Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping - Beyond Reason Essay -- Robinson Ho

Marilynne Robinsons 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 pitiable events and the mundane expound 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. kinda than the wooden structure built by Edmund Foster, the house Ruth eventu onlyy comes to inhabit with Sylvie and learn to keep is metaphoric. ...it seemed something I had lost might be launch in Sylvies house (124). The very act of housekeeping invites a radical revision of fundamental concepts like while, memory, and meaning. Robinson delig hts in an intense undifferentiated attentiveness to all the details (82). The ordinary is given added significance and, as a result, the pace of the novel is slowed considerably. While supplying a layer of added realism, these mundane, fragmentary domestic details serve as an important thematic strategy to Robinson. The readers attention becomes focussed on the passing of each moment in time. Ruth is initially thwart with the seeming discontinuity of her own existence and tries to assign some order to it. What are all these fragments for if not to be knit up finally? (92). She yearns for a time when there would be a general reclaiming of the various seemingly meaningless fragments of human existence, a moment when time... ...ould become unnecessary and meaningless if only the night, like nothingness, could be perfect and permanent (116). Nothingness does preclude individual identity of any sort, however. Surrendering completely to nothingness would negate any possibility of auth orized intimate human relations the one source of meaning and happiness to Sylvie. The house Sylvie attempts to keep must accommodate change including the peace and threat implied by nothingness. A house should be built to float cloud high, if need be...A house should have a compass and a keel (184). Rather than macrocosm seduced by the ultimate and final separation of nothingness, Ruth learns (as a transient) that housekeeping can be an expansive and inclusive method of engaging and interpreting the world. feat Cited Robinson, Marilynne. Housekeeping. New York Bantam Books, 1982.