Throughout Housekeeping we see Ruth describing how dreams can mix with reality. I found this idea fascinating because it's true that with time moments become memories which bare likeness to dreams and are ultimately buried so deeply in our consciences that it's difficult to tell the two apart. Some of my earliest memories make no sense at all and it's impossible for me to explain how they ended up in my mental timeline.
For example, I've always remembered encountering a bear when I was about two or so, and for years after that, I would scold my mother for not having protected me. My parents promise me that there never was a bear, and yet I can picture it perfectly in my mind. As I grew older, I realized it very well may have been a dream, but as a child, it made little difference to me as I slipped from sleep to being awake with little differentiation.
Ruth specifically touches upon the irrelevance of fact at the end of the book:
All this is fact. Fact explains nothing. On the contrary, it is fact that requires explanation. For example, I pass again and again behind my grandmother's house, and never get off at the station and walk back to see if it is still the same house, altered perhaps by the repairs the fires made necessary, or if it is a new house built on the old site. I would like to see the people who live there. Seeing them would expel poor Lucille, who has, in my mind, waited there in a fury of righteousness, cleansing and polishing, all these years. She thinks she hears someone on the walk, and hurries to open the door, too eager to wait for the bell....Sometimes she dreams that we come walking up the road in our billowing raincoats, hunched against the cold, talking together in words she cannot quite understand.
All this that Ruth imagines about Lucille is significant in its own right. These details she can picture, although without factual evidence, are woven from what she knows of her sister and are part of how she perceives her past as well as her present. Interestingly enough, mixing memories with dreams and imaginings seems almost contrary to Sylvie's philosophy of living in the moment. But then again, to live every second to its fullest, isn't it imperative that we mix in our past and future? Some of the best moments taste sweeter with a memory associated with it or an aspiration that you're working toward.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Trying to Figure Ruth Out
I just finished Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson this morning, and I still feel like I don't really know Ruth. She partakes in barely any dialogue throughout the book, and the narration is all retrospective. It wasn't until the end that I got a clearer glimpse of her.
But after a while, when the customers and the waitresses and the dishwasher and the cook have told me, or said in my hearing, so much about themselves that my own silence seems suddenly remarkable, then they begin to suspect me, and it is as if I put a chill on the coffee by serving it. What have I to do with these ceremonies of sustenance, of nurturing? They begin to ask why I do not eat anything myself...Once they begin to look at me like that, it is best that I leave.
Just like me, the people around her are perplexed by her silence, and in seeing this, I found myself becoming more sympathetic with her. Although she may be very introverted, it is not out of self-absorption or disinterest with the people around her. It is almost the opposite: she quietly takes in her surroundings with fascination, too enthralled to disrupt the events around her. She reacts the same way when she's in the woods with Lucille, peacefully listening to the animal sounds, unlike Lucille who is impatient with the disorder of the outdoors. Be it nature, animals or people, Ruth is mutely observant, and perhaps this is what makes her able to write so well. She takes the time to understand the world, rather than drowning out its sounds with her own voice.
Sylvie played a huge role in aiding Ruth to become the keen observer that she becomes. Her practice of eating dinner in the dark forced Ruth to employ her other senses while her eyesight was of little use. I was especially impressed by Ruth's behavior when Sylvie took her to the abandoned house in the valley. When Sylvie left her, she remained still, always watching, always imagining. Even though Sylvie facilitates Ruth in becoming quiet and observant, there is something unique about Ruth which allows her to become this way, because Lucille was given the same upbringing and yet is completely different.
At the end of the novel, Ruth traces her uniqueness back to waiting on her grandmother's porch for her mother to return, saying it instilled in her a "habit of waiting and expectation which makes any present moment significant for what it does not contain." This explanation makes sense to me. Even if Lucille was also on that porch, the experience clearly meant something different to Ruth, maybe because she was younger, or maybe, because Ruth was already different since conception as she later goes on to claim.
I still can't say I feel like I know Ruth intimately, like I could have said for Holden Caulfield, but then again, not many people could, and that's part of what defines her. Living in a reality where she can barely distinguish dreams from real events, nor does she bother even trying to, she's on a level at which friendship would take on a completely different meaning. She drifts and barely speaks, let alone opens up to people. But I do like her. She's imaginative, pensive, and so free-spirited that she's just out of everyone's grasp.
But after a while, when the customers and the waitresses and the dishwasher and the cook have told me, or said in my hearing, so much about themselves that my own silence seems suddenly remarkable, then they begin to suspect me, and it is as if I put a chill on the coffee by serving it. What have I to do with these ceremonies of sustenance, of nurturing? They begin to ask why I do not eat anything myself...Once they begin to look at me like that, it is best that I leave.
