Housekeeping Housekeeping is a novel written by Marilynne Robinson, whose title heavily implies a deeper meaning within itself. The story is centered around two girls, Ruth and Lucille, who have been left in the hands of others as a result of their mother 's suicide. The novel is very simplistic in it’s nature paralleling the type of lifestyle that most of the members of the family live, excluding of course Molly who goes to do missionary work and China, and also Helen who drives herself off of a cliff. After the death of Helen the two sisters, Lucille and Ruth, are sent to live with their grandmother in Fingerbone. While the grandmother is a very loving person, she struggles with relaying these same ways of going about life to her daughters, Molly, Helen, and Sylvia. This is one of the first implications that “housekeeping” is something other than a title. Throughout the novel we see each character 's version of “housekeeping.” The first character we meet is Ruth, the narrator of this story. She talks about her childhood and how she and her sister were abandoned by their two aunts that were given the responsibility of parenthood …show more content…
Lucille likes to think that the mother was very clean and organized, very much a housekeeper, but Ruth is able to see that that wasn 't necessarily the case. She faces the reality of the situation head on, referring to her mother as the abandoner. With Sylvia, Ruth feels at home. She establishes the true meaning of housekeeping. Marilynne Robinson does an excellent job of creating different versions of the term housekeeping in this novel. Her characters have lead me to believe that their is not one single definition of what housekeeping is. While all interpretations of the word may not be traditional or appealing to our personal thoughts, this novel allows us to see the trials of women throughout life when faced with the responsibility of maintaining a
William H. Burke suggests that transience in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping is a type of pilgrimage, and that “the rigors and self-denials of the transient life are necessary spiritual conditioning for the valued crossing from the experience of a world of loss and fragmentation to the perception of a world that is whole and complete” (717). The world of reality in Housekeeping is one “fragmented, isolated, and arbitrary as glimpses one has at night through lighted windows” (Robinson 50). Many of the characters that precede Ruth in the narrative rebel against something in this world that is not right. Edmund Foster, her grandfather, escapes by train to the Midwest and his house is “no more a human stronghold than a grave” (3). His daughters, Molly, Sylvie, and Helen, all abandon their home and their mother; Helen, in fact, makes the greatest “leap” away from the world into death when she cannot effectively deal with the expectations placed on her to “set up housekeeping in Seattle” with husband and children (14). Ruth takes up a transient life with her mentor and aunt, Sylvie, to escape from history and the past into a new life, a new awareness. Crucial to this spiritual awakening is the abandonment and the isolation of the self. Transience is Ruth’s escape from the impermanent illusory world, a world that rejects one of the tenets of transience, that “the perimeters of our wanderings are nowhere” , in favor of fixity and stasis (218). She acknowledges the world’s illusory nature when she admits that she has “never distinguished readily between thinking and dreaming”, and that “Everything that falls upon the eye is apparition, a sheet dropped over the world’s true workings...
The setting of this story is described as an old nursery that is located on the top floor of an old isolated mansion that is several miles off of the main road. The narrator’s treatment is “prescribed” by her husband, John, who orders her to stay in bed and separate herself from the outside world in a bedroom that previously had several different identities. “It was a nursery first, and then a playroom and gymnasium, I should judge, for all the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the wall”(730). The feeling the room creates around her slowly begins to alter her mindset. The barred windows create the sense of being trapped within the walls around her which slowly starts to transform the room into the identity of not just any prison, but the narrator’s prison.
The lust for control dwells in every human being. We like to be comforted with the idea of authority because it gives us a sense of power and certainty towards the future. The text “To set Our House in Order” takes place in a fictional setting of Manawaka, Manitoba, during the time of the Great Depression. Through this text Margaret Laurence depicts the idea that one may face many difficulties in the fight for order upon situations that are beyond human control. Laurence assembles her characters with very different personality traits to show contrast and conflicting ideas. Vanessa the main protagonist of the story, along with Grandmother Macleod, possess a longing for “order” and certainty. As the plot progresses so does Vanessa’s way of thinking.
As a Victorian woman of the 20th century, the housewife had to manage her family’s
Within this chapter, Barbara Ehrenreich experienced the maid’s life by becoming a maid. She was employed for three weeks by The Maids International in Portland. During her employment, she worked with team members to clean multiple houses. Cleaning up after the owners Ehrenreich subjected herself to “about 250 scrubbable
The responsibilities held by a housewife had immense importance in her role in society. Women were responsible for preserving the boundaries of social and cultural life. When this process was disrupted, the authority and identity of the housewife were put into question, she could no longer control the processes needed to fulfill her role. Instead of admitting this loss of control, it may have been easier for the housewife to blame a witch, usually someone who had wronged her. (Starkey 24)
In The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Ruth’s relationship with her mother suffers because she knows very little about her mother’s history. As people grow up they often grow apart from their parents,
...demonstrates the oppression that women had to face in society during the nineteenth century. The nursery room, the yellow wallpaper, and the windows, all symbolize in some way the oppression of women done by men. She bases the story on one of her life experiences. Charlotte Gilman wrote the story because she believed that men and women should be treated equally.
