First off, they're both very female-centric novels that take place in America some time ago and, as such, are largely centered around daily household life. In the beginning of Housekeeping, Sylvia lives with her kids in this timeless, idyllic, unambitious way that is very like Sethe's early days in the North (though Sethe is much more involved with the community at this point). Then the kids run away (for some unknown reason in Housekeeping and after the central tragedy in Beloved) leaving their mothers in secluded households (though Sethe has Denver).
The Houses themselves are very significant to both books. They serve as the central setting and almost have personalities. In Beloved, since the house is haunted, the personality is something like the very bitter baby ghost that inhabits it. In Housekeeping it represents the family history and permanence and the attitudes towards its keeping of the people who inhabit it.
Both stories play with the concept of time in weird, ambiguous ways. Throughout Beloved I could tell that Morrison was making some point about the nature of time and memories, but the mysterious ambiguity with which she presented this point made it very difficult to pin down and describe (in a cool way). So far this has been true for Housekeeping as well. The separation of Fingerbone from the larger historical time and events and the in-depth look into the memories of other people that Ruth couldn't have possibly known as well as she seems to and the lake eating things up and sealing over forever and Ruth's fantasies about those things coming back out of the lake and the permanence of the house and the transience of the people in it all point to some time-related theme that I can't quite wrap my head around.
Both books kind of open with the death of the grandmother character (Baby Suggs/Sylvia), but you get to know them through memories.
Both are eerie, quiet character studies
In the end of Beloved it is mentioned that the residents of the town chose to forget the story and it gets lost as if it never really happened, which is sorta reminiscent of Ruth's attitudes towards not remembering things accurately (like the people who died on the train) and the fallibility of our perception. Although, once Ruth and Sylvie are gone, I don't know if Fingerbone is the type of town to brush their story under the rug or hold onto it and maybe distort it like they did with the train accident, and like Lucille did with her mother's death.
The Houses themselves are very significant to both books. They serve as the central setting and almost have personalities. In Beloved, since the house is haunted, the personality is something like the very bitter baby ghost that inhabits it. In Housekeeping it represents the family history and permanence and the attitudes towards its keeping of the people who inhabit it.
Both stories play with the concept of time in weird, ambiguous ways. Throughout Beloved I could tell that Morrison was making some point about the nature of time and memories, but the mysterious ambiguity with which she presented this point made it very difficult to pin down and describe (in a cool way). So far this has been true for Housekeeping as well. The separation of Fingerbone from the larger historical time and events and the in-depth look into the memories of other people that Ruth couldn't have possibly known as well as she seems to and the lake eating things up and sealing over forever and Ruth's fantasies about those things coming back out of the lake and the permanence of the house and the transience of the people in it all point to some time-related theme that I can't quite wrap my head around.
Both books kind of open with the death of the grandmother character (Baby Suggs/Sylvia), but you get to know them through memories.
Both are eerie, quiet character studies
In the end of Beloved it is mentioned that the residents of the town chose to forget the story and it gets lost as if it never really happened, which is sorta reminiscent of Ruth's attitudes towards not remembering things accurately (like the people who died on the train) and the fallibility of our perception. Although, once Ruth and Sylvie are gone, I don't know if Fingerbone is the type of town to brush their story under the rug or hold onto it and maybe distort it like they did with the train accident, and like Lucille did with her mother's death.
Yes! The transient nature/impossibility of time is so evident in both novels! However, Beloved was a lot more painful for me to read than Housekeeping, and there were some constant super natural undertones in Beloved that I never felt in Housekeeping, but I agree, the books are surprisingly similar, hadn't thought of that.
ReplyDeleteWow--very interesting comparison. _Beloved_ is more dizzyingly supernatural, but there is a dreamlike and nearly supernatural quality to aspects of _Housekeeping_ as well. The lake in particular takes on a range of haunted and haunting meanings over the course of the book, "alive" in a way the haunted 124 is in _Beloved_. The traumas at the heart of Morrison's novel are more intense, of course, and represent more violent. But I especially think of the ending, when Denver (the heretofore quiet and reserved young girl who doesn't speak to anyone) "comes of age" and emerges into the world, as a kind of reverse of Ruth's crossing over to "the other side" instead of entering that world.
ReplyDeleteInteresting stuff.