55 pages • 1 hour read
Housekeeping
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Chapters 6-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
The next summer, Ruthie begins “to sense that Lucille’s loyalties [are] with the other world” (141). Ruthie believes this was the last real summer of her life. The girls stop going to school when the weather turns nice, but they pretend to go as a courtesy to their aunt. They walk by the tracks past the unhoused people. The school sends letters to Sylvie about the girls’ truancy, and she writes letters back, blaming it on “the discomforts of female adolescence” (142). Lucille feels uncomfortable in her developing body. Ruthie thinks of herself and her sister as a single entity over the course of that summer even though her sister is morose at times. They spend most of their time in the woods, Ruthie because she likes the woods and Lucille to avoid being seen by anybody. At times, Sylvie has a fire going when the girls come home, and they like it when she scolds them for things like staying out late or not having their coats with them.
One night Lucille starts itching a lot, and she turns on the light to examine her body. At this time, they discover what their home truly looks like. The kitchen is cluttered. The three drink from jelly jars and eat from plates out of detergent boxes. There are unhinged doors on the cupboards; the paint that once covered the tables and chairs are chipped. There is soot covering the wall and ceiling. Dust is everywhere, and the window is missing a curtain that once started on fire from a birthday cake. On that birthday, Ruthie received, from Sylvie, a cardigan and a ceramic kangaroo, and Sylvie had a great time. Sylvie quickly turns the light off.
Lucille then asks Sylvie where her husband is, and she says she doubts her husband knows where she is. Lucile accuses Sylvie of never having had a husband, and her aunt tells her to think whatever she wants. Lucille imagines the woman’s husband died in war and that grief caused Sylvie anguish. When she believes this, Lucille has mercy on her aunt. When Sylvie shows them a picture from a magazine and says it is her husband, Lucille no longer forgives her aunt for anything. Lucille starts to insist on having the lights on and eating on china. Her aunt gives her the grocery money when Lucille starts insisting on meat and vegetables for dinner. Sylvie, herself, eats saltines. Lucille also becomes upset her aunt did not change much about their grandmother’s room and that she keeps her belongings in a box under her bed. Sylvie also sleeps in her clothes, and this bothers Lucille. When Sylvie one night sleeps on the lawn because it is nice outside, Lucille mentions how their classmate Rosette Browne’s mom takes her to ballet. None of this bothers Ruthie, even when Sylvie sleeps in the car or reads old newspapers, because she perceives this as a sign Sylvie managed to stay a transient while still living in Fingerbone. She thinks this might mean she is likely to stay.
One day when Lucille and Ruthie find Sylvie asleep on the park bench, Lucille runs away and tells Ruthie to wake her up. Sylvie tells Ruthie it is hard to know what Ruthie is thinking because she is quiet, and Ruthie says she frequently does not know herself what she thinks. She narrates, “I feared and suspected that Sylvie and I were of a kind, and waited for her to claim me, but she would not” (157). When Sylvie and Ruthie return home, Lucille is cleaning the kitchen, and Lucille is worried people could have seen Sylvie. Sylvie walks out the door, and Ruthie is concerned she may be leaving them. Lucille thinks there could be worse things than Sylvie leaving them.
Chapter 7 Summary
The two sisters continue to spend all of their time together, but they start to disagree on details when they try to remember their mother. Lucille remembers their mother as being sensible and orderly, while Ruthie remembers their life as being very simple and their mother as being indifferent to them. Lucille remembers their mother as a widow who accidentally drove into the lake despite the fact that she left them at their grandmother’s house. They are now certain Sylvie is staying with them. The girls go out to the lake and walk into the shallow water. The two make a hut and fall asleep inside of it. It is pitch black when they wake up, and they hear coyotes and owls and other wildlife. Lucille believes Ruthie fell asleep, but Ruthie thinks she just became one with the darkness. She thinks there would be no need for mementos or memories if the darkness could become permanent.
When it begins to get light, the two start to walk home. Lucille thinks Sylvie will be angry, but when they return home, she is reading a magazine. Sylvie places chairs near the stove and wraps the girls in quilts. Lucille and Sylvie talk while Ruthie falls asleep, believing the room is filled with strangers. She spilled her tea on her lap but does not know how to tell Sylvie. Sylvie tells her that during the best sleep when a person is really tired, they die. Lucille quickly cleans Ruthie up. Lucille tells Ruthie she had a dream she was a baby and was crying and someone who resembled Sylvie brought her blankets to comfort her but was really smothering her.
