Housekeeping and narrative voice and folklore

Compared to Bell Jar and Catcher, Housekeeping has come as a breath of fresh air so far. Don't get me wrong, I've been a big fan of all the books we've read in this course, but the narrative styles and tones have been somewhat homogeneous: a heavy focus on the deep emotive reactions of the narrators, generally told from afterward, though with a stream-of-consciousness style to it -- we see Holden and Esther (and Stephen!) describe the moments they see people, walk through cities, and confront their demons with painstaking detail and a tone that feels like beautifully articulated spontaneity more often than not.

As a result, Housekeeping is just... so refreshing. Of course, we've only read the first chapter so far, and this might not hold throughout the novel, as Ruth departs from the sweeping account of her family history, but it's still great anyway. Ruth's tone -- the removed narrator, factual and specific in her details (though she plays around with the mystery of unseen and unremembered events) is such a large shift from our previous books. Callie mentioned this in class yesterday, and we talked about how, if we hadn't read Catcher and Bell Jar right before this we might have interpreted it differently, but Ruth's tone, in comparison to Holden's and Esther's, almost seems to work with levity. There's removal in her tone, yes, but there's a hint of sarcasm and a playful use of language that is so, so different and compelling.

I also mentioned the narrative style, and how it reminds me of Song of Solomon and Toni Morrison's introduction to the novel in a lot of ways. Take this excerpt (the opening lines of the novel):

"The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o'clock. Two days before the event was to take place he tacked a note on the door of his little yellow house:
         At 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday the 18th of February, 1931, I will take off from Mercy and
         fly away on my own wings. Please forgive me. I love you all.
                                                             (signed) Robert Smith,
                                                                              Ins. agent"

It takes a minute to hit the reader, but as the rest of the first chapter unfurls we learn very clearly we're talking about Robert Smith's suicide. This style of factual, mystical, vague description of something seemingly brutal, mirrors the style Robinson uses in the first chapter of Housekeeping in many ways. Robinson drops the moments of Edmond and Helen's deaths (also relating to lakes like Robert's!) at the ends of paragraphs, afterthoughts almost, and treats them with a light tone and straightforward language, resisting the overly-complicated, intensely emotional style that Holden, Esther, and Stephen all go for in their description of most of the stuff they do.

Because of this descriptive and narrative style, Housekeeping and Song of Solomon both come across as reminiscent of folklore and fables, in the way that they describe nature, death, and brutality with levity. The dark underpinnings of stories like La Llorona, The Lady in the Veil, and classic nursery rhymes like Ring Around the Rosie (which, as children, I think we were all told was secretly some reference to the plague and Black Death and funerals, or something awful and grotesque along those lines), haunt the stories themselves. There's children's tales like these all over the world, but I find their strange histories and the lore that surrounds them -- explaining natural phenomena, the stories themselves, or some otherworldly or occult things -- is really intriguing, because however brutal these backgrounds are, we still tell all the stories with lightheartedness to our children. It's difficult to articulate, but you know what I mean? Like, kids love the stories of Brothers Grimm, but we all find out later in our lives how bizarre and cruel most of them are... think of Sleeping Beauty, or Cinderella, and all the crazy shit that goes down in the original versions of those stories.

In some way, I think Housekeeping evokes those styles. Though Ruth narrates with humor and a tone of objective truth, there's something dark and mysterious that looms above the reader as we realize she's talking about the deaths of her grandfather and mother, consumed by this giant lake and the terrifying ways of nature to just, simply, continue without us (like all those stories that explain natural forces -- "yes, he was eaten up by the ground, and his soul weeps now, and that's how earthquakes work, children!")

Anyway, this is a messy post but those are my thoughts! Toni Morrison and Brothers Grimm, y'know?