Families can become a neighborhood. The religious philosopher John Calvin thinks that it is the Maker’s doctrine, which suggests that people take care of their close members, helping each other. In Home, Ames and Lila go to their neighbor Glory’s home, entering a small scale of the religious family gathering, in which Jack mentions the issue of salvation of the soul. Lila firstly responds to Jack’s question that if one cannot change one’s self, the salvation will be not sufficient. Having a long time considering the coexistence of predestination and salvation, Glory’s father appreciates Lila’s opinion and mentions that how to come up with an acceptable conclusion has never been as interesting as the instant of questioning. Thus, Lila reinforces her ideas that one can change oneself so things will be transformed. Witnessing Lila’s religious expressions in the neighboring gathering, Ames feels much moved, because her unique spiritual reflections from her solitude and self-study impress him.
Marilynne Robinson encouraged people to read John Calvin when the Church Times interviewed her in 2012. She is interested in Calvin, expressing that interest not only in her nonfiction but also in her fiction Gilead. For instance, Robinson expresses her ideas about Calvin’s revolution of the church system in her Foreword of Calvin (2006), claiming that Calvin established a nonhierarchical church (2006: vi). In my interpretation, though Calvin has a strict view of religious morals such as predestination, he suggests that everyone still has a chance to access salvation in next life. I think the following scene in Robinson’s Gilead and Home responds well to both Calvin’s idea of the community of church system and his theological thinking about salvation. The important and reemphasized scene in Robinson’s
Gilead and Home occurs when Lila is invited to have a talk with the gathering in Glory’s
house with the two ministers’ whole families: Glory, Glory’s father the minister, her brother Jack, and Ames the minister. Considering that Robinson proposes that Calvin creates a nonhierarchical church, I would further explain my opinion on the church’s position within the religious works and then I will refer to other criticism written by Robinson, Steward of God’s Covenant, to examine how Robinson reflects on Calvin’s theologies through her
character Lila about the individual’s meditation. Next, I want to draw back to the function of church by referring to Robinson’s insights in the Foreword of Calvin. I think that, like Calvin, who deals with his religious faith seriously through research in the Bible with a group of religious meditators’ cooperation, Robinson also believes in the power of the groups so she puts such emphasis on the union of the two ministers’ family gatherings. Robinson stresses the support from family members as individuals form their belief in situations ranging from the daily eating table to random gatherings for talk in religion with neighbors and family members. Thanks to this kind of gathering of the family and neighborhood, members can reveal their life bewilderments so people on the spot can join in, discuss their problems, and then solve their puzzles, with inspiration and religious reflections from each other. In this way, the family and their neighbors can all together live a better life.
Steward of God’s Covenant (2006) is Robinson’s criticism of Calvin’s theological contributions. According to Steward of God’s Covenant, “each one is trained to genuine self-denial, so that one’s will being brought into obedience to God, one bids farewell to one’s own desire” (2006: 8). In other words, one should lower one’s own desire. If people can treasure what they already have, they can more easily feel content, and be happier. For example, in the gathering combining the two ministers’ families in Gilead and Home, Jack mentions whether one is destined to suffer difficultly in this life. After a series of discussions, what makes Jack impressed is Lila’s comment that if one does not change one’s way of
thinking, the salvation is not effective enough. Yes, I agree to Lila’s saying. She shows the importance of confessing one’s sin. In the meantime, she points out that the method of confession includes deep meditation and reflection. I think Lila’s interpretation of salvation resides in getting release from spiritual burdens, avoiding committing the same mistakes or errors, and stopping a bad situation from becoming even worse. Even if it seems hard to see the painless near future, one can accumulate good deeds for the next life. God helps those who help themselves. I would like to conclude that the gathering contains both the family and religious characteristics. Members in the group help Jack go through his past and ongoing bitter experiences. According to Glory in Home, Jack has left home without further news “for twenty years” (2008: 31) because he once had a child before marriage. He did not marry the girl even when his minster father knew the fact of the child. At that time, he just fled. Now, Jack is confronting another difficulty in his life: having a secret black lover. This forbidden interracial love takes place against the background of the 1950s, just before the Civil Rights Movement in the US. Therefore, I believe that Lila’s words comfort Jack whether for the past wounds or for the present anxiety. This is the power of the mixture of the religious and family community.
