{"id":5,"date":"2019-02-04T18:18:43","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T23:18:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/housekeeping\/2019\/02\/04\/chapter-1\/"},"modified":"2019-05-16T12:57:38","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T16:57:38","slug":"chapter-1","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/housekeeping\/chapter\/chapter-1\/","title":{"raw":"Chapter 1: William M. Burke, \"Border Crossings in Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping\"","rendered":"Chapter 1: William M. Burke, &#8220;Border Crossings in Marilynne Robinson&#8217;s Housekeeping&#8221;"},"content":{"raw":"In the first selection, entitled \u201cBorder Crossings in Marilynne Robinson\u2019s <em>Housekeeping<\/em>,\u201d William M. Burke describes the novel as \u201can unconventional primer on the mystical life, in which the basic accomplishment for both the protagonist, Ruth, and the reader is the expansion of consciousness through a series of border crossings \u2013social, geographic, and perceptual.\u201d Burke examines two competing impulses in the Foster family, as portrayed in Ruth\u2019s narrative, one towards rootedness and domesticity, the other towards transience and \u201cthe shifting margins of experience.\u201d\u00a0 Ruth and Lucille\u2019s grandmother Sylvia Foster embodies the first tendency. For the Grandmother, as Burke notes, \u201cthe rooted and the circumscribed life produces the \u2018resurrection of the ordinary\u2019 . . .\u00a0 as life passes through its cycles, and nature brings daily its \u2018familiar strangeness.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 The girls\u2019 grandfather, Edmund Foster, embodies the opposing trait or tendency. It is his wanderlust that first brought the family to the shores of Lake Fingerbone, and as \u201ca trainman he is the prototype for the family tendency toward rootlessness\u201d (717). The conflict between these two tendencies is most evident in the rift that develops between Ruth and Lucille over Sylvie\u2019s role in their lives, with Lucille aligning herself with her grandmother\u2019s conventional, middle class values while Ruth follows both Sylvie and her grandfather\u2019s example by embracing transience. Burke also draws attention to the epistemological dimensions of Robinson\u2019s novel, noting that for Ruth \u201cthe shifting margins of the physical world serve warning that the visible world falsely signifies reality\u201d (720). As Ruth herself remarks, \u201cEverything that falls upon the eye is apparition, a sheet dropped over the world\u2019s true working\u201d (116). As surrogate mother and spiritual guide, Sylvie \u201ceducates Ruth . . .\u00a0 in the hard disciplines of instability, loneliness, uncertainty and change \u2013the necessary conditions for seeing the true workings of the world\u201d (721). In choosing transience over rootedness, a life of wandering over the comforts of home, Ruth aligns herself with the world of memory and desire. By burning down the family home and crossing the same bridge that had claimed the life of their grandfather Edmund Foster, Ruth and Sylvie are crossing from the world of appearances into a quasi-mystical realm where Ruth hopes to be reunited with her mother and her grandfather and all those other souls who now inhabit the depths of Lake Fingerbone.","rendered":"<p>In the first selection, entitled \u201cBorder Crossings in Marilynne Robinson\u2019s <em>Housekeeping<\/em>,\u201d William M. Burke describes the novel as \u201can unconventional primer on the mystical life, in which the basic accomplishment for both the protagonist, Ruth, and the reader is the expansion of consciousness through a series of border crossings \u2013social, geographic, and perceptual.\u201d Burke examines two competing impulses in the Foster family, as portrayed in Ruth\u2019s narrative, one towards rootedness and domesticity, the other towards transience and \u201cthe shifting margins of experience.\u201d\u00a0 Ruth and Lucille\u2019s grandmother Sylvia Foster embodies the first tendency. For the Grandmother, as Burke notes, \u201cthe rooted and the circumscribed life produces the \u2018resurrection of the ordinary\u2019 . . .\u00a0 as life passes through its cycles, and nature brings daily its \u2018familiar strangeness.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 The girls\u2019 grandfather, Edmund Foster, embodies the opposing trait or tendency. It is his wanderlust that first brought the family to the shores of Lake Fingerbone, and as \u201ca trainman he is the prototype for the family tendency toward rootlessness\u201d (717). The conflict between these two tendencies is most evident in the rift that develops between Ruth and Lucille over Sylvie\u2019s role in their lives, with Lucille aligning herself with her grandmother\u2019s conventional, middle class values while Ruth follows both Sylvie and her grandfather\u2019s example by embracing transience. Burke also draws attention to the epistemological dimensions of Robinson\u2019s novel, noting that for Ruth \u201cthe shifting margins of the physical world serve warning that the visible world falsely signifies reality\u201d (720). As Ruth herself remarks, \u201cEverything that falls upon the eye is apparition, a sheet dropped over the world\u2019s true working\u201d (116). As surrogate mother and spiritual guide, Sylvie \u201ceducates Ruth . . .\u00a0 in the hard disciplines of instability, loneliness, uncertainty and change \u2013the necessary conditions for seeing the true workings of the world\u201d (721). In choosing transience over rootedness, a life of wandering over the comforts of home, Ruth aligns herself with the world of memory and desire. By burning down the family home and crossing the same bridge that had claimed the life of their grandfather Edmund Foster, Ruth and Sylvie are crossing from the world of appearances into a quasi-mystical realm where Ruth hopes to be reunited with her mother and her grandfather and all those other souls who now inhabit the depths of Lake Fingerbone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"menu_order":1,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[47],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-5","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-standard"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/housekeeping\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/housekeeping\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/housekeeping\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/housekeeping\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/housekeeping\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/housekeeping\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/5\/revisions\/52"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/housekeeping\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/housekeeping\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/5\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/housekeeping\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/housekeeping\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=5"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/housekeeping\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=5"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/housekeeping\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}