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Courtney Todd Prof. Schiff Final Essay 11 December 2012 The Freedom of a Transient Life Marilynne Robinson wrote Housekeeping with a lyrical tone revolving around death and darkness that leads us to believe these two factors are what has led Ruth, Robinsons narrator, to not only a life of abandonment, but rather to a subjective life of transience. As children, Ruth and Lucille are victims of neglect; while Lucille conforms to the norms of society, Ruth becomes a transient for a quest of her own freedom led by her aunt Sylvie; who later becomes the most influential person in her life. The relationships of women within this novel suggest the strain of female ideologies within a patriarchal society. In addition, the notion of home for Ruth expresses that conformity does not always lead to stability. Furthermore, within the poetic writing of Marilynne Robinson, Ruths story is ultimately a case of human uncertainty that leads us to finding freedom in a transient and non-conformist life. To pin-point Ruths transience, it is important to note that she does not believe Sylvie and herself to be travelers, but rather wanderers. They do not have direction or purpose to where they go and to where they end up. In other words, transience for them is a way of life that leads to a non-conformance world outside of Fingerbone. In her essay, The Pleasures and Perils of Merging: Female Subjectivity in Marilynne Robinson's "Housekeeping, Karen Kaivola states, Because the text accepts Ruths and Sylvies difference from normative attitudes and behaviors,

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it subverts traditional ideas about what women are or should be (Kaivola 671-671). In essence, Ruth wondering outside the borders of Fingerbone suggests that her home lifestyle became a sort of conformance and it became a necessity for her to leave in order to grow into young female adulthood. In William M. Burkes essay, Border Crossings in Marilynne Robinsons Housekeeping, he states that: Transience implies pilgrimmage, and 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 transient life that Ruth leads is inhabited from her past experiences in Fingerbone with the loss of major familial figures in her life such as her: grandfather, grandmother and mother. Ruth, from a young age, has lived a life of loss that has made her world incomplete. Perhaps, Robinson leads Ruth to a transient life based off of her grandfathers once existence, 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 (Robinson 4). Like Ruth, her grandfather exhibited a sort of freedom in order to pursue his hobby of painting, He painted many more mountains, none of them identifiable, if any of them were real (Robinson 4). Ruths grandfather was somewhat of a transient himself; although he did end up building a home, built for her by her husband (Robinson 3); he picked up his life and began a job as a signal man on a railway which soon would lead to his demise. Burke states, Grandfather Foster has given his transient impulses artistic form in a series of paintings, as if transience addresses a desire to make contact with a larger and fuller dimension of life (Burke 718); the aspect of the

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grandfather escaping from Fingerbone suggests that this novel does not only contain feminist perspectives. Moreover, Robinson uses the only patriarchal figure in Housekeeping to have started the life of transience for the beauty of nature which continues to exist throughout the novel depicting Ruths journey outside of Fingerbone. Undoubtedly, Robinson exhibits the way transience relates to the home regarding Ruths and Sylvies nature which is one aspect that leads to Ruths freedom. For instance: My grandmother always boasted that floods never reached our house, but that spring, water poured over the thresholds and covered the floor to the depth of four inches, obliging us to wear boots while we did the cooking (Robinson 61). With many forces of nature, people are pushed out of their homes due to wreckage, however they lived on the second floor for a number of days (Robinson 61). Ruths home may not have been the most stable aspect of her life, however there was a certainty that lied within its walls that kept her there for an assured amount of time: Lucille and society. Robinson, however, then contradicts the aspect of home being a certain entity in Ruths life with this narrative: Fingerbone was never an impressive town. It was chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history has occurred elsewhere. (Robinson 62) Within the above lines, Ruth exhibits a sense of uncertainty of her hometown Fingerbone. In addition, Hedrick states that The seeming stability of a family hides beneath its surface, as beneath the surface of Fingerbones lake, drowned and missing and abandoning mothers from his essay The Perimeters of our Wandering are nowhere: Breaching the Domestic in Housekeeping (Hedrick 147). In other words, family and home does not guarantee a stable

