Housekeeping

Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

Housekeeping is a story about lost things, among which American writer Marilynne Robinson tells the story of three generations of women, focusing on the youngest Ruth and her sister Lucille. The small town named Fingerbone, where the story finds its setting, is surrounded by a lake, over which a railroad is built on to connect the town with the outside world. Ruth, the narrator, gives us a vivid account of her life and those before her in a prose like language; therefore, we are told at the beginning of the novel things that took place earlier at Fingerbone, where her grandfather died in a curious train wreck and where her mother years later drives her car off the cliff. Robinson masterfully sets her tale in this secluded, imaginative town, where each character strives to find meanings in the absence of lost things, and along the way, offers a different perspective on things gained and lost in life.

“To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any things so utterly as when we lack it?”(Housekeeping, p.152) This direct quote from the novel presents the central idea which the tale and its characters nourish by; it suggests that anything we loose is its presence regained. All three generation of women suffer for different kinds of lost from the contemporary point of view, but if the afore put quote is to be regarded as the central philosophy that all the characters believe in, then the sufferings no longer exist. All is free of sorrow and all, when seen in completely different light as this, can indulge themselves in the nostalgic feelings of the re-appearance of lost things.

The title “housekeeping”, then, is deprived of its meaning. For Ruth and her aunt Lucy, the only way to free themselves from their dysfunctional home and to gain its idealized image is to disown it. This explains Ruth’s strange way of housekeeping, since her sole purpose is to turn it into a place one can hardly recognize as a home. She wants the lights to stay off at night for fear that it asserts itself the idea of a home. Therefore, in the end when the authority comes in and ask them to act according to social conformity, meaning to restore the house to its usual image, they cannot do anything but destroy it. For they want to have in their mind always the beautiful craving of their home in its complete form, and it is always a lot easier to imagine its perfect state than to see its flawed existence.

Even though Robinson’s poetic writing and her nuanced words choice may pose as a threat or challenge to the readers, Housekeeping, this highly metaphorical tale, still contains too much to be left unnoticed. Robinson’s philosophical interpretation on the lost things leaves both the optimist and pessimist with much to dwell upon. If we should all believe thus in Ruth and her philosophy, we would never mourn with desperation, for “[…] whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again”(p.152). But then, since to “have” makes us forget the thing’s actual presence, while to “lose” brings it right back to us, how to distinguish the actual owning, and how to make exact of anything, remains open to each reader’s interpretation.

Note: Lectures on Housekeeping is also available from the website lited on the side.