Analysis Of Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping

2015
Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping sets out to define home and the role of women in it through the practices of housekeeping. Through a series of polarizations (fixity – transience, society – nature, dividing – merging, outdoor – indoor, patriarchy – matriarchy) taken up by the characters Robinson manages to show how different notions of housekeeping correspond to different definitions of home and different female subjectivities.
Housekeeping in its traditional sense is related to patriarchal notions, namely that of women’s confinement in the private sphere and that of the house’s condition as a sign of women’s character. In her essay, Paula Geyh views the house as the physical dimension of societal patriarchal organization (107); potential

In a material level, this is incarnated in the figure of the house. As Simone de Beauvoir mentions: “it stands for permanence and separation from the world” (467). It becomes a haven, a refuge from the natural forces of change. Insulation from these forces is secured through an adherence to boundaries: the outdoor and the indoor should remain separate, because the indoor of the house can be shaped according to societal expectations, while the outdoor is subject to natural laws of change. In Housekeeping, it is Lucille who primarily expresses this concern for boundaries: “[s]he insisted on a light at suppertime” (102), a fact which brings to the foreground the relation of the window with the indoor – outdoor distinction. As Geyh argues in her essay, the window is the boundary of the house, which simultaneously separates and connects the inside and the outside (111). By turning the light on, it goes dark; “[f]unctioning as a mirror, it creates a circle of inwardness” (111). It sustains the illusion that what is inside is the only reality that exists, since the outside is no longer visible. The window then emerges as a separation tool from nature outside rather than a means of

Their subjectivities are just as fluid as their sense of home: “I suppose I don’t know what I think” (105), Ruth remarks to Sylvie at some point. Lacking a fixed notion of a house, together with the code of behavior this entails, makes it difficut for her to define herself. Sylvie’s and Ruth’s familiarity with instability is what poses a threat on the artificial fixity societal norms try to impose: “the transients wandered through Fingerbone like ghosts, terrifying as ghosts are because they were not very different from us” (178). If transients are not an abomination of nature, then the notion of house stability is exposed for what it is: an artificial