In Housekeeping, there is a turning point after which Lucille and Ruth become estranged. Lucille doesn't accept Sylvie any more, and eventually goes off to live with the home economics teacher, while Ruth begins to embrace Sylvie's transient lifestyle, until she ultimately runs away at night with Sylvie. While Ruth and Lucille are initially somewhat equally accommodating yet nevertheless uneasy with Sylvie's behavior, Ruth begins to grow closer just as Lucille grows farther. Thinking back to physics class, it is almost like Lucille and Ruth were two objects next to one another--when Lucille started to conform more, Ruth was pushed in the opposite direction by an equal and opposite force--or did Ruth's increasing accommodation to Lucille really trigger this division of the sisters? A division of Ruth and Lucille is by no means inevitable--one must only think back to Lily and Nonah for an example of close, old sisters in the family.
Importantly, Lucille and Ruth's separation seems to be less about Sylvie than about a growing difference between their basic approaches to their environment. Although Sylvie's arrival hastens this change by exposing Lucille and Ruth to a new lifestyle, Sylvie is only a catalyst in this process. This can be seen in Chapter 7 of Housekeeping, pages 113-117.
Ruth and Lucille stop by the side of the lake to hang out in the woods on a Saturday. "It was a place of distinctly domestic disorder, warm and still and replete" (Robinson 113). Even though they are in the woods, a sense of domesticity is nonetheless present. They see not a house they are living in, but a space they have constructed for themselves that they feel in control over. "Lucille and I sat down and tossed pebbles at dragonflies for a while. Then we fished...tossing the guts up onto the beach for raccoons. Then we made a shallow fire...rituals of predation engrossed us until late afternoon" (Robinson 113-14).
At the point described, Lucille and Ruth have a balanced posture in the woods--they aren't afraid of its wildness and dirtiness, but they take significant steps to make it "theirs." As night comes, they realize they cannot get home; "the woods at night terrified us" (Robinson 114).
Together, Ruth and Lucille built "a low and slovenly structure, to all appearances random and accidental...We had to sit with our chins on our knees to avoid bringing a wall down" (Robinson 114).
Later at night, Ruth woke up, and woke up Lucille. Lucille stood up through the roof. Lucille "sat down beside me in our ruined stronghold, never still, never accepting that all our human boundaries were overrun" (Robinson 115).
"Lucille would tell this story differently. She would say I fell asleep, but I did not. I simply let the darkness in the sky become coextensive with the darkness in my skull and bowels and bones... ...While it wass dark, despite Lucille's pacing and whistling...there need not be relic, remnant, margin, residue, memento, bequest, memory, thought, track, or trace, if only the darkness could be perfect and permanent" (Robinson 116).
On this duo trip without Sylvie, Lucille finds herself unable to cope with the darkness and company of woodland creatures. The house is broken, and she is resigned to whistling and frantic attempts to ward off the wilderness. Tranquility is gone for her, just as it is truly appearing for Ruth. Ruth finds that, in the darkness, having so little domestic possession or pleasure at the moment, she can simply embrace the lack of normal comfort. Once they return to the house, Lucille's disgust and recent trauma with un-domesticity will make her greatly resist Sylvie's housekeeping, while Ruth suddenly can appreciate Sylvie more. Although Sylvie definitely helped to speed up and incite Ruth and Lucille's estrangement, this episode of Housekeeping allows Marilynne Robinson to show that rather than being about Sylvie, the story is fundamentally about Lucille and Ruth.
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