SOURCE: Booth, Allyson. “To Caption Absent Bodies: Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping.” Essays in Literature 19, no. 2 (fall 1992): 279-90.

In the following essay, Booth examines the significance of bones, artifacts, and the story of Noah's wife in Housekeeping, arguing that these elements reflect Ruth's attitude toward physicality and her effort to preserve a connection to her deceased and absent loved ones.

Ruth Stone is abandoned by her mother, tended by her grandmother, and given up as hopelessly eccentric by her sister Lucille. When Ruth and her aunt Sylvie escape the concerned citizens of Fingerbone by crossing a bridge at night, the townspeople conclude that the pair has fallen into the water and drowned. “Lake Claims Two” reads the headline, but the aunt and niece have lived as transients for more than seven years by the time this narrative is composed. Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping may thus be read as Ruth's postscript to...