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to the most recent Pew Report. That’s four years older than in 1990. Additionally,
women’s roles in the workforce have changed radically in the last 50 years.
Though incomes between men and women still remain unequal, more women
are joining and staying in the workforce, even after they have kids. Their literary
counterparts, however, don’t reflect that.
Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping is different. Housekeeping was the first
book I ever read about women that didn’t feature a love line. There is no love
interest, no sex, and no important man in Housekeeping. It is a book solely about
growing up, because that in itself is a story.
Housekeeping follows the lives of two sisters, Ruth and Lucille, who are moved
to the beautifully desolate Fingerbone, Idaho to live with family members after
their mother’s death. Their guardianship changes several times before finally
ending with their Aunt Sylvie, an eccentric woman who lives a transient lifestyle
and eventually drives the girls apart.
Ruth grows up in the book. As the narrator, she describes her own frustrations
and confusions. Robinson’s book is full of Ruth’s anguish and loneliness: the
suffering of transitory adulthood. At times the novel is as barren and icy as the
frozen lake it is set around. The characters often ignore each other and sometimes
themselves. As Ruth and Lucille are forced to cope with the death of their
relatives, they must learn to live their own lives. Ultimately, Housekeeping isn’t
an easy book to read, and it doesn’t wrap up neatly. Life doesn’t wrap up neatly.
There is no love plotline in Housekeeping, because not every story needs one.
No one expects Holden Caulfield to find love at the end of his self-explorative
adventure, and we shouldn’t expect every female character to either. Coming of
age novels are supposed to be about finding yourself, not finding someone else.
Ruth doesn’t think about boys or talk about them; she grapples with loneliness
and longing and losing her family, her dreams, and her sister.
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