Housekeeping

Housekeeping

Marilyn Robinson’s novel asks us to consider what are the connections that bind people. One would think that love and family might be enough to keep a family connected through crisis and catastrophe; however, this novel attempts to assert that such bonds hold very little sway.

The novel is narrated by Ruthie, detailing her life with her sister Lucille, as they look to make sense of the world after the deaths of their mother (who drowned herself) and their grandmother (who dies of old age). They are immediately given over to the custody of their maternal great aunts who are incapable to keep up with children, as they claim a host of impediments—age, temperament, location, etc.  And eventually, their maternal aunt, Sylvie, comes back to Fingerbone to raise the girls.

Sylvie serves as a stark contrast to the settled, ordered life that they knew with their grandmother and great aunts. She is a transient, and her quirks emphasize how little she knows of housekeeping or staying connected to the everyday experience. The house becomes ensnared in piles of old newspapers—which Sylvie reads for odd pieces of news—and collections of old cans.  The detritus of news and simple consumerism dominate a place that should offer basic comfort and stability for the young girls.

The issue that I found most pressing with the novel is that I could not see why Robinson wanted us to sympathize with Ruthie or Lucille. Here are characters who have gone through traumatic events, and they are forced to remain in the care of their aunt who has no business in keeping house or family. And yet, I could not tell you much about these young girls. They seem unformed as characters, and so the sympathy that the novel looks to elicit from the reader fails to materialize.

A recurrent motif in the novel was discussion of memory, and memory’s impact on how people attempt to make sense of their surroundings. Ruthie believes that memory is something that focuses us on creating narratives that improve people. She is able to keep an image of her mother as someone who was not perfect, but she would have probably ended up worse than their transient relative had she lived. It is echoed earlier in the novel by Sylvie who decries the fragmentary and arbitrary nature of memory. They cannot be fixed and they cannot be verified, and for Sylvie their function is worsened by that absence.

Memory, of course, is an active process—science has demonstrated that to us in many ways. We actively modify and transform memories, shaping them to respond to the moments in which they are recalled, and so they become less and less tied to the initial moment. The most perfect memory is one that cannot be altered, and yet an unaltered memory exists only in an inactive mind. My memory of Housekeeping will change over the years, but this record will remind me of the fact that emotions must be drawn from characters of substance, an absent quality of this novel.