Housekeeping

Sylvie’s unconventionality grows ever more apparent as the novel progresses, and when she and Ruthie take the boat, she demonstrates that she is unwilling to even conform to social norms and laws surrounding property ownership. It is at this same time that Ruthie becomes ever more aware of the similarities between herself and her aunt. Now that Lucille is gone, Ruthie has only Sylvie to rely upon, and she no longer has Lucille tying her to the conventions of proper society. She becomes more and more willing to leave them behind as well. In Sylvie, she sees herself because they both have wandering spirits, but she also becomes willing to leave all else behind in order to follow her aunt and not leave the one tie she still has to her world. As Ruthie becomes more and more dependent upon Sylvie, the novel wonders how much of Ruthie’s transience is based in her character and how much is based in her association with her aunt, which also speaks to Family Bonds and Responsibility for Women in 20th-Century America. The bond between Ruthie and Lucille and between Ruthie and Sylvie represent different kinds of familial connections for women in a changing America.

Ruthie associates the dawn and light with Heaven and her grandfather, but it is not here that she feels most comfortable. In fact, she says she does not think she will much like Heaven. This shows that she is not pleased by or motivated by what most people are. This reference to the light of Heaven hearkens back to previous chapters where she felt at one with the dark. Light in windows is shown, throughout the novel, to be associated with the pleasantries and comfort of home, but this type of home has never been available to Ruthie. Because she is so removed from the comforts of home, she most feels comfortable in the darkness, where she and her faults are hidden away. While she thinks of her grandfather when she sees the dawn, her grandfather and mother’s eternal fate, at least in the physical world, is the darkness of the lake bottom. In these ways, she is like her grandfather and mother, both wanderers, and now like her aunt, also a wanderer. She has abandoned the expectations of civil society and has united herself with the wanderlust of those who came before her.

Ruthie explores her feelings of loneliness while on the island, and this proves to be one of the defining characteristics of her identity. She demonstrates an understanding of loneliness when she empathizes with a child outside looking in a window at children playing together. These children in the lighted house can shut the shades and shut her out at any time. She sees in them a smugness. This smugness is something she cannot attain because, unlike others, she does not have even a single connection with another person besides Sylvie. She has lost her sister, and she is left with only Sylvie. She identifies so strongly with Sylvie that she will not even leave her when given an option. While Sylvie remains physically present in Ruthie’s life, she is not able to be psychologically and emotionally available to her to the extent that Ruthie needs, and as such, Ruthie is left outside of much human companionship. She believes that, like Sylvie, she is able to sense the spirits of children left behind years ago, but she feels even this connection to the past is too illusive and that she would scare the children away by even looking at them. The novel continues to develop the theme of American Transience and Rootedness for Women. Lucille drifts further from Sylvie, while Ruthie gravitates closer to her aunt. The novel juxtaposes these options for women as the 20th-century changes their positions and roles.

During this journey, Ruthie is left alone to an extent that she never has been before. She does not know where her aunt is. She digs into the remnants of a fallen house, and this demonstrates how, in the absence of living companionship, she digs deep into the past to try to resurrect people and lives that once were there. She has very little left in the land of the living. She gets so desperate that she starts to believe that death might be her escape from her loneliness because in death she can find her mother. Desperation begins to hover around Ruthie.

Sylvie and Ruthie become more and more alike, but what continues to separate them is their perception of their wandering spirit. There is no indication in the novel that Sylvie desires to be connected to other people. She speaks casually about her marriage to the point that Lucille does not even know if her husband really exists. She left home and never came back except for during her sister’s wedding. She remains with her nieces but spends much time gazing out into the distance, giving the girls the impression that she is dreaming about her freedom. None of this bothers Ruthie throughout the novel except to the extent that her aunt’s wandering spirit could take her away from her. Unlike Lucille, Ruthie will put up with all she suffers at the hands of her aunt just to be in her aunt’s presence. The closest relation Ruthie ever has is her sister, but it is her aunt she clings to. While Sylvie’s wayward nature appears to bring her happiness and contentment, to Ruthie, it brings loneliness. When Ruthie clings to Sylvie rather than Lucille, she shows that it is a mother figure that she is most looking for.

The piano that Ruthie thinks about in her grandmother’s house is symbolic of the various objects of life that seem to imply domesticity and being tied to an area but that really can prove to be so heavy and dramatic that they threaten the very structure of that life. Ruthie’s life is threatened by overt domesticity because this domesticity could drive her aunt away from her. The lack of traditional domesticity, on the other hand, drove her sister away from her. She had a seemingly stable life with Bernice and Helen until Helen, too, had difficulties managing the life. Ruthie’s grandmother believes that everything left behind on earth will one day be reunited with a person in the afterlife. To the grandmother, possessions are eternal. To Ruthie, the very concept of domesticity threatens her stability and, as such, can be seen as a threat just as a piano could be a threat to an unstable house. This demonstrates the theme of Women and Housekeeping.

Sylvie proves her loyalty to Ruthie when she does everything that she can to conform to society in order to keep the girl with her. Never through the course of the novel has Sylvie been shown to do anything to conform to convention. She simply does not care what other people think about her, and she does not care about the housekeeping or the lifestyle standards of those around her. When she is threatened with losing Ruthie, however, she does everything that she can to conform to those standards, getting rid of anything she needs to and cleaning throughout the night. This is shown to still be contrary to her nature as, through her cleaning, she herself becomes quite disheveled, never quite able to live up to those expectations despite her best attempts. While Ruthie has never felt secure because she has always believed that Sylvie was with her only because of chance, Ruthie is shown to be the one person Sylvie will continue to fight for and even change for in order to keep her. Because of this, Sylvie demonstrates that, while she still has no loyalty to any one place, she does have one person she is willing to change and adapt for.