Essay Database

Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping In Housekeeping (1980), Marilyn Robinson provides a sense of women and the space and the domestic constraints of society. The story crosses several generations of women and their lives in a single house in a town named Fingerbone. Ruthie is the main protagonist. She is a young woman who grew up in a household of women, beginning with her grandmother, then her great aunts, her aunt, and her only sister. But the house …

…ghostly and depressing. However, its strength is in the perceptive description of people and places. Robinson is especially vivid with the sense of place, whether of the house or the place in Seattle where the girls lived with their mother before coming to Fingerbone. Her descriptions of people were clear portraits that told as much of their character as their appearance. What the book lacked emotionally was made up in the artistry of the language.