I know it's kind of late to be talking about Housekeeping but as I was looking back over my notes to try and find something to write a reflective response on I stumbled back upon a note that I had underlined about Sylvie and Lucille. I didn't work this into my paper but I still think it's an interesting point to bring up here. All that being said, here I go:
Lucille makes her feelings towards Sylvie pretty clear to everyone with her leaving the house to go live with her Home-Ec teacher. She then tries to go back for Ruth, to save her from the path she eventually ends up going in life. Sylvie to her credit seems to take Lucille's utter contempt of her in stride, telling Ruth that, "Well, we'll be better friends" (Robinson 142). While much of this mellow reaction can be credited to her general nature, I propose that it's because of her actions at Lucille's age that she so calmly accepts what happens. Sylvia, Ruth's grandmother seems to have been a very orderly person, keeping a clean and tidy house while her daughters were growing up. When Sylvie leaves her mom, only being a few years older than Lucille when she leaves, she almost completely abandons the way she was raised. She becomes a transient, never settling in a place long enough to make a house her own and have to bother keeping it orderly.
People in class brought up the similarity between Sylvie and Ruth, or the near copycat personality Ruth develops to match Sylvie. The one thing that Ruth lacks in this comparison is a strong independent spirit. Ruth isn't about to go against the mother figure in her life, she won't really go against anyone for that matter. Sure she tells us when she disagreed with something, but in the moment she just accepts pretty much everything thrown her way. Sylvie couldn't have done that when she was younger, or else she never would have left Fingerbone or had the gall to take a nap on the bench in the park as an adult. This independence is what really defines Sylvie in every sense of her life, and it's what defines Lucille too, even if her independence is leading her into the main stream she still has to break away from the norm that she grew up in (i.e. Sylvie's way of living). I hesitate to completely say that Lucille is more like Sylvie than Ruth is, but I do think that in terms of instinctive personality Sylvie and Lucille are two peas in a pod, whereas Ruth has to morph her personality to align with Sylvie.
That's a really good point! Lucille and Sylvie both have very distinct personalities, whereas Ruth is much more of a follower. I hesitate to call her a sheep, but it is true that she finds herself only by following someone else. Ruth may seem more like Sylvie, but it's more a matter of being influenced by Sylvie. Lucille and Sylvie are similar types of people, in that they aren't afraid to separate themselves from their childhood, from everything they've known. They aren't afraid to do their own thing, even if they are two completely different things.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really good observation--just as Sylvie often seems like a combination of herself and Helen to Ruth and Lucille, she also contains aspects of Ruth and Lucille in herself. She is indeed more independent and assertive than Lucille, which is reflected in the fact that Lucille does most of the talking when the girls question Sylvie's housekeeping methods. But I hesitate to conclude that Ruth has to "morph" herself in order to fit Sylvie's way of life--it seems like a pretty good fit to me, and we can see Ruth gradually realizing this over the course of the novel. She prefers solitude, or keeping to herself in crowds, she feels the eye of society as a "distorting mirror" and shies away from judgment, yet she seems to really dislike being altogether alone: she needs a Lucille, or a Sylvie, as a constant companion.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought of it before, but your background image could totally be Fingerbone Lake.