Ruth is great. By far the best protagonist we've followed so far, in my opinion.
This is a somewhat difficult position to hold given the remarkable lack of effort she has put into developing her own character. Sylvie and Lucille have both been thoroughly described, but Ruth's own appearance and character are of more mystery than than the frightful amalgam of physical and mental color that is Bernice; a character who inhabits like four pages. We almost never hear about Ruth's emotions or even opinions (beyond ways in which she chooses to describe things), especially not her individual thoughts (she does talk about the motivations of her and her sister as a pair fairly frequently, but not in particularly personal ways).
But this is part of what I enjoy about Ruth. Her apparent lack of self interest makes her seem chill and not self-absorbed (as I could imagine would be tempting when writing about ones own childhood), to a similarly charming effect as Sylvie's apathy towards social convention.
In fact, she shares a lot of Sylvie's more charming aspects. They've both got a sort of go-with-the-flow attitude; Ruth rarely ever decides to do anything, and Sylvie seems not to have made a long term plan in her life (and very few short term plans). Unlike Lucille, the (in my opinion much less pleasant) foil to the Sylvie-Ruth mindset, Ruth doesn't mind Sylvie and even aspires to her way of life to some extent. Pages 105 and 106 present the reader with a rare moment of self reflection (Ruth is surprisingly self-aware given how little she seems to exist in her own head as opposed to drifting through the world around her) which is much more like what I would expect from a typical coming of age novel, during which Ruth details her fears about her "incomplete existence" and what not. During this little spiel she admits to suspecting that she and Sylvie are of a kind, and though she says she fears this possibility, it seems like she kind of wants to be claimed by Sylvie, and is somewhat taken a back when she is not.
I think the primary difference between the two characters, is that, while Sylvie's whimsical, childlike manner could make her come off as a little slow or oblivious (actually this is kind of ambiguous, but there are no real clues that Sylvie is especially aware of her eccentricity), Ruth's narration reveals a subtle but very sharp wit and surprising social acuity given her actions as a character. It's very possible that the wit we're reading is developed later in life, but regardless of which Ruth has it (old or young), it's certainly impressive and stands in stark contrast with Sylvie's assumed train of thought.
Ruth's subtle, but often really biting criticism of other characters illustrates a very well developed understanding of her world. It's almost Holden-esque, the way she undercuts their dignity with the subtleties of her descriptions, but I think she tends to do it in a much more clever way. Ruth's description of Bernice almost tells the reader more about Ruth than any passage that is actually about her (in fact, this is the line that convinced me of my love for Ruth). To say that Bernice "managed to look like a young woman with a ravaging disease" is a super concise and well worded commentary on the futility of trying to preserve one's vanity into old age. It's a smart thing to say, or at least I think so, and its hilarious to imagine this thought beginning to develop in the mind of Little-Ruth as Bernice gossips to their mother in the doorway.
Another delightfully mean description: "Fingerbone was never an impressive town. It was chastened by an outside landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history has occurred elsewhere."(62)
The one legitimate criticism of Ruth that I can think of is that she's not very prodiuctive. However, I think that this book is very skeptical of traditional views on productivity. If Ruth can live her life happily with no ambition what so ever, I think that's totally fine.
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