I have been thinking about Marilynne Robinson lately … I met her once, briefly, after a lecture and reading. Her hair fell thick and somewhat wild past her shoulders, dark and streaked with silver greys. During the Q&A portion of the lecture I remember thinking that, whether or not I agreed with what she was saying, she had an almost overpoweringly poetic sensibility in her speech and she spoke in ways I thought could only be written: I did not want her to stop speaking.
The work she is best known for is her 1980 novel Housekeeping. When people ask me what it is about I generally respond with “women in Idaho.” That’s a cop-out: the novel’s complexities do not lend themselves to casual conversation. Which is another way of saying that it is most difficult to decide what to write about in a post on Marilynne Robinson. What I appreciate most about the novel is it’s inherently open structure—the text itself seems to refute any definitive or singular interpretation.
And so I thought I would take this space to share a passage, just one, that I particularly enjoy. The narrator is reflecting upon the idea of loss, and specifically the death of Christ.
And when He did die it was sad—such a young man, so full of promise, and His mother wept and His friends could not believe the loss, and the story spread everywhere and the mourning would not be comforted, until He was so sharply lacked and so powerfully remembered that his friends felt Him beside them as they walked along the road, and saw someone cooking fish on the shore and knew it to be Him, and sat down to supper with Him, all wounded as He was…. Every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming, habitual fondness, not having meant to keep us waiting long. (194–5)
There is something beautiful to me about the idea that the loss of the physical presence of Christ could precipitate such a powerful longing as to bring Him back into the lives of his friends. (Do I miss Him? If not, why?) And the movement in the text to a more general concept of resurrection—earlier in the novel it is termed the “resurrection of the ordinary” (18)—where what is brought back is not the flash of unknown glory but instead the comfort of the familiar (and in the story, familial); that understanding of resurrection adds to my hope.
When my husband read Housekeeping on the train back and forth between the University he kept on waiting for something to happen, for the story to go somewhere. We do not all react the same to softly wandering prose. But I hope by exracting this one passage I have opened the door a bit: if you’ve never read Marilynne’s words, well, now you have; and if you have, well, please share—what is it that you enjoy and why? And, of course, if there are any further thoughts on the restoration of those we have lost please feel free to share them as well.
I loved “Housekeeping”. The themes of loss and memory threaded through this book profoundly illustrate how our families and childhood experiences become the framework for our own lives. Even if we reject our familes, as Lucille did, we can never be completely free of their influence.
I loved the last three or four paragraphs of the book, as Ruth is recounting how she imagines Lucille, her sister she hasn’t seen in years, sitting in a restaurant absently thinking of Ruth, their Aunt Sylvie and the life she left in Fingerbone (a wonderful name for their town!):
“Or imagine Lucille in Boston, at a table in a restaurant, waiting for a friend. She is tastefully dressed — wearing, say, a tweed suit with an amber scarf at the throat to draw attention to the red in her darkening hair. Her water glass has left two-thirds of a ring on the table, and she works at completing the circle with her thumbnail. Sylvie and I do not flounce in through the door, smoothing the skirts of our oversized coats and combing our hair back with our fingers. We do not sit down at the table next to hers and empty our pockets in a small damp heap in the middle of the table, and sort out the gum wrappers and ticket stubs, and then add up the coins and dollar bills, and laugh and add them up again. My mother, likewise, is not there, and my grandmother in her house slippers with her pigtail wagging, and my grandfather, with his hair combed flat against his brow, does not examine the menu with studious interest. We are nowhere in Boston. However Lucille may look, she will never find us there, or any trace or sign. We pause nowhere in Boston, even to admire a store window, and the perimeters of our wandering are nowhere. No one watching this woman smear her initials in the steam on her water glass with her first finger, or slip cellophane packets of oyster crackers into her handbag for the sea gulls, could know how her thoughts are thronged by our absence, or know how she does not watch, does not listen, does not wait, does not hope, and always for me and Sylvie.”
I have not read Housekeeping, nor have I read Little House on the Prarie (I hope you realize that latter part is a *joke*), but I own and have read parts of The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought, a favorite book, and quite poetic (maybe even romantic) at that.
Thanks for this post, Jenny. I loved Housekeeping (although I read it so long ago I remember little of the plot, mostly just that I loved the language). I haven’t read Gilead yet. I hope to over Christmas break.
ECS: That final image is also one of my favorites—I love the depiction of Lucille trying to finish the water ring left by her glass into a complete circle. It’s a simple picture, and yet the difficulty of forcing water into a predetermined path and the inherent fragility of any such circle (the water will inevitably evaporate and break the circle) subtly reinforce the theme of loss. It is as if Lucille, for all her attempts to attach herself to the solidity of upper-middle-class respectability, cannot escape the essentially transient nature of this life. You are right, Lucille cannot leave behind her familial history, and I think the Marilynne is also speaking to our own inability as mortal human beings to leave behind our heritage of inevitable loss, movement, transience, and decay. These aren’t parts of my existence I particularly like to think about, and yet the novel’s language creates such a beautiful tender portrait of loss that I find myself drawn to it …
Rhapsidiomite: Thank you for bringing up The Death of Adam—it was actually my first introduction to Marilynne’s works (I picked it up randomly at a bookstore right after my mission) and I think it gives a more complete picture of the thinking and philosophy that underlies her fiction. There are some authors who may write about religion in fiction, but not believe themselves. The essays in Death, however, bring a fascinating light to the flavor of her religious beliefs. And, of course, they’re extremely well written.
There’s actually a passage I really like from the essay “Psalm Eight” that fits in quite well with the text of Housekeeping discussed in the original post, for any who are interested:
Eve: I think your commment is valuable because it highlights an interesting aspect of Marilynne’s works: how easy it is, in a way, to forget them. The plot is secondary to the language in aesthetic importance. This is even more true for Gilead. I’ve worked extensively with the text of Housekeeping in my life, and yet I’d be hard pressed to give you more than a most basic outline of what goes on. I could, however, describe the landscape, the depth of the lake and closeness of the mountains, and the house itself with its stacks of yellowed newsprint and fall leaves underfoot. I think this emphasis on image over movement is part of what makes the text difficult—while we are a very visually attuned society, our images are in motion (they are going somewhere to do something) and Marilynne’s are not. Although she herself would strongly disagree with the following implied interpretation, I think it would be interesting to look at her as a kind of anachronistic postmodern author in that she consciously foregrounds language and the linguistic structure behind thought in her works.
Jenny, I haven’t read any Marilynne Robinson, although she has been recommended to me by several people whose opinions I trust. Is this a long, slow read (a page a night–like my scripture reading, sadly), or is this something to reserve a weekend for reading quickly?
I tend to think of her as a slow read, although neither Housekeeping nor Gilead are that long (I think about 200 pages and 300 pages respectively). Maybe a few Sunday afternoons would do it (I’d start with Housekeeping, but that’s just because I know it better). It took Nick a week on the train (whatever that conversion would be …) :)