Housekeeping (1980) is a novel by Marilynne Robinson that follows the upbringing of two sisters, Ruthie and Lucille Stone, in Fingerbone, Idaho, in the 1950s. This is the first novel by Marilynne Robinson. It was awarded the PEN/Hemingway Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, an award the author later won for her novel Gilead (2004). Beyond Housekeeping, Robinson is most known for Gilead (2004) and Home (2008). Housekeeping, which has been named to numerous best-100 lists both of all time and for the 20th-century, follows themes of transience, family bonds, and the meaning of housekeeping. It was made into a film, which also has the same name, in 1987. Robinson is one of the most respected American novelists of the contemporary era.

This guide uses the 40th anniversary Kindle edition of this novel published in 2020 by Picador.

Content Warning: This novel contains depictions of death by suicide, mental health conditions, and child abandonment. Characters in the novel engage in stereotypical depictions of nomadic or transient people and unhoused individuals.

Plot Summary

Housekeeping is primarily set in the 1950s in Fingerbone, Idaho, and centers around the protagonist, Ruthie Stone, her younger sister, Lucille Stone, and their aunt, Sylvie Fischer. The narrative is told by Ruthie and recounts the story of several generations of her family.

The family lives in Fingerbone for three generations after the girls’ grandfather, Edmund Foster, leaves the Middle West to head to the mountains. Edmund marries Sylvia, and the two spend their lives in the town, Edmund working on the train and Sylvia keeping home.

One day there is a train accident in which Edmund and everybody else on the train dies when it crashes into the lake and is never recovered. Sylvia spends her life raising her daughters, Molly, Helen, and Sylvie. The four live a seemingly contented life until, in quick succession, all three sisters leave home to pursue lives elsewhere, rarely if ever returning home to visit their mother. A few years later, Helen returns to town, now the mother of Ruthie and Lucille. She leaves her daughters alone at her mother’s house and purposefully drives her car off a cliff and into the lake.

Ruthie and Lucille spend the rest of their childhoods moving among guardians. Sylvia takes them in and provides well for them until her death. She entrusts the girls to her sisters-in-law, Lily and Nona, after her passing. The two sisters-in-law, referred to at times as the aunts, come to live in Sylvia’s house and raise the two girls for a brief time. They are elderly women, however, and are set in their ways. They are scared of the house in Fingerbone and feel they cannot properly care for the girls because, in their mind, they are frail, being older women. Sylvia never specifically mentions any of her daughters in her will, and the aunts decide that forgiveness is a good thing and write to Sylvia’s youngest daughter, Sylvie, to tell her about her mother’s death and her nieces, hoping she will come inhabit the home and care for the children.

Sylvie is a wanderer, but she comes to Fingerbone and decides to stay in town and raise her nieces. Ruthie and Lucille are insecure for quite some time, worrying their aunt will leave. They recognize Sylvie’s transient spirit, and they notice signs that she is not committed to one place, such as the fact that she keeps her coat on while indoors. Sylvie loves her nieces but is not naturally inclined toward housework or the physical care of children. Ruthie and Lucille start to skip school and are always set apart from the rest of the town. They spend all of their time together.

As the two grow older, however, Ruthie and Lucille begin to differentiate themselves from each other. Ruthie takes more after her aunt and develops a transient spirit like Sylvie. She identifies strongly with the woman and is unbothered by either their extremely unkempt house or their aunt’s unconventionality. Lucille, however, wants a different life. She wants to be more like the other people around her, and she is disgusted by the garbage, wildlife, and dust in their home. She tries to convince Ruthie that another way of life is better, but Ruthie remains committed to her aunt.

One day after a dance, Lucille goes to the home of her home-economics teacher, Miss Royce, and from then on lives with the woman, who can provide her with a more conventional home environment and way of life. The authorities eventually become concerned with Sylvie’s caretaking of Ruthie. Sylvie quickly changes her ways. She brings fake flowers into the home and spends much time cleaning it up and ridding it of the newspapers she accumulated over the years. Sylvie tells Ruthie she must go back to school, and she fixes up her dress for her. A court date is set to determine Sylvie’s suitability as a guardian.

Knowing Ruthie will be removed from the home if they go to trial, Sylvie and Ruthie decide to leave Fingerbone. The two attempt to burn down the house and make it appear they died in the fire. The house is too damp, however, to properly ignite enough to burn down completely. The two flee, and they leave town across a long railway bridge in the dark of night. The two go on to live the life of transients, moving from town to town and never staying in one place very long. Occasionally the trains they ride on pass by Fingerbone, but from the train they cannot see the house to see if it is still standing. Ruthie notes she would like to go back sometime to see Fingerbone, but she rarely looks presentable enough to do so.