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lifestyle like the terms suggest. Ruth notices that the entities that lie outside the limits exhibit a greater freedom within its landscape and weather. Robinson writes, I had no curiosity about what was destined for me, and no doubt (Robinson 191). The curiosity Ruth does not have expresses the uncertainty she leads her life with which leads to transience and the concept of her destiny being a non-conformance life. This notion suggests the realization of conformist pitfalls and the uncertainty of transience which eventually leads to her freedom. Throughout the novel, Robinson shows the literal sense of housekeeping: Sylvie talked a great deal about housekeeping. She soaked all the tea towels for a number of weeks in a tub of water and bleach. She emptied several cupboards and left them open to air, and once she washed half the kitchen ceiling and a door. (Robinson 85) Housekeeping, in its most literal sense, exhibits a sort of conformity with women as the key component. However, Sylvie finds solace cleaning the house and exercising domestic duties because it is an obligation for her to care for Ruth and Lucille; although she goes about it in misconstrued ways, [She] liked to eat supper in the dark (Robinson 86). In her essay Delinquent Housekeeping: Transforming the Regulations of Keeping House Christine Wilson states that, One of the ways Sylvie subverts expectations about housekeeping is by redefining it into something that maintains permeable boundaries (304). In other words, Sylvie is okay watching over Ruth and Lucille and contributing to domestic necessities as long as her bags are packed and it doesnt look as if she will stay, Lucille and I still doubted that Sylvie would stay. She resembled our mother, and besides that, she seldom removed her coat, and every story she told had to do with a train or a bus station (Robinson 68). Transience begins to affect

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housekeeping due to a dominating aspect of a newfound freedom without perimeters. In his essay, Tace Hedrick explains that transience begins to mark the house more and more: piles of magazines, empty tin cans, leaves, all work to release [Sylvie] and Ruth to an exterior that is permanent because it is without perimeters or borders (Hendrick 144).In other words, their house becomes engulfed in their needed transience with a mess, so they are able to feel free from a house that has succumbed to domesticity by acting like they will not stay. Additionally, when Sylvie is finished with her domestic life for that day, she finds her real home in the landscape away from town. This is where Ruths quest for freedom begins. Kaivola states, If a womans place is in the home, one way to make the home less confining is to remove the boundaries that both separate it from nature and define female roles and behaviors (Kaivola 674). Like her caregiver who exhibits an eccentric pattern of life, Ruth decided to wander around the landscape outside of Fingerbone that a conformed house would not exhibit nor would a life of abandonment contain. This becomes significant because Ruth found a caregiver from a world of neglect in Sylvie who perhaps has shown her what freedom means; although in this case, it is an unconventional freedom. Furthermore, freedom becomes a necessary accomplishment in Ruths life; transience is the only way she can gain this because society has predetermined her fate if she stays within the limits of Fingerbone; specifically because the inherited values her grandmother and mother may have passed on which led to two women leading masked lives. Grandmother Fosters life was hidden behind the extraordinary life of her husband and Ruths mothers life was a case of abandonment by her husband. Freedom within a transient life is to escape the typical day of a normal society and experience the outer boundaries. Although, uncertainty lies within Ruths determined transience, it is the only way she can find freedom from an abandoned world she was

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born into. Robinson writes, [O]nce alone, it is impossible to believe that one could have ever been otherwise. Lonliness is an absolute discovery (Robinson 157). Loneliness, is not distinguished as a refutable trait in Ruths and Sylvies life; one may say that nature is what makes them less lonely and transience is the only way to be one with nature in Fingerbone because the breakage from society lies within the landscape outside of town limits. Transience for Ruth, was the way she could be free from society; although uncertainty lies within the walls of Robinsons nature, it was better for Ruth to be alone with her landscape than living a programmed life in Fingerbone. For instance: I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation. I expected - an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There never had been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, just when I got used to the limits and dimensions of one moment, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hid in its shadows. That most moments were substantially the same did not detract at all from the possibility that the next moment might be utterly different. And so the ordinary demanded unblinking attention. Any tedious hour might be the last of its kind. (Robinson166) Ruth is not waiting on the next task she needs to complete like the rest of the town or like her sister Lucille. In fact Robinson shows us this with the line, Any tedious hour might be the last of its kind because literal housekeeping can be very meticulous and female-centered; Ruth wants to detract herself from that life. She is rather waiting on the extraordinary existence on the outside of her concealed world in Fingerbone. When Robinson states, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hid in its shadows we know that Ruth wants the

