Sylvie's Housekeeping
Throughout Housekeeping so far, Sylvie had been a benign, if
a bit out to lunch, guardian for the two girls. Though we saw more of the
dangerous aspects of Sylvie’s unfettered attitude towards her nieces, in the
last two chapters of the book we see her become almost sinister.
Sylvie’s childlike attitude hadn’t been much of a problem in
the earlier chapters when she was taking care of the girls, though it annoyed
Lucille and left them to fend for themselves a lot of the time. However, once
Lucille leaves, Sylvie latches onto Ruth as almost a replacement for her sister
Helen, and takes it upon herself to teach her to grow up in the way she knows
how, as a transient. This in itself wasn’t scary, but depending on your point of
view was worrying. Ruth didn’t seem to be able to stand up for herself or take
care of herself at all even if she wanted to.
The part that really freaked me out was after the residents
of Fingerbone made it clear that they intended to take Ruth away from Sylvie.
The visits from the concerned women of the village were the start of all that,
when Sylvie didn’t know how to respond to their questions in any convincing
way. It just got exacerbated the closer it came to the court date, with Sylvie
being more and more desperate to learn how to actually keep house in order to
be able to hold on to Ruth. I don’t really understand why she wants to keep her
so much while being a transient, since she doesn’t really seem to be that
attached to anything else. But the scary parts of Sylvie come out when she tries
to do the housekeeping: she burns old papers and magazines right outside the
house, and when Ruth runs away, thinks she’s playing a game. She also lies (if
unconvincingly) to the sheriff. The most shocking part was when they were
trying to burn the house down while still being inside of it, lighting up the
curtains and hearing the windows pop. I could have seen this chapter going in
the direction of a horror movie if taken even further.
The mistake of the town was that they tried to use a
societal system to take Ruth away. That was definitely not going to work on
Sylvie, and she took matters into her own hands and took Ruth across the
bridge. I was wondering if they were going to actually die at this point, but
they might as well have. The last parts of Ruth that might have been attached to
society died at that moment, and she started building a new life, for better or
worse.
Ruth playing her "game" of running away into the orchard is a variation on a "game" Sylvie has played with Ruth and Lucille before--like when she's walking around downstairs during the flood in the dark, and she refuses to answer when Ruth calls out to her, or when she disappears at the ruined house in the woods and compels Ruth to sit by herself alone and wait for the "children" to appear. There's an interesting role reversal here, as Ruth behaves in a more "transient" way, while Sylvie is desperate to convince the sheriff that everything is fine and normal. I don't know exactly what to make of these games, but they seem to have something to do with acknowledging and even dramatizing the inherent transience of any human relationship, play-acting this idea that people just "disappear" without warning.
ReplyDeleteIt's really interesting to me that you read these final chapters as so sinister, with Sylvie almost going mad, aiming to "replace" Helen with Ruth. But the "replacement" idea seems to work both ways, as Sylvie has started to displace Helen in Ruth's memories, and they start to blur in her memory and imagination (to the point where she even calls Sylvie "Helen" when they're under the bridge on the lake, although Sylvie/Helen doesn't answer). Is this "new life" for the better or worse? The townspeople seem to think it's unambiguously a failure to "lose" Ruth in this way, but does Ruth's narration, which is more clearly at peace with this turn of events, persuade you that it might be seen as an appropriate manifestation of her coming of age?
I think crossing the river was like their old life dying and who they were in that life dies. I think they started a new life with a clean slate. Ruth is a new person after that night she is no longer "housekeeping" she is just the opposite always moving. I also think this life suits Ruth perfectly because she never wanted to be looked at and by being a wander she never will be.
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