After Robinson published Home, Ramona Koval interviewed her in 2008. Robinson mentions that the parable of the prodigal son is a parable less about forgiveness than about grace or love. I would like to focus attention on the analysis of Jack’s spiritual transformation in Home. Jack wants to receive salvation in this life so he asks in a religious gathering of the family and neighbors whether someone is destined to suffer hard in this life. Maybe he hopes to get relief from his bitter experiences. I think this kind of the religious and family gathering offers him spiritual supporting systems with elements of grace and love. Members conduct such gatherings in the form of study groups. They talk to each other and express their opinions on members’ questions. This is an expression of language’s strength. According to
Robinson’s talks in the interview, “[Glory’s] father runs to embrace [Glory’s brother Jack] as a son simply when he sees him at a distance.” The father’s hug shows how body language reveals grace and love. I would like to infer with the following observation how grace and love appear: The father does not say any words but concretely confesses his love toward his son by a natural and sincere embrace. This conveys a sense of acceptance. I think grace and love are voiced out either by physical touches in Jack’s case of returning home or by greeting words in Glory’s case of returning home. On seeing Glory come home, the father greets her whole-heartedly, “Home to stay, Glory! Yes!” Then, as Jack finally comes home after twenty years, the father embraces his son with all his enthusiasm, which is beyond the expression of language. Robinson further defines these “prosaic gestures,” including “small gestures, little courtesies towards one another, and little provisions for one another’s comfort.” Robinson frequently uses those observations in her imagination of the characters’ interactions. Let me elaborate on how Robinson has taken on the concreteness of love through prosaic gestures and her specific definition of them: those prosaic gestures show one’s goodness toward others, comfort other people sometimes even beyond the communication of language, and shorten the distance between people. I think the concrete messages of grace and love through a warm embrace may sustain one’s strength to continue in life or to pursue one’s dream. I want to emphasize that the prosaic gesture is really Robinson’s strategy of writing her domestic novels, including Housekeeping. The grandmother did not ask much about the life Ruth lived with her mother, but in other ways, she did express her love and warmth by daily care for Ruth and Lucille.
The secondary source about Gilead, Siefker Bailey’s criticism (2010) studies transient joy and religious sensation as depicted in this work. That is to say, “Robinson’s novel asks readers to seek that kind of transcendent joy, to look through a lens of love and acceptance and communion to strive to see the good, the beauty, and the love, with whatever it takes to
see that, be it forgiveness, camaraderie, solidarity, anything that allows a harmonious community to transcend enmity between people, the iniquities that cause community to transcend enmity between people,” (2010: 276). We can immediately associate Robinson’s religious utopia with Siefker Bailey’s criticism.
As Robinson is a biblical scholar, I refer to her ideas in Absence of Mind (2010), where she mentions that self-discipline and solitude are important for exercising spiritual meditations. I think Robinson’s women characters often meditate when they confront difficulty in the family life. Ruth and Sylvie in Housekeeping, Lila in Gilead, and Glory in Home all meditate in order to change themselves. Robinson’s religion in Absence of Mind
leaves at least two traces: First, the importance of self-discipline or self-criticism when she examines science as comparative figure with religion; second, the “feeling, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude” (7).
In the first place, Robinson considers that one should let one’s self live an independent life based on serious spiritual self-learning. To start with, I think in a religious family group, if each member does not control his or her desire, everybody will inevitably claim right excessively. The community, therefore, cannot be sure whether everyone in the big religious family still has his or her original freedom. It is a serious disciplined lifestyle that one has infinite freedom but within the religious restrictions. Next, we can glance at some reasons why we have to criticize ourselves. In order to reflect on one’s acts, one has to practice spiritual meditations. In this way, one is able to confess his or her sin, and then has the possibility to receive salvation in next life. An example of this is Robinson’s character Lila in Gilead and Home. Lila suggests to prodigal Jack that he should actively try changing himself
in this life rather than passively waiting for salvation in next life.
