The Significance of Debris and Mess in Marilynne Robinsons Housekeeping - Term Paper Example

The Significance of Debris and Mess in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping “Now truly we were cast out to wander, and there was an end to housekeeping.” from the novel Housekeeping (1980) In the novel Housekeeping, the story of Ruth tells us about the constant tension between nature and society – mainly between women who conform and confine themselves with the norms, and those who are drawn to ethereality and find themselves wandering free. With this, Marilynne Robinson introduces the subject of housekeeping as a task that indicates the norm and social connectedness. Housekeeping is a routine in which the society takes control over nature and its external surrounding by establishing order and conformity. At the same time, the activity characterizes the ways in which the people bind together through customs and convention. Awarded and hailed as a profound novel, Housekeeping draws the readers to examine an important female perspective of what it means to live, to be free. My Name is Ruth: The Beginning The story takes us back to a small community in the mountains of Idaho known as Fingerbone where the narrator, Ruth Stone recounted stories and thoughts about her difficult childhood and her eventual consciousness as she grows up. By declaring “My name is Ruth” at the beginning of the novel, the character introduced herself as a stranger – someone who is separate from the reader. Then the people who became part of her childhood were eventually introduced: “I grew up with my younger sister, Lucille, under the care of my grandmother, Mrs. Sylvia Foster, and when she died, of her sisters-in-law, Misses Lily and Nona Foster, and when they fled, of her daughter, Mrs. Sylvia Fisher.” This gives us a glimpse of what happened to her mother and why she and her sister Lucille passed through so many hands. The swift introduction also acquainted us with the dominant representation of female characters in the novel. The Foster Family becomes a matriarchy starting with the death of Edmund Foster, Ruth’s grandfather who died before she was born because the train he was riding plummeted into Fingerbone Lake. As a result, Ruth’s grandmother raised her daughters Helen, Molly, and Sylvie all by herself. The plights of these women shows the different roads they took as they eventually diverge from the shadow of their mother. Molly, the eldest, left Fingerbone to do missionary work as a bookkeeper in the Honan Province of China. Her path signifies order and stability of leading a religious life. On the other hand, Sylvie becomes an erratic vagrant who spent her years hopping trains and living on the outskirts of towns with other homeless women. The contrasting lives led by Molly and Sylvie represent the tension between a conformist and a free-spirited individual. When it comes to the life of Ruth’s mother Helen, we saw her devastation after her husband abandoned the family which caused her to commit suicide by driving into the Fingerbone Lake. As a result, Ruth and her sister Lucille were left to the care of their grandmother, Sylvia who tried to bring back ‘normalcy’ into their lives by implementing housekeeping routines. Grandmother Sylvia tried to execute her task of bringing up Ruth and Lucille by imposing a routine of rigid and conservative housekeeping like that of Fingerbone community. When Sylvia died, Ruth and Lucille’s aunts, Lily and Nona, took over to care for them but they became anxious when their own housekeeping routines are disrupted by the adolescents. Eventually, Lily and Nona searched out for their aunt Sylvie Foster to care for her nieces. And this is where the story starts to take shape. Sylvie’s Erratic Housekeeping in Ruth’s Eyes When Sylvie came into the lives of Ruth and Lucille, she introduced an unconventional way of tending to her nieces through her own ways of housekeeping. That is, her idea of nurturing the Ruth and Lucille includes not requiring them to attend school and socialize with everyone. Being a drifter, Sylvie did her best to ‘keep the house in order’ in her own erratic ways. For instance, she leaves the doors of the house constantly open in order for the girls to sleep outside and explore the woods. Moreover, under Sylvia Fosters care, the window is used only in daylight and the curtains have no functional use because the window is used at night. Because Sylvie "dislikes the disequilibrium of counterpoising a roomful of light against a world full of darkness", they eat their evening meal in the dark, with the kitchen lights off. This particular scene about how Sylvie disliked the contrast of a dark window against a lighted room revealed the complete mess and disarray of Sylvie’s housekeeping skills – stack of old cans and newspapers, leaves which have gathered in the corner, and burned curtains hanging on the window that had never been replaced. In this case, Sylvie seemed to view housekeeping in a metaphorical sense as described by Ruth in the following passage: “ There were scraps of paper among them, crisp and strained from their mingling in the cold brown liquors of decay and regeneration and on these scraps there were sometimes words. One read ‘Powers Meet’ and another, which had been a flap of an envelope, had a penciled message in an anonymous hand: ‘I think of you’. Perhaps Sylvie when she swept took care not to molest them. Perhaps she sensed a Delphic niceness in the scattering of these leaves and paper, here and not elsewhere, thus and not otherwise." Indeed, Instead of cleaning and tidying, Sylvie turns the house into a calamitous mess.. However, Ruth was able to see Sylvie’s views on housekeeping as a sort of gathering words and intention gather around the debris. Sylvie seemed to see the beauty of language and stack