Ruth, whose dreams are the same as Mama’s, get deferred when the family are forced into there small apartment and there lack of money. Since she has no money she can not help her family as much as she would like to.
In Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, the story follows Ruth and Lucille as they pass through the care of their mother, grandmother, great-aunts, and finally their mother’s transient sister, Sylvie. While Ruth is generally passively accepting of the care or lack thereof that she receives from these women, no matter how unconventional, Lucille purposefully sets herself against Sylvie. After existing outside of the boundaries that society imposes for the majority of her adult life, Sylvie is unable to provide the structured normality to which Lucille so desperately cleaves. In their own methods of seeking happiness, Sylvie prefers a fluid way of housekeeping, while Lucille needs strict adherence to convention. The polar relationship that exists between Sylvie and Lucille serves to illuminate that while society as a whole is more comfortable when everything is separated into rigid order and divided by strict boundaries, categories detract from the happiness of all individuals regardless of whether they attempt to fit within or reject them.
Upon an initial read, both Mary Collier’s “The Washerwomen” and Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone show the servant as a figure who has little control over their own life and choices. In Collier’s poem, the washerwoman toils from early morning to late at night in order to make ends meet, all while dealing with the abuse of the mistress. In The Moonstone, servants are treated with more respect than the Washerwomen Collier describes, but they still have their own trials to contend with; for example, Rosanna Spearman dealt with the harsh reality of the workhouse and later is suspected of thievery. While in the beginning both works seemingly portray the servants as helpless in their own way, this helplessness only remains constant throughout “The Washerwomen”. Both Rosanna and the unnamed narrator from “The Washerwomen” lack hope for life to improve, however, they use this hopelessness in different ways; the washerwoman allows her hopelessness to control her, whereas
From the beginning Lucille wants to forget about the family’s past in Fingerbone. While Ruth is not 100% stuck in the past she still has a foot in the door where she cannot let go. Even with this foot in the door, Ruth is able to hold back Lucille so much so that she has to leave. Lucille had to take steps backwards and let go of her only family to be able to move forward with her life. It is only when she does this that3 she becomes “safe”(97) from unconventional life. In her essay, Mallon writes at this point in the book “we silently applaud.” This is true because up until that point I was anxious of when Lucille would come to her senses and finally break free to a new life. While I agree with Mallon here, I view the way she portrays Lucille differently. Mallon views Lucille leaving her family as a way to fit the stereotype lifestyle of Fingerbone. I view Lucille leaving her family as an escape from a trap. Lucille was unable to move forward with her life trapped with Ruth and Sylvie. Once she did escape she would just be absorbed into society rather than trying her hardest to fit in to the stereotype. The way I view Lucille escaping the trap can also be viewed from the opposing side. Ruth thinks that society is the trap and Sylvie is the safe-haven, so she must escape from Fingerbone and all of their opposing
further. The opening lines describe simple chores a woman is assumed to complete in a household.
Many women in modern society make life altering decisions on a daily basis. Women today have prestigious and powerful careers unlike in earlier eras. It is more common for women to be full time employees than homemakers. In 1879, when Henrik Ibsen wrote A Doll's House, there was great controversy over the out come of the play. Nora’s walking out on her husband and children was appalling to many audiences centuries ago. Divorce was unspoken, and a very uncommon occurrence. As years go by, society’s opinions on family situations change. No longer do women have a “housewife” reputation to live by and there are all types of family situations. After many years of emotional neglect, and overwhelming control, Nora finds herself leaving her family. Today, it could be said that Nora’s decision is very rational and well overdue.
The story unfolds in a rickety colonial mansion described by the narrator plainly as “a haunted house” (Gilman 1) with barred windows and rings bolted to the walls (Gilman 2). These features along with the “horrid” (Gilman 6) yellow wallpaper entrap the narrator and swaddle her in her own madness. As the “woman” (Gilman 6) in the wallpaper takes hold of the narrator’s psyche she grows sinisterly corporal, depicted through the unintelligible sporadic entries. The purpose of the narrator’s journal warps from entries assuring herself of the pettiness of her sickness to entries that confirm and act as horrendous safe haven’s for her unhinged mental condition. Entries like “I see her in that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in hose dark grape 'arbors, creeping all around the garden” (Gilman 8) juxtapose nonchalant writing style with dark subject matter in a way that creates a disturbing tone that must be uncomfortably ingested by