Housekeeping

Sylvie’s coat is symbolic of her transient nature in the novel, and it is one of the first things the girls note when they wake up the morning after Sylvie arrives. Sylvie is wearing a coat indoors, and this makes the girls worry that the coat means that she is going to leave. The girls’ fear shows how much they want their aunt to stay. Leaving is not Sylvie’s intent, however. Because the coat is not representative of her leaving, it represents her character. While she plans to stay, she remains who she is, and who she is is a wanderer. Coats are made for people going out of doors. Since she wears one inside, she shows that while she remains tied to the home, her nature remains unchanged. As such, she will have to try to live a domestic life with a wanderer’s spirit. In such a way, clothing choices are shown to be symbolic of a person’s nature. This also demonstrates the theme of American Transience and Rootedness for Women. At this point in the novel, the girls get their first full view of Sylvie, who has far different ideas about what is acceptable than their grandmother.

The aunts in the novel are the very epitome of stability, and yet they do not stay. Sylvia chose them to care for the girls because they are responsible and stable, but this does not prove to be satisfactory enough to allow them to care for the girls. In fact, it is their very stability that makes them insufficient. They do not want to stay in Fingerbone because it lacks the comfort they had back home. They believe they are too old and too immobile, too inflexible, to be able to care for the girls properly. This is, indeed, shown to be the case when they spend their days worrying about the girls and the house falling on them. To the aunts, Fingerbone represents unfamiliarity and ill ease. For Sylvie, it represents all that is familiar, but it is uncomfortable for her too. Where the aunts find discomfort, she finds a stable environment that is not large enough to hold her. In this way, Robinson demonstrates how the relationship between transience and stability mean different things for different people.

When Sylvie decides to stay in Fingerbone, she demonstrates her ability and desire to put family before her own personal preferences. Sylvie is a wanderer, and caring for her two nieces requires her to stay in one place for many years. She visits the train station, she says to warm up, before she tells the girls she plans to stay and care for them. Her trip to the station suggests a goodbye to her transient lifestyle as she visits the trains she loves one last time. While she attempts to take care of her nieces to the best of her ability, the lifestyle never appears to be beneficial to her, and as such, her decision to stay is likely based on her desire to care for her family. While she treasures freedom of place, she is willing to be tied to other people. As such, transience can be said to occur both in relation to place as well as in relation to others. She, the supposedly transient sister, is the one to spend the most years tied to both family and the childhood home. This also speaks to Family Bonds and Responsibility for Women in 20^th-Century America, as Sylvie proves to be the most active caregiver for the girls besides her mother. Sylvie is committed to family bonds in her own way, without the strict adherence to the role of caregiver that is expected of her.

The flood that occurs In Fingerbone can be read in light of Noah and the Biblical flood. Floods are a frequent occurrence in Fingerbone, showing a lack of stability in the town as a whole. They do not usually affect the family’s home, however, because it is built on a hill. The year Sylvie comes is different, however, and the flood waters rise into the home and leave behind a permanent smell and reminder of them. In the Bible, Noah’s flood symbolizes a rebirth. God leaves behind a promise to never flood the earth again, and as such, it is a new beginning. Lucille and Ruthie are afraid that Sylvie will leave, and they have every reason to believe this. Their mother, father, and grandmother all died, and their great-aunts left. They even lost Bernice. Every bit of stability they have has been taken away, and as such, they are left feeling insecure at the thought of losing Sylvie as well. While the flood marks a new beginning in the Bible, the question arises as to whether this is a new beginning for the family and if Sylvie will change the family’s trajectory by staying. At this point that remains uncertain, but the Biblical reference provides foreshadowing as to whether the fate of the girls will change.

The girls’ fear over losing Sylvie is demonstrated in their behavior when Sylvie does not come upstairs. Despite being afraid to go down, Ruthie goes downstairs to find her aunt. She finds Sylvie physically present, but mentally she is gone and does not respond to what her niece says. This is so disturbing to Ruthie that the girl punches her aunt in the stomach to get her attention. This scene demonstrates two key points. The first is that Sylvie’s transient lifestyle cannot be contained within the walls of the home. She is determined to stay with her nieces and raise them, but when she cannot get away physically, she mentally leaves at times. The sacrifice of lifestyle this exhibits shows the level of commitment she has to her nieces, and it also shows the pain she experiences being trapped in one place. At the same time, it shows the absolute fear that both Lucille and Ruthie have at being abandoned again. The fear is so complete that when Sylvie says she will go back downstairs for more light, Lucille will not let her and goes herself instead. The pull between Sylvie’s apparent desire to escape at times and the girls’ need for stability is demonstrated through some of the tension that is exhibited between them and the psychological discomfort they all experience at times.

Sylvie’s attempts to make a home for her nieces and her failure to provide a stable home is demonstrated through her housekeeping. While she uses bleach and cleans items, the home still becomes a refuge for wildlife, and she does not sweep the leaves out of the house. This demonstrates a lack of stability in her and an inability to keep a home up to the standards of most people, but it also demonstrates her attempts to do so. She believes most strongly, however, in the need to air out the house and cabinets, and this shows that to her, keeping a home properly involves bringing in the new to clear out the old and bringing the outdoors indoors. She aims to avoid staleness. She attempts to embrace the world and her fate by allowing it to flow through the home, instead of building the home on top of the earth and shutting the earth out from it. She provides some semblance of stability with her presence, but she fails to provide an environment for them that most people would consider proper.. These details also demonstrate that Sylvie tries to be what the children need, but she has trouble doing so at times. Still, she is the only one who stays in the children’s lives and does not leave, and as such, she represents Family Bonds and Responsibility for Women in 20th-Century America.