생태학적 상상력의 소생의 미학 —메릴린 로빈슨의『하우스키핑』

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to contend the importance of resurrection of fluid identity and ecological imagination for making the habitable biosphere in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. Ruth as a narrator suggests the future-oriented vision that the environment and nature(mother) can be resurrected,crossing Fingerbