Marilynne Robinson's first novel, Housekeeping, came out in 1980 and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. It is widely regarded as a modern classic. The story is about two orphaned sisters, Ruth and Lucille, who are raised by first their grandmother, then two grandaunts, and last their aunt Sylvie in the house built by their grandfather in Fingerbone, a small town in Idaho.
Even as a child, Ruth could tell that the people who lived in her household are considered odd by the others in the town. They do not fit in and they do not belong to Fingerbone. They belong to nowhere. “I have observed that, in the way people are strange, they grow stranger," says Ruth, the narrator of the story. Their grandfather has a heart of an artist and world traveler, but traps in a boring and isolated place called Fingerbone. He dies when the train he rides crashes into the nearby lake. His body has remained in the lake with his unfulfilled traveling dreams. Later, Ruth and Lucille’s mother, Helen, committed suicide by driving into the lake.
The death of their grandfather, a tragedy to their grandmother on the surface, is actually liberation to her. “The years between her husband's death and her eldest daughter's leaving home were, in fact, years of almost perfect serenity. My grandfather had sometimes spoken of disappointment. With him gone they were cut free from the troublesome possibility of success, recognition, advancement. They had no reason to look forward, nothing to regret. Their life spun off the tilting world like thread off a spindle, breakfast time, suppertime, lilac time, apple time. If heaven was to be this world purged of disaster and nuisance, if immortality was to be this life held in poise and arrest, and if this world purged and this life unconsuming could be thought of as world and life restored to their proper natures, it is no wonder that five serene, eventless years lulled my grandmother into forgetting what she should never have forgotten. “(p.13)
The above prose-like lines described a life lived from moment to moment without the past or the future. The grandmother's life is simply moment to moment housekeeping. However, most of us are unable to be completely and totally living in the present. Our thoughts are either dwelled in the past with regrets, remorse, and painful memories; or preoccupied with hope, worry, and anxiety for the future.
After the death of their grandmother, the housekeeping which includes raising Ruth and her sister Lucille falls temporally on their two eccentric grandaunts (sisters of their grandfather). It turns out the job of the housekeeping and Fingerbone are too much for the grandaunts. They escape back to their little hotel room in Spokane, Washington after handing over the housekeeping to Sylvie, the sister of Ruth and Lucille's mother.
The book never clearly points this out, but we can read between the lines that Aunt Sylvie would be called as mentally impaired nowadays (some would call her dysfunctional). If their grandmother is isolated from the town's people, at least she does a proper job in her housekeeping. Aunt Sylvie's housekeeping, which includes illuminating leaves that have gathered in the corner, piles of old newspapers and cans, and burned curtains hanging on the window that had never been replaced, is eventually regarded as inappropriate even by the County authorities. As told by Ruth, Aunt Sylvie “had no awareness of time. For her, hours and minutes were names of trains – we were waiting for the 9:52” (p165-166). We read that Aunt Sylvie, sometimes sleeping on the lawn and on a park bench, has obvious been a transient (homeless person).
During their teenage years, Lucille realizes the embarrassment of their unconventional life style; she decides to live a normal life like other people in Fingerbone; and she moves into one of her teacher's home. Ruth chooses to stay with Aunt Sylvie. However, the Community Authority eventually regards Aunt Sylvie as unfit to raise Ruth and decides to take her away from Sylvie. Ruth and Sylvie, after their failure to burn the house down, leave Fingerbone for good. Still, they live as outsiders in the outside world. They belong neither here nor there.