In the second place, Robinson says that each one becomes silent and afterward calms down to meditate, feeling peacefully, acting wisely and gaining experience of the broader
worldview (Absence of Mind 7). I want to develop this statement above. One should not just keep complaining when she confronts difficulty in life. Thus, one will not be controlled by her negative emotions. It would be more likely for someone to get through hardship wisely, as she can stop furiously cursing her miserable fate. An individual should not lose her head in harsh circumstances so she will not do regrettable things. Instead, one can reflect thoroughly on her present state, thus standing outside the worry over the problem, conducting another direction of thought to deal with the issue, then accumulating relevant experiences, finally coping with the dilemma successfully. In conclusion, Robinson has chosen two perspectives that I feel to be reasonably central in a sense that religion helps people live liberally by moderate self-control, and religion makes it possible that people live through their difficult positions by religious spiritual silent meditations in their solitude. I think that though Robinson mainly discusses the tension between religion and science in this book, she does not fundamentally reject the convenience of science.
Conclusion
Marilynne Robinson cares about how women spiritually transform themselves, in their homes and in public environments. In Housekeeping, Sylvie and Ruth leave their house for the wild outside world. Robinson ends up by writing about their new life away from the town of Fingerbone with an open-ended description. We are not sure if Sylvie and Ruth are ghosts or still alive when the narrator Ruth mentions that she saw Lucille’s daily activities. In Gilead, Lila takes care of her child with Ames when Ames gradually moves toward death, the next spiritual form of existence. In Home, Glory attempts to live independently between domestic space and public space. This thesis contributes a new perspective to Taiwan scholarship on American women’s writers and Robinson’s works, in particular in reference to discussions of the home, women’s roles and religious meditations in terms of inside space and outside space.
Robinson structures her first novel with this concern of the literary tradition in mind that women are almost excluded in Moby Dick. She then designs men’s exclusion in Housekeeping. “While I first started writing Housekeeping, […] I did think of creating a
world that had the feeling of femaleness,” (Robinson, An Interview Conducted by Thomas Schaub, 1994: 233). I conclude that Robinson wants to create a world that seems to exclude
men because she finds that women are seldom mentioned in Moby Dick, except for the fact that the inn-keeper is a woman, who is treated “gently and respectfully” (1994: 234).
Robinson says, “I thought if I could write a book in which there were no male characters that men could read—comfortably—then I get Moby Dick” (1994: 234). I also find out that from Robinson’s perspective if men experience adventure and learn lessons on the sea, women similarly can go drifting and gain spiritual rebirth in the wild. This indicates why Robinson starts building Ruth’s home of thorough femaleness after her grandfather’s death in the beginning of Housekeeping. Ruth never met her grandfather but she describes his anecdotes vividly by his traces left in the house. Her grandfather constructs the house for her
grandmother in an isolated place where the family will probably stay for life. Her grandfather likely discovers the fact that his house actually is located in at an isolated place that is almost without travelers so he collects all sorts of travel magazines. He makes paintings of mountains with snow-covered peaks. Ruth’s Grandmother Mrs. Sylvia Foster does not inherit her grandfather’s travel dream, but Ruth’s mother Helen and Ruth’s aunts all leave the town of Fingerbone as they grow up. Sylvie, who is responsible for Ruth after Ruth’s grandmother dies, even leads a transient life. Therefore, I want to comment that through Ruth’s narration, the grandfather’s death and his influence on his daughters and granddaughters in the beginning of Housekeeping has the following influence: the grandfather’s travel mags are a substitute for the Moby Dick adventure enjoyed by men.