of leaves together in the corner. As symbolic and an almost spiritual act, housekeeping for Sylvie simply means keeping things, especially family, together. The House as a Symbol In the novel, Foster family’s “unfinished house” underwent series of changes depending on its primary residents. Under Grandmother Sylvia’s care, the house remained tidy and well-kept as rigid and strict housekeeping is observed. However, it was only after the death of Edmund Foster that her daughters seemed to become aware of her presence as “they pressed her and touched her as if she had just returned from an absence". It was in Edmund Foster’s time when the house’s second floor separated the children from parents. When he passed away, it was as if the entire house’s divisions which include walls and floors had disappeared. This portrays the difference between the notions of female space in contrast with the patriarchal conception of house areas. As the house is being associated with the sense of security during Sylvia’s time, the arrival of Sylvie seemed to “threaten” this security by leaving doors and windows open so that Ruth and Lucille are free to explore the woods. Also, Sylvia did not at first sleep into the master’s bedroom but instead occupied a room which is characterized as “a sort of narrow dormer with a curtain closing it off from the hallway". By the time she moved to the master’s bedroom, Sylvie defied all convention by sleeping with her full clothes on and habitually putting her feet on the pillow. As Ruth took note, her aunt Sylvie displayed “clearly the habits of a transient” as she radically transforms her house but the house did not transform her. Sylvie seemed to remind Ruth and Lucille that as a family, their transitory nature is contained in a seemingly fixed structure of the house. Ruth and Lucille’s Diverge Paths Though they shared memories over the years, Ruth and Lucille saw things in a different way as they grew older. Lucille moved away to live with her home economics teacher to experience order and stability that Miss Royce offered such as sticking to conventions of tidying a house, wearing well-pressed outfits, and exercising proper etiquette at a dinner party. From this, we can see how she tries to conform to “normalize” her life and attain stability amidst the troubled history in her family. We can view Lucille’s as a response to her own mother’s suicide and Grandmother Sylvia’s death. As the Foster family experienced troublesome years, Lucille desired normalcy and improvement in her life – as in her own words, “we must improve ourselves.” But as Ruth and Sylvie become more alike, Lucille becomes determined to reenter what she considers the “real world.” After several attempts to include Ruth in her plans, Lucille gives up and parts from her sister, though not without reluctance. Lucille just cannot and will not live in Sylvie’s dreams. She is not contented to simply become a drifter. She is interested in anchoring and some permanence in her life. Eventually, Lucille abandoned Ruth and Sylvie for the stability which she finds inside the house of her home economics teacher. Ruth is left with Sylvie to cope with damaged and erratic housekeeping skills. This further separates their wandering life from the ordinary lives of others. Ruth’s Wanderings After Lucille left them, Sylvie and Ruth took a journey onto the islands in the lake outside Fingerbone. By stealing a rowboat, the two rowed over to a mysterious valley with abandoned and decayed houses, where Sylvie proposed that they “watch for the children.” Sylvie suddenly left Ruth in the cool, misty valley as a test into the world of transience to which Sylvie wishes to return. This scene portrays Ruth’s desire to enter the world of transience – in the world of nature where one is immersed to discover herself. Eventually, towards the end of the novel, Ruth seemingly became a re-born child as she was able to mysteriously return to her aunt. The two were able to Fingerbone by boat and train and they where they were spotted by several townspeople. Soon enough, rumors filled the community about Sylvie’s incapacity to take care of Ruth. The town demanded action and as the only living male to breach their space, the sheriff came to the house to warn Sylvie that she cannot continue to care for Ruth in such a careless manner. Sylvie tried to conform to the notions of the town and its church women, but she was not able to persuade them of any change in her ability to “keep the house.” This gives us a glimpse that how the society tries to make people conform to their standards of normalcy. Eventually however, Ruth and Sylvie abandoned housekeeping and any notion of permanence by setting fire to the house and fleeing Fingerbone by crossing the train trestle spanning the lake. The book ended with Ruth imaging Lucille in Boston waiting for them and the others who will not come and who are known only by their absence. Housekeeping: Final Thoughts In my view, Marilynne Robinson’s decision to name the novel “Housekeeping” is relevant to its theme about women who are liberated from the standards of domesticity. The book talks about women’s identity in contrast with the conforming views that they should stay home to “keep the house”. Also, it presents complex identity of a woman – social and contemplative – but appears to favor those who wander in order to find their individuality. To break the pretense associated with housekeeping, Ruth, the story’s narrator gripped by her aunt’s idea of rejecting societal norms established in common forms of housekeeping. Both embraced idea that women can gain autonomy creating and inhabiting their own niche which do not necessarily conform to the patriarchal structure. In this way, women can liberate themselves from domesticity and finally put a final “end to housekeeping”. Read More