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unexpected. Although, she may be uncertain of what the shadows could be, she still longs for them instead of ordinary housekeeping and the past struggles of abandonment that continue to haunt her. In addition, Sylvie finally leads Ruth away from abandonment and into a free world, I thought of the house behind me, all turned to fire, and the fire leaping and whirling in its own fierce winds (Robinson 211). The house turning to flames exhibits an end to abandonment and an end to conformity in Ruths life, Now truly we were cast out to wander, and there was an end to housekeeping (Robinson 209). Finally, Ruths uncertainty of Fingerbone and transience becomes a reality, we were never found, never found, and the search was at last abandoned (Robinson 213). Ironically, abandonment in this case leads Ruth to freedom. Additionally, the abandonment of the search suggests the freedom Ruth will now endure from society. Perhaps, it also suggests Ruths acceptance of her past struggles with abandonment throughout her life in regards to her mother, father, grandmother and grandfather. Robinson writes, Every last thing would turn to flame and ascend, so cleanly would the soul of the house escape ( Robinson 212). Perhaps, the soul escaping is Ruth from her previous life. In addition, if Sylvie had not became part of Ruths world, than Ruth would not know what uncertainty lies outside the town of Fingerbone and she would be stuck living an involuntary life. Perhaps, Sylvie was Ruths greatest caregiver. Kaivola verifies this assumption: The world Housekeeping maps is female centered, the relationships it represents and the values are between women and Ruth makes a radical decision in choosing to follow Sylvie and in refusing to be contained within spaces traditionally coded as female, domestic, and normative (Kaivola 671). The normative issues Kaviola is referring to happen to be the conformist lives of Ruths grandmother, mother and sister.

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Furthermore, Robinson pushes us to look outside the issues of feminism being a harsh reality within her novel Housekeeping so that we dont lose focus of the matters of abandonment and loss that also lead Ruth to a life of transience. In an interview led by Thomas Shaub, Robinson states: I don't know if I'd have used the word "matriarchal," but women were enormously important in that family and powerful figures, in one way or another. When I first started writing Housekeeping I didn't have in mind that I would suppress male characters to the extent that I did, or exclude them, or whatever I did, but I did think of creating a world that had the feeling of--I don't know what the word is-femaleness about it to the extent that my experience did, and it wasn't because I felt that women had been slighted in that setting but that their presence was ignored in representations of the place. (Schaub 1) Its not to say that she ignores feminist issues that critics believe are present throughout her novel, Robinson rather promotes it as female awareness. The significance of Robinsons answer to feminism within her novel is that it leads us to believe there were other contributing factors that led to Ruths transience other than domesticity within society. In conclusion, Robinsons picturesque writing which leads to Ruths beautiful narrative in her novel Housekeeping suggests that loss and abandonment are what led Ruths life to freedom in regards to three major factors: the meaning of home, the literal housekeeping and the uncertainty that lies outside the limits of Fingerbone. These three issues contributed to Ruths exercised transience; keeping in mind that the determining factor was her last care-giver: Sylvie. Ironically, we end with Ruth abandoning society whereas her entire childhood, she was the one

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abandoned. This suggests that transience became Ruths ultimate freedom from abandonment that was contained within a society that only practiced conventional ways.

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Works Cited
Burke, William M. "Border Crossings in Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping." MFS Modern

Fiction Studies37.4 (1991): 716-724. Project MUSE. Web. 10 Dec. 2012. <http://muse.jhu.edu/>. Hedrick, T. (1999). "The perimeters of our wandering are nowhere": Breaching the domestic in housekeeping. Critique,40(2), 137-151. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/212448555?accountid=2909 Kaivola, Karen. "The Pleasures and Perils of Merging: Female Subjectivity in Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping." Contemporary Literature 34 (1993): 67s90. Mallon, Anne-Marie. "Sojourning Women: Homelessness and Transcendence in Housekeeping." Critique (1989): 95105. Schaub, T. (1994). An interview with marilynne robinson. Contemporary Literature, 35(2), 0Frontis. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/206040109?accountid=2909 Wilson, C. (2008). Delinquent housekeeping: Transforming the regulations of keeping house. Legacy, 25(2), 299-310. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/223832106?accountid=2909