Theme Of Transience In Housekeeping

When given the option to choose a life of transience or permanence, what does Ruth decide and why?

Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping represents the benefits of being labeled a deviant by society. With the inclusive aspects of women's marginality and domesticity, Robinson uses Ruth’s character development to portray the cost of being rule-breaker in the 1950’s. Ruth is handed a life of permanence, but with the entrance of Sylvie and the reflection of past key figures in her life, Ruth is able to attain a craving for transience and,therefore ultimately decides for a life of transience in order to obtain freedom. The theme of transience in Housekeeping is indicative of women in society and allows for the shift in perception in relation to family

Their Aunt’s persona is obscure before she arrives, and once she is their full caretaker, they begin to realize that her behavior is contrasting to their formulated notion of domesticity. The entrance of Sylvie puts a strain on the two inseparable sisters. Sylvie represents the opposite of Lucille, who mimics the ideals and values of Fingerbone,therefore; She represents the paragon of a female within the 1950’s. With opposing views such as the matters of schooling ,feeding, cleaning, and responsibilities the relationship is severed between the sisters. For example, the heaps of unwashed dishes, burnt curtains, opened cans reflecting trash to Lucille and art to Sylvie, and the lights that are rarely turned on. Lucille set on finding an escape from her grandmother’s house and rejecting transience, allows Ruth to no longer base her identity to the one her sister and the town has construed for her. With the severing of the relation and Lucille leaving to home economics teachers house, Ruth is liberated from the bondage of her sister who expected her to be her shadow. With the diversion of ideals between Sylvie and Lucille, the differences between permanence and transience is highlighted through the use of the two. This is noted when Ruth says “Lucille hated everything that had to do with transience”(103).And after this statement we

Ruth says “Sylvie was an unredeemed transient, and she was making a transient of me.”(189) This is the first time we see Ruth classify herself as a transient. Although, she was surrounded by figures in her life that reflected some qualities of transients, Sylvie is the first she is able to recognize without having to look back and didact from her memories after the person is gone (ex: her grandmother, her mother, her grandfather) Ruth was aware that making the decision was crucial in order for her to disengage from the static life she had. In obtaining a transient life, Robinson uses the past and allows the reader to understand that Ruth’s desire for a transient lifestyle began long before the entrance of Sylvie, but with her grandfather Edmund. Her grandfather entrance into fingerbone was not of a meticulous manner Ruth says “One spring my grandfather quit his subterraneous house, walked to the railroad, and took a train west. He told the ticket agent that he wanted to go to the mountains, and the man arranged to have him put off here, which may not have been a malign joke, or a joke at all, since there are mountains, uncountable mountains”(9). The decision would foreshadow her departure of fingerbone through the use of the