Housekeeping

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PLOT: Two orphaned girls are joined by their transient aunt who becomes their unconventional guardian in this dreamy, pensive study of nonconformity and the breaking of social mores in a restrictive 1950's environment. But it was the apple tree that seemed particularly charged in Robinson’s presence. More trunk than tree, barren except for a single branch with a few withered attempts at fruit, its shadow was barely longer than hers. As a writer, Robinson is a direct descendant of Frost, carrying on his tradition of careful, democratic observations of this country’s landscapes and its people, perpetually keeping one eye on the eternal and the other on the everyday. As a Calvinist, she has spent a lot of her life thinking about apple trees. It is a story filled with colorful and alluring metaphors, which make the entire book compelling to read. Almost every line in the novel can be used both in and out of context, as the manner of writing is strangely musical and melodious, making it pleasant and interesting to read. The number of possible interpretations, the literary talent of the author, and the themes touched upon in the novel make it one of the contemporary classics for many generations to come. Plot Summary The influence of Robinson’s Calvinism on her work has been widely noted, and while some have argued that the emphasis on resurrection in such passages of Housekeeping reveal a compulsion towards the Christian afterlife, she has resisted being labeled as a “religious writer.” This might be because her beliefs preclude such easy categorization. As Mark O’Connell wrote in the New Yorker, “Her spiritual sensibility is richly inclusive and non-dogmatic. There’s little talk about sin or damnation in her writing, but a lot about forgiveness and tolerance and kindness.”

Housekeeping is a story about three generations of women. Ruth and Lucille grow up in a world of mothers and daughters, sisters, widows, unmarried aunts and divorcees. Since that first catastrophe of their grandfather’s death, all men have been elsewhere—the girls never knew their father, and the whereabouts of Sylvie’s husband are similarly unknown. marilynne robinson's 'housekeeping', like all great literature, is a revelation. it's a revelation of lonliness in particular, and of transience (two subjects often, if stupidly, associated with male psyches and literary tastes). it resonates less, in my opinion, as a girl-comes-of-age story or as a tale of sisterly bonds than it does as just the story of a person trying to make it in a family trying to make it in a town trying to make it in this world. about the survival strategies of each. about how things just keep going, keep trying to make it (or stop trying), and why. Once she completed her dissertation on Shakespeare, she was ready to begin work on Housekeeping, her first novel. She wrote much of it while teaching in France and, after that, in Massachusetts. She gave a draft of the novel to her friend and fellow writer John Clayton, who passed it on to an agent without her knowledge. "If he hadn't done that," said Robinson, "I'm not at all sure that I would ever have submitted it for publication." It was published in 1980 to widespread critical acclaim, winning the PEN/Hemingway Award for best first novel.At eighteen, Robinson followed David, a senior at Brown, to Rhode Island, enrolling at the university’s sister school, Pembroke College. It was the early sixties, and she found herself ideologically adrift: too serious-minded for the countercultures embraced by some of her peers, and unmoved by the Freudian theories espoused by some of her professors and the behavioralism advanced by others. She and David took long, meandering walks around Providence, undeterred by rain or snow, ruining their hats and shoes, discussing aesthetics and ethics. When David graduated, he went to Yale for a doctorate in art history, and, once Robinson had mastered the train schedule, they continued their walks in New Haven. Robinson, Marilynne (2016-03-01). "Save Our Public Universities". Harper's Magazine. ISSN 0017-789X . Retrieved 2017-02-05. The novel treats the subject of housekeeping, not only in the domestic sense of cleaning, but in the larger sense of keeping a spiritual home for one's self and family in the face of loss, for the girls experience a series of abandonments as they come of age.

How does the town of Fingerbone shape the novel's characters? How does the house itself affect Ruthie and Lucille? Consider the influence of your own hometown and childhood home on the person you've become. One week after Ruth tells the story of her family, Fingerbone is overwhelmed by a great flood. The waters eventually reach the Fisher house. For a while, everyone has to take shelter on the second floor of the house. As the relatives remain together in one relatively small place, conflicts begin to occur. However, the most extraordinary thing happens when Sylvie tells a story about a girl whose mother was taken by the court. Naturally, the girls are frightened by the possibility of losing Sylvie. So, rather than submit to yet another assault on their strange and transient association, Ruth and Sylvie burn down their house and escape together across the lake. The townspeople, who cannot understand the idea of self-sufficient “homeless” women, decide Ruth and Sylvie are insane and that they must have drowned in the lake. Since Housekeeping is narrated by Ruth, everything we know is filtered through her perspective. Do you believe she is a reliable narrator? How might the story be different if told from another character's point of view? Robinson was a pious child, but her parents, who were Presbyterians, did not go to church often. What services she did attend she mostly spent pushing the coins for her offering into the tips of her white gloves to give herself toad fingers. But she recalls feeling God’s presence everywhere: in the pooled creeks where tender new trees rose up from drowned logs; in the curious basalt columns that seemed like ancient temples; and in the lake, nearly fifty miles long and almost twelve hundred feet deep, cold and dark, like mystery itself. The Idaho of her childhood was a strikingly quiet place, its people reticent, its landscapes romantic; beauty was a given no matter which direction you looked.It is the only one left. A hundred years ago, Robert Frost bought a ninety-acre farm near South Shaftsbury, Vermont; it came with an old stone house and a pair of barns, but he also wanted an orchard, so he planted hundreds of apple trees. Time and wind and winter storms have had their way with them, and today only one remains.

After a brief stint of trying to show the town that she is in fact, suitable to take care of Ruthie, Sylvie does what everyone else in the family does: decides to run away. Initially, they decide to burn down their house and fake their death; with no thought of how Lucille will feel. But, when that doesn’t work, Sylvie and Ruthie decide to go the one way no one will follow, “‘Cross the bridge’”(210). The mood when they cross the bridge is completely away from their thoughts. Not a single time does it mention them reminiscing on their lives or who they’ll miss. All that is cogitated by Ruthie is imagery of her surrounding such as, “We stepped on every other [railroad] tie, although that made our stride uncomfortably long, because stepping on every tie made it uncomfortably short”(211). This really shows that they believe running away from your problems is ok because not only does she not think about how she’s jilting her sister into thinking her dead but also has the audacity to think about how far apart her steps are. Housekeeping is the story of two orphans, Ruth and her sister Lucille Stone, living in remote Idaho by the lakeside town of Fingerbone. These abandoned girls are raised by a succession of relatives, and finally their aunt Sylvie, a strange drifter who becomes the novel’s compelling central character. Sylvie commits to staying in Fingerbone to “keep house” for her nieces, though neither believes she will stay with them for long. Ruth says: “I was reassured by her sleeping on the lawn, and now and then in the car. It seemed to me that if she could remain transient here, she would not have to leave.” Sylvie, who is like a “mermaid in a ship’s cabin”, wanders by the lake while the family house goes to pieces. Ruth, our narrator, is at home with her aunt’s transient spirit, and comfortable with solitude: “Once alone,” she says, “it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.”Fay, Interviewed by Sarah. "Marilynne Robinson, The Art of Fiction No. 198". The Paris Review . Retrieved 2017-02-05. Sandra Hutchison (15 February 2015). "Marilynne Robinson". Sandra Hutchison . Retrieved 2019-01-03. Simmons among nine honorary degree recipients". Brown University. 16 May 2012 . Retrieved 28 May 2014.