To Be or Not to Be Like Sylvie

When I first started reading Housekeeping, it was obvious that Ruth and Lucille seemed to think and act quite similarly. I sort of saw them as a dynamic duo that consoled each other as they experienced the loss of so many family members together, thus being each other’s support systems through times of trouble. As Sylvie becomes their primary caretaker, however, the gradual but steady separation in the girls’ perspectives on life is clear. Ruth begins to turn towards Sylvie, while Lucille turns away. I began to ask see their coming of age stories in a light of nature versus nurture. They grew up with the same “nature” -- as sisters, it’s easy to say that they have the same genes. Their “nurture”, or rather lack of proper nurturing, was also similar, in that they both experienced the tragic loss of their mother, the constant inconsistency of different guardians, and Sylvie’s free-spirited, live-in-the-moment supervision. However, they ultimately decide differently on how they would like their lives to be spent, and eventually separate completely from each other. So what caused this change?

A telling passage that showcases the start of their different thinkings is in chapter 7 (pp 112-121), when they are stuck and uncomfortably coping in the woods together. As they are in their hut, Lucille is very obviously impatient, uncomfortable, and unhappy in their situation -- and understandably so. They are teenagers in their makeshift “human stronghold” that had a collapsing roof of driftwood and stones. Lucille, in an effort to distract herself, writes her name with pebbles in the sand outside of the hut. Ruth also narrates that she throws rocks at the animals down at the water that they could not see in the darkness, and grumbles that the animals are unable to smell them. Ruth also notices “Lucille’s pacing and whistling” in the darkness, and her swiftness to pack up and leave as soon as the sun began to rise.

As a stark contrast, Ruth is in the same collapsing hut as Lucille, but is calm. She does not waver in the darkness and the unknown around her. As Lucille thinks that Ruth is falling asleep, Ruth allows the darkness to “become coextensive with the darkness in my skull and bowels and bones”. She becomes comfortable in the uncomfortable, and begins to think about the people that used to be in her life -- her mother, her grandmother, and generalizes the idea of ghosts and spirits around her. She comes to conclude that “darkness is the only solvent” to coping with every death or catastrophe that comes to her, which is very telling of the transient perspective she comes to see. Detaching from human life and instead becoming one with nature so as to avoid the consequences of bad events is Ruth’s solution to her life.

The rest of this chapter and this book detail Lucille and Ruth’s change of minds. Lucille becomes determined to change the way that people see her, essentially getting rid of any evidence that she is affiliated with transience. She looks to adopt fashion styles and culture trends that girls her age find “normal” so that she finds a change to also be “normal”. Ruth, on the other hand, sees the unpredictable path of life as her normal. She starts to believe that things can only be held onto for so long before letting them go, and that this is just a fact of life; she eventually follows in Sylvie's footsteps.

What seems to be a causal factor of these differing perspectives is the girls’ individual relationships with Sylvie, and how/if they respect her and her way of living. Lucille despises the way that Sylvie seems to not care about their wellbeing, as she does not ask where the girls were when they came in distraught after their time in the woods. However, Ruth thinks differently of her, as she is “surprised and touched by [Sylvie’s] solicitude” when she brings them warm quilts and hot tea to welcome them home. Sylvie’s transient thinking and acceptance of the life she lives -- her unawareness of her husband’s whereabouts, her history of train-hopping, her carefree personality -- is polarizing, and it ultimately takes a huge effect on the girls’ , as Lucille fits into the mainstream while Ruth follows Sylvie’s transient lifestyle on trains. Sylvie was the part of nurture that the girls responded differently to, which set them to either totally reject or accept the idea of change and impermanence. Which makes me wonder -- if Sylvie wasn’t around, would Ruth have turned out like Lucille? Would Lucille even have turned to the mainstream if she didn’t have anything to reject?