The two sisters go to buy beauty products, and Ruthie remembers dreaming that she was waiting for her mother like she did the day Helen left them on their grandmother’s porch. Ruthie has a hard time keeping up with Lucille, but Lucille wants them to have a conversation like other people do. Ruthie wants to go home, but Lucille insists she stay. Lucille tells Ruthie she knows Ruthie will leave but that the house is not theirs anymore; it is Sylvie’s. Lucille believes the two sisters must improve themselves. Ruthie says they can talk about that later, but Lucille is urgent. Ruthie believes she is trying to pull her into a different world. As she approaches home, Ruthie notices the changes due to neglect to the house.
Lucille comes home with supplies to make a dress. She wants Ruthie to help her, but they have to clear off the cans Sylvie was cleaning and collecting on the kitchen table. The girls do not complain about these cans because they are orderly, and they appreciate, by this point, any order they can find. The girls realize they need pinking shears but do not know what that is. When Ruthie looks it up in the dictionary, she finds flowers her grandfather pressed between the pages. Lucille wants to burn them, which upsets Ruthie, and when Ruthie goes to find a different book to put them in, Lucille crumbles them.
The two girls stop speaking for a few days, and Lucille will not tell her sister where she goes when she leaves. One day Ruthie follows her with an excuse for why she is there, and Ruthie realizes her sister leaves and kills time just to avoid Ruthie. One day, Lucille comes downstairs and throws the dress into the stove. Ruthie apologizes, and Lucille is no longer upset. Lucille tells Ruthie she knows Ruthie cannot help but be like Sylvie. Lucille tells her sister they need to stop spending all of their time together and they need to make new friends. Neither sister ever had any real friends because they spent their “lives watching and listening with the constant sharp attention of children lost in the dark” (194). The two sisters see Sylvie brushing her hair just as their mother did the night before they left home.
Lucille starts brushing her hair to appear healthy. Lucille stops spending time with Ruthie, and Lucille starts keeping a diary. Ruthie begins to realize Lucille will leave soon. One day at school, the two are called in to the principal’s office about all the schoolwork they previously missed, and Lucille says they will make it up by doing extra work. Lucille tells the man she does not know if Ruthie will work harder this year because Ruthie is unconcerned with practicalities. Ruthie says she does not know what matters to her, and Mr. French says this is a sign of her attitude problem. The man tells Ruthie she will have to learn to speak for herself instead of having her sister speak for her. Lucille avoids Ruthie at school.
Ruthie starts to do better at school because it is a distraction, and the principal calls her in and commends her for this. Sylvie and Ruthie eat alone at dinner, while Lucille eats “vegetable soup and cottage cheese” elsewhere (204). One night when Lucille goes to a dance, Sylvie tells Ruthie about a boat she discovered. Lucille says she will sleep downstairs, but when Sylvie goes to check on her, Lucille is gone. She walked to the home of the home-economics teacher, Miss Royce, and told the woman about the situation at home. Lucille moves in with Miss Royce, and Ruthie narrates, “I had no sister after that night” (209). The next day Miss Royce comes to speak with Sylvie, and the two adults talk. Sylvie packs up Lucille’s belongings. Lucille tells the woman to leave most of her things for Ruthie. She does not even want to bring clothes or a hairbrush.
Chapters 6-7 Analysis
The girls’ desire for a steady adult figure in their lives is shown through their response to Sylvie’s admonishments when they come home late or without a coat. Sylvie is not a typical mother figure. When the girls are reprimanded for not going to school, she makes excuses for them. She does not keep their house up to typical standards, and her meals are irregular in both the content and the time at which they are consumed. The girls do not know how to ask for what they need, as they likely do not know what it is specifically they lack. Still, their desire to be reprimanded demonstrates that they do desire these boundaries that Sylvie is unable to provide them with. They have some desire to be like typical children even when they skip school and fail to conform to the norms the school provides. Because they have never had stability, they do not know how to provide for themselves what they lack, but they know enough to sense it when they see it through Sylvie’s admonishments. This shows that at times, Sylvie is able to present the children with some structure and that they crave this structure, emphasizing the motif of stability that trails throughout the novel.