Just like me, the people around her are perplexed by her silence, and in seeing this, I found myself becoming more sympathetic with her. Although she may be very introverted, it is not out of self-absorption or disinterest with the people around her. It is almost the opposite: she quietly takes in her surroundings with fascination, too enthralled to disrupt the events around her. She reacts the same way when she's in the woods with Lucille, peacefully listening to the animal sounds, unlike Lucille who is impatient with the disorder of the outdoors. Be it nature, animals or people, Ruth is mutely observant, and perhaps this is what makes her able to write so well. She takes the time to understand the world, rather than drowning out its sounds with her own voice.
Sylvie played a huge role in aiding Ruth to become the keen observer that she becomes. Her practice of eating dinner in the dark forced Ruth to employ her other senses while her eyesight was of little use. I was especially impressed by Ruth's behavior when Sylvie took her to the abandoned house in the valley. When Sylvie left her, she remained still, always watching, always imagining. Even though Sylvie facilitates Ruth in becoming quiet and observant, there is something unique about Ruth which allows her to become this way, because Lucille was given the same upbringing and yet is completely different.
At the end of the novel, Ruth traces her uniqueness back to waiting on her grandmother's porch for her mother to return, saying it instilled in her a "habit of waiting and expectation which makes any present moment significant for what it does not contain." This explanation makes sense to me. Even if Lucille was also on that porch, the experience clearly meant something different to Ruth, maybe because she was younger, or maybe, because Ruth was already different since conception as she later goes on to claim.
I still can't say I feel like I know Ruth intimately, like I could have said for Holden Caulfield, but then again, not many people could, and that's part of what defines her. Living in a reality where she can barely distinguish dreams from real events, nor does she bother even trying to, she's on a level at which friendship would take on a completely different meaning. She drifts and barely speaks, let alone opens up to people. But I do like her. She's imaginative, pensive, and so free-spirited that she's just out of everyone's grasp.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Esther's Unease with Marriage
As I read the first several chapters of The Bell Jar, I was instantly intrigued by Esther Greenwood. She is so much less defined than Holden Caulfield and Stephen Dedalus who exude a tone of confidence in their convictions. We've already seen how drastically she changed her mind about Buddy Willard and Doreen. Or how she suddenly realizes that she doesn't know what she wants to do with her life after being certain for so long. And yet amidst this whirl of changing opinions, we see her forge her own unique ideas, apart from everyone else.
What really caught my attention was her perspective on dating, marriage, and sex. In a society with the double standard expecting women to remain virgins until marriage, she figures that because Buddy has already "known" a woman, she must "know" a man before being with him. This idea is contrary to everything her society has taught her. She describes an article from Reader's Digest which outlines the commonly held belief of the era that ideally a man and woman should both be chaste if unmarried, but if a man doesn't remain so, he should still expect purity from his wife. In response to this article, Esther states, "I couldn't stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not." Her feminist logic emerges, purely of her own thought, in a culture which wholly disagrees with her.
With regards to marriage, she perceives the institution as something daunting she wants to avoid. But when she does consider it as an option, she speaks very cynically of it:
Finally I decided that if it was so difficult to find a red-blooded intelligent man who was still pure by the time he was twenty-one I might as well forget about staying pure myself and marry somebody who wasn't pure either. Then when he started to make my life miserable I could make his miserable as well.
Whereas the other girls around her seem to be building their futures around their plans to marry, Esther sees marriage as something that would only detract from her life.
The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.
Her fear of losing independence when marrying isn't without reason either, as Buddy has told her that once they're married, she won't be interested in poetry anymore, something she is very passionate about. She has also seen how dependent married women are on their husbands. In fact, her unusual views on marriage tie into her habit of constantly changing her mind and developing new opinions. She thrives on this amorphous style of thought, and she fears that getting married will constrict her to a stagnant state of existence.
What really caught my attention was her perspective on dating, marriage, and sex. In a society with the double standard expecting women to remain virgins until marriage, she figures that because Buddy has already "known" a woman, she must "know" a man before being with him. This idea is contrary to everything her society has taught her. She describes an article from Reader's Digest which outlines the commonly held belief of the era that ideally a man and woman should both be chaste if unmarried, but if a man doesn't remain so, he should still expect purity from his wife. In response to this article, Esther states, "I couldn't stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not." Her feminist logic emerges, purely of her own thought, in a culture which wholly disagrees with her.
With regards to marriage, she perceives the institution as something daunting she wants to avoid. But when she does consider it as an option, she speaks very cynically of it:
Finally I decided that if it was so difficult to find a red-blooded intelligent man who was still pure by the time he was twenty-one I might as well forget about staying pure myself and marry somebody who wasn't pure either. Then when he started to make my life miserable I could make his miserable as well.
Whereas the other girls around her seem to be building their futures around their plans to marry, Esther sees marriage as something that would only detract from her life.
The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.
Her fear of losing independence when marrying isn't without reason either, as Buddy has told her that once they're married, she won't be interested in poetry anymore, something she is very passionate about. She has also seen how dependent married women are on their husbands. In fact, her unusual views on marriage tie into her habit of constantly changing her mind and developing new opinions. She thrives on this amorphous style of thought, and she fears that getting married will constrict her to a stagnant state of existence.
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