As Robinson claims her favorite book is Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, I also intend to look into Robinson’s inspiration from books in criticism of Melville in Hester Blum’s
“Melville and the Novel of the Sea” (2011). Blum proposes that in the criticism, the character Dana in Two Years before the Mast (1984) influences Melville because Dana regards “the sea as a palace for labor” (2011: 154) and “a place for contemplation.” Besides, in the early puritan age, American writers also relate the world to philosophy or religion by life and meditation. For example, Edward Taylor similarly interpreted the world by lines, whereas Ann Bradstreet observed the world in order to understand the Bible. Therefore, Blum’s criticism is useful of approaching the elements of traveling and transport in Robinson’s novels. In Housekeeping, Sylvie invites Ruth to the boating trip and then inspired by the water body, Ruth reflects upon the death-birth passage. I think, first, that the water claims Helen’s life, and causes natural disasters such as folds, so it represents destruction and death;
second, that the image of water evokes danger as well as rebirth because it relates the mother womb of fluid and the plot crossing the bridge to gain new life. In Gilead, Lila is actually a traveler from somewhere with a different background compared with her husband Ames in
terms of religion, and her perspective that impresses Ames by her different usage of grammar, and philosophy of salvation. Her misusage of plural form of single person subject makes her language generous in forgiving. In Home, Glory returns home from the high school as an English teacher with perception of women’s independence. She can drive the car that means she owns mobility; can teach as a high school teacher and therefore she has occupational experience and ability; and lastly has her own opinions on domestic decorations.
In Karen Kaivola’s “The Pleasures and Perils of Merging” (1993), Sylvie’s housekeeping does not keep the house separate from the outside, from nature, and has a tendency toward chaos; therefore, the house/home is redefined. If a woman’s place is in the home, one way to make the home less confining is to remove the boundaries that both separate it from nature and define female roles and behaviors (680). Considering this fact, I argue that the domestic boundaries become looser in Robinson’s novel. Similarly, based on Geyh’s criticism (1993), “While subjects constitute themselves through the creation of spaces, these same spaces also elicit the structure subjectivity” (104), we inevitably discern that there is no frame, thus there is all freedom. This is useful for me to further expound Robinson’s observation in Housekeeping, Sylvie’s way of keeping house appearing to result in a state of chaos to the community, showing that women’s own subjectivity in terms of housekeeping, in her home and her own private space, is invaded by the norm, the invisible frames.
Based on Wood’s criticism (2012), I infer that in Home the mental pressure is reflected in physical pressures in the home: “The very furniture is oppressive, immovable. The numerous knickknacks were displayed only ‘as courtesy to their giver, most of whom by now would have gone to their reward” (2012: 166). In my opinion, the decoration in the house reveals how social rules are like unnecessary surface layers of the family’s core.
Robinson in Home writes about women’s religious meditations through Lila’s, and Glory’s cases. First, Lila grows many flowers in both Ames’s and Glory’s family graveyard,
out of kindness, love, and passion for life. By taking care of the family graveyard, Lila seems to become a member of those past lives just as she presently lives as a family member in both Ames’s home and an intimate neighbor near Glory’s home. Second, Glory reads the Bible every day in the morning and at night when she lives alone away from home. Feeling that her old father will be happy to know her effort to read the Bible, Glory studies the Bible so she always remembers who she is and where she comes from.
Women characters in Marilynne Robinson’s novels have radical possibility, against traditions. In Marilynne Robinson’s works, Glory and Lila radically change traditions with their revolutionary opinions. Having received higher education, Glory functions like the woman Calvinist Anne Bradstreet in the mid-20th century. In the Gilead series, Lila carries on
Women characters in Marilynne Robinson’s novels have radical possibility, against traditions. In Marilynne Robinson’s works, Glory and Lila radically change traditions with their revolutionary opinions. Having received higher education, Glory functions like the woman Calvinist Anne Bradstreet in the mid-20th century. In the Gilead series, Lila carries on