The family only really functions well in darkness. It has already been established that Sylvie likes to eat in the dark. The three have become accustomed to their environment, but when a light is shown on it, they can see the environment for what it is. They see all the mess and disrepair the house has fallen into. It is Lucille who turns on the light, which is symbolic of the way in which she will be the one of the three who can most clearly see that the environment they live in is not typical and is not conducive to the bringing up of children in this typical American environment. It is Sylvie who turns this light off, as she is the one who does not want her weaknesses on display. In darkness, the family can pretend that their living situation is not as dire as it is, but when a light is shown, the weaknesses are on display. Sylvie has a different concept of the relationship between Women and Housekeeping, and here the novel begins to show her form of housekeeping as not being altogether utopian either.
The different ways the girls respond to Sylvie as they grow up represent their differences in their values as well as their different desires. Ruthie is fine accommodating for her aunt’s idiosyncrasies because she takes them as proof that her aunt has learned how to remain true to herself and her transient lifestyle while staying in one place. She sees these idiosyncrasies as a source of comfort and stability because, to her, they mean that her aunt is going to stay, and this is what she wants most. Lucille stops showing her aunt mercy, and she tries to mold her entire family into the picture of what she thinks a family ought to be. When she laments how her friend’s mom takes her friend to ballet, she shows that she wants a traditional mother-child bond. When she insists that the lights be kept on, she refuses to allow her aunt to hide her inadequacies. Her meal choices are very stereotypical and demonstrate that she wants what she believes is an ideal family. While Ruthie remains loyal to her aunt and prizes having her in her life above all else, Lucille prizes an ideal life and starts to seek that out even if it means leaving her family. Both sisters seek stability, but they look for it in different ways: Ruthie through relationship, and Lucille through conformity to social norms. These differences reflect their different ways of viewing transience and rootedness, as they differ in both where and how they seek home. This brings in the theme of American Transience and Rootedness for Women. Ruthie and Lucille begin to diverge as young women in America, as Ruthie embraces transience while Lucille embraces rootedness.
The dreams the two sisters have explain the greatest fears they both have. Ruthie fears strangers entering their home and herself being embarrassed. She wants Sylvie, and family is all she really cares about. She does not care about impressing others even though she is embarrassed in her dream. She has already started to see herself in Sylvie. She has what she needs in Sylvie, but Sylvie will not outwardly claim her as her own. In this sense, she is still lacking. Lucille, on the other hand, feels smothered by Sylvie. This is not because of any overbearing nature in the aunt but rather because the kind of care she gives threatens to take from Lucille what she needs. Lucille wants to be able to conform to the expectations of others. She finds comfort in what she considers normalcy. As such, Sylvie’s caregiving takes from her what she most desires. Ruthie wants to become one with the darkness that Sylvie craves, whereas Lucille wants to be set free.
Lucille’s and Ruthie’s different attitudes about the pressed flowers indicates their different beliefs about the importance of family ties. Ruthie cares about family and wants her family around her. This is evident in that she wants to stay with Sylvie and also because she cares about the remnants her grandfather leaves behind. For Lucille, these family ties threaten to keep her from social inclusion, and as such, she destroys them, as she has no need for them. While Lucille wishes to keep Ruthie in her life, she begins to realize that she will not be able to do this and still pursue her goal of inclusion. The sisters have their biggest fight over the flowers, and this foreshadows how their differing needs and desires will eventually drive them from each other.
The complex relationship between sisters is demonstrated through the details presented the night Lucille and Ruthie make amends with each other. Neither is angry any longer, but this does not mean that their relationship can continue on as it always has been. Lucille has come to the realization that she has to separate from her sister a bit because her sister is like Sylvie, and Lucille cannot live in that environment. She must find other people to meet some of her needs. Love and the bond between sisters is not enough to always sustain a relationship. The relationship between sisters, however, is shown to be deeper than even love can describe. This is shown when the girls recognize their mother’s actions in their aunt’s brushing of her hair. Helen brushed her hair the night before she died by suicide in the same manner that Sylvie does on this night. This demonstrates that Helen and Sylvie’s transience was alike, but so were their mannerisms. They sought out similar things but in different ways. All of the main relationships in the novel are between female relatives, and the author avoids oversimplifying these roles as she demonstrates the ways in which sisters come together and fall apart; she also shows the ways mannerisms and characteristics carry on throughout time.
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