Light Vs. Dark In Housekeeping By Marilynne Robinson

Goodness verses evil is how most novels portray light verses dark. Marilynne Robinson challenges this idea in her novel Housekeeping by changing the roles of light and dark. Light, in her novel, represents a normal life as Lucille, the protagonist’s sister, chooses to endorse. Darkness is portrayed as a source of enlightenment and a path to an abnormal life which Ruth, the protagonist, and Sylvie, the protagonist’s aunt, embrace. In the novel Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, the main characters, Ruth and Lucille, have to choose their lifestyle as a normal one in the light, or one that is unique in the dark.

In the novel, light is used as a symbol of a normal life that is dictated by the normality of society. This is illustrated when Ruth

sees a train “in the dark afternoon, creeping through the blue snow with their windows all alight, and full of people eating and arguing and reading newspapers” (Robinson 54). The train is a symbol of a regular life because the people that board such trains are those who are commuting to and from work. Robinson purposely made the afternoon a dark one to show emphasize that everything the train crosses is not what society says is normal. She goes on to describe the people that are illuminated in the train as those who are always in a hurry. Lucille did not enjoy the unique life that Ruth and Sylvie had chosen and chose to walk away from it. It was as if the “dark allowed Lucille to pass” (Robinson 99) into the light. This would imply that Lucille was headed on a path to an abnormal life but chose a drastically different route to embark on. Such a drastic drift between their families could be viewed as an allusion to modern America. With all of the technologies that are coming out, the normality in society has become to spend as much time away from your family as possible. With progression in society, rifts begin to form within families. Robinson is not saying that it is necessarily a bad thing, that it is a lifestyle one has to choose for his or her own self. She also shows us the flip side of the light.
Darkness, in this novel, is used as a form of enlightenment which can only be found in nature and would lead to serenity.

Sylvie was the original person to embrace the darkness. When she arrived, the sisters immediately noticed how Sylvie would eat “supper in the dark” (Robinson 86). Typically, when eating, people turn on the light so that they can see the food they are eating. Sylvie on the other hand would keep it off so because she believed that the moonlight was good enough. Robinson illustrates the stark distinction in the way Sylvie runs her life and the way society expects her to. Ruth eventually comes to term with Sylvie’s methods of living and is reborn when she realizes that “the only true birth would be … one which would free [her] from watery darkness and the thought of watery darkness” (Robinson 162). Darkness in this context is losing oneself and having to find their way back. Robinson is saying that once you find serenity in this world, you will be reborn and will never lose your way again. This is significant because this is a deciding moment for Ruth and she has to make a decision as to who she wants to be as she grows older. This is something that is relatable to most people, where they go through an event which gives them an idea of who they want to be as they

progress.
Robinson’s novel Housekeeping is full of philosophical ideas that can be relatable to everyone. There is no one moment to connect this to; rather you can make connection from this book to an individual and his or her experiences which is what makes the novel exceptional. Robinson takes a simple idea, such as light and darkness, and transforms it into a multilayered, complex idea with meanings specific to each individual while maintaining an underlying definition for what each represents. In this case, light represents a normal life while darkness represents a path to one that is not.