Response to Ending of Housekeeping

        When I read the end of Housekeeping, I felt as if everything finally settled in its place with all of the pieces falling in line.  Throughout the entire book Ruth narrated with a sense of tension and dismay. However, in the final few chapters, her narrating feels completely different. There is a freedom and honesty to it, versus the rest of the story where conflict and suppression dominate the mood. The fact that a freedom and comfort were established for me in the ending of the book is actually kind of ironic because in the end, everything kind of goes awry. Yet maybe that is the reason for the freedom. Near the end, Ruth began to split from Lucille and found herself resonating more and more with Sylvie, the transient. She remains stuck in between Lucille’s reality and Sylvie’s dream world until Lucille leaves them. After that, she finally escapes and fully submits herself to Sylvie’s ways. In the very last chapters, Sylvie and Ruth completely let go and set the house on fire. This seems crazy and terrifying and would usually mean that the characters reached a point of insanity. For Sylvie and Ruth though, it brings closure and comfort. I loved this concept and felt Robinson fully concluded the book, and left the reader satisfied.

         In my opinion, everything clicked in the last few pages. Ruth suddenly comes out and says, “All this is fact. Fact explains nothing.” She realizes that for her, reality is not necessarily what is real for her. For everyone else, the traditional lifestyle fits and works, but for Ruth and Sylvie their life is steady when they are transient. She refers to herself and Sylvie as being, “not travelers.” To anyone else, they were travellers who had no home, and just spent their life wandering with no constant. However, Ruth and Sylvie found constancy and comfort in travelling. For them, it wasn’t even travelling. In their eyes they were living their life. This is what they were supposed to do. The concept was difficult to wrap my mind around at first, but I feel that I have better understanding now. I comprehend that all of the negatives at the end show what is really happening. It is as if what isn’t going on says more about reality than what is. Ruth dug past the surface of life and really found a new approach. I appreciated this, and respected her and Sylvie because they were true to themselves. They easily could have fallen into tradition and lived their lives in agony. But they broke free from what the rest of their relatives never could.