Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping - Beyond Reason
Marilynne Robinson gives voice to a realm of consciousness beyond the bounds of reason in her novel Housekeeping. Possibly concealed by the melancholy but gently methodical tone, boundaries and limits of perception are constantly redefined, rediscovered, and reevaluated. Ruth, as the narrator, leads the reader through the sorrowful events and the mundane details of her childhood and adolescence. She attempts to reconcile her experiences, fragmented and unified, past, present, and future, in order to better understand or substantiate the transient life she leads with her aunt Sylvie. Rather than the wooden structure built by Edmund Foster, the house Ruth eventually comes to
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Ruth is able to perceive each moment as a reference point for past events as well as events to come.
Paradoxes within this invisible rational framework begin to emerge, however. Because human senses are inherently limited and fallible and "memories are by their nature fragmented, isolated, and arbitrary," they are highly suspect in providing reliable evidence of rational structure to the progression of thoughts and experiences of any individual or group (53). Order can and will be made from the fragments available in a given situation; it is an extension of the most intense form of human will. "The world will be made whole For to wish a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, the very craving gives it back again" (153) Memory thus houses a great paradox: the ability to create a sense of completeness and the ability to provoke the most profound sense of loss. It is the paradox woven into the nature of memory which moves time forward. "The force behind the movement of time is a mourning that will not be comforted" (192). Based in part on her memories, Ruth begins to consider the idea that in committing suicide, her mother wanted to evoke a less absolute, constantly negotiated existence, "whole and fragment", within her daughters' minds (163).
Rather than attempt to pull herself "into some unseemly shape and slip across into that other world" as her
Ruth compares with two people I know personally. My mom and my grandma remind me of her very much. My mom is very similar to Ruth because they are both independent, witty, loving, and kind. My mom keeps my family on track everyday just as Ruth does. Both my mother and Ruth crack jokes often to lighten the mood. My mom and Ruth care about the well being of their families more than anything. My Grandma is also very similar to Ruth in many ways. My grandma is loving, kind, and firm. My grandma and Ruth both
* This chapter was written in Italics because it was written from a different point of view which was Ruth’s perspective who talks about her past as a child.
This notion is particularly evident in the realisation of the persona “years cannot move nor deaths disorienting scale distort those lamp lit presences” reiterating the immortality of memory as a constant, surpassing the boundaries of time and places we go.
Memory. According to the Webster Dictionary, memory is “The power or process of reproducing or recalling what has been learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms” (Webster Dictionary) Taking that under consideration, imagine if everyone didn’t remember the last time they smiled, their siblings last birthday, or the last really good meal they had. The last time they laughed so hard their ribs hurt, the last time they had so much fun that they couldn’t believe it really even happened. Or the last time they told someone they loved them, before they probably never saw them again. Thats memory, now could they imagine if they didn’t remember any of that anymore, because it was taken away. It was such a long time ago and so
The Book of Ruth Ruth is a story about loyalty, love, and faith. The simple love story
From a scientific perspective, memory is not a reliable source. Although the big picture might be accurately recalled, the specifics of the event often lose its precision as time progresses. In addition, human memories often vary because of differences in interpretation, beliefs, and values. As a result, it would not be surprising if Jeannette Walls remembered events differently from her siblings. For example, since “Maureen always had plenty to eat” (Walls 173) and “was more or less living with neighbors” (Walls 249), she likely views life in Welch more positively compared to her siblings. Further, one person may think an event was more significant than another. Even though Jeannette’s story may not be completely accurate, it is truthful in her perspective. In other words, since Jeanette believes that her memory is accurate, then she is being truthful. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men…” (Emerson 1).
Throughout the whole novel, Ruth is a tough and brave woman, yet she has a big
Ruth led a life broken in two. Her later life consists of the large family she creates with the two men she marries, and her awkwardness of living between two racial cultures. She kept her earlier life a secret from her children, for she did not wish to revisit her past by explaining her precedent years. Once he uncovered Ruth 's earlier life, James could define his identity by the truth of Ruth 's pain, through the relations she left behind and then by the experiences James endured within the family she created. As her son, James could not truly understand himself until he uncovered the truth within the halves of his mother 's life, thus completing the mold of his own
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
A review of the house itself suggests that an architectural hierarchy of privacy increases level by level. At first, the house seems to foster romantic sensibilities; intrigued by its architectural connotations, the narrator embarks upon its description immediately--it is the house that she wants to "talk about" (Gilman 11). Together with its landscape, the house is a "most beautiful place" that stands "quite alone . . . well back from the road, quite three miles from the village" (Gilman 11). The estate's grounds, moreover, consist of "hedges and walls and gates that lock" (Gilman 11). As such, the house and its grounds are markedly depicted as mechanisms of confinement--ancestral places situated within a legacy of control and
.” He goes on to explain that unlike voluntary memory, a madeleine moment is dependent on chance. Furthermore, Proust’s “madeleine experience initiated for him a whole chain of association, and from this he achieved the eventual restoration of an entire vanished world.” While voluntary memory can help develop an informal timeline of events along with major details such as location, involuntary memory fills in the gaps to a greater extent or even uncovers a different timeline while restoring feelings and senses connected to the recollection. This type of memory is simulated by something as simple as a pastry, or in Edmund Wilson’s case, a window.
Between the roles of the two woman, it is apparent that Ruth’s role is more favorable in the eyes of characters
Memory – what it is, how it works, and how it might be manipulated – has long been a subject of curious fascination. Remembering, the mind-boggling ability in which the human brain can conjure up very specific, very lucid, long-gone episodes from any given point on the timeline of our lives, is an astounding feat. Yet, along with our brain’s ability of remembrance comes also the concept of forgetting: interruptions of memory or “an inability of consciousness to make present to itself what it wants” (Honold, 1994, p. 2). There is a very close relationship between remembering and forgetting; in fact, the two come hand-in-hand. A close reading of Joshua Foer’s essay, “The End of Remembering”, and Susan Griffin’s piece, “Our Secret”, directs us
In a sense Grange views Ruth as his second chance. He sees her youth and uncorrupted mind as something he can influence and steer in a positive
Those who just watch things happen would be Ruth because she just watched as her own