Sheltered Vagrancy in Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping

Abstract

Departing from a representation of the silent or inarticulate female vagrant as simply projection or scapegoat, Marilynne Robinson creates in Housekeeping an articulate first-person narrator who is also a female drifter. Although the novel begins with Ruth recounting her childhood years under the care of various female relatives her mother, her grandmother Sylvia, her two great aunts, and finally her Aunt Sylvie it eventually turns into a story of how she is forced to leave her grandmother's home in Fingerbone, Idaho, to take up a life of drifting with her Aunt Sylvie, and how her sister Lucille leaves that same house to live with her Home Economics teacher, Miss Royce. During the course of Ruth's narrative, the grandmother's house occupies a role as central as that of the many female inhabitants it shelters. As much as this novel is about the homeless condition, it is also about coming to a new understanding of shelter and the ideology of home. In that context, it is worth noting that although Lucille's departure is voluntary, Ruth and Sylvie's is not: If they want to keep their household intact, they must leave the home they have created.