novel concerning Ruby are written in the first person narrative style. This is a very good way of showing the feelings of the narrator, in this case the feeling of loneliness and alienation from her mother. The repetition of the phrase ‘my real mother’ shows how unattached Ruby feels to her mother because she is imagining what her ‘real’ mother must be like. Some other examples of this include: “Is this my real mother?”, “I’ve been given the wrong mother (…) I trust (…) I will be reunited with my real mother.” Sadly, Ruby will never have this perfect mother and she will remain just a fantasy. Ruby feels a sense of alienation throughout the novel. After the death of her twin sister, which she does not remember due to amnesia, she begins to refer to the household ghosts and appears to be more in tune with them than her human family members. “I have a distinct feeling that something – or somebody – is missing. There is a space in the room that wasn’t there before, not a vacuum but an invisible cloud of sadness that drifts around, bumping into furniture and lingering at the foot of my bed as if the domestic phantoms had been joined by a raw recruit.” In this scene, Ruby is sleeping in her own bed for the first time since her twin sister died. She has no memory of the incident and only has the occasional “distinct feeling” that serves as a clue to the audience that something is amiss. Despite the fact that she can sense the “raw recruit” to the household ghosts this does not trigger a memory of her sister. The way that Atkinson refers to the household ghosts many times during the novel shows how Ruby is more in tune with the household ghosts than with her family members (parents included) and in this way she is alienated from them. Ruby demonstrates her lack of feeling for her parents by what she calls them. Her father is ‘George’ and her mother is ‘Bunty’. “Bunty’s name will be ‘Mummy’ for a few years yet, of course, but after a while there won’t be a single maternal noun (…..) and I more or less give up calling her anything. Poor Bunty.” Ruby is wholly justified in feeling alienated. After the accident in which her twin sister died, she was exiled to an aunt’s house where she stayed for two and a half weeks with no contact from her family. Because of the amnesia she had no clue as to why she was being treated this way. For a child who has just lost such a close relative, this is appalling treatment. This treatment was repeated after Gillian’s death. This time Ruby and sister Patricia were abandoned in the house over Christmas while George and Bunty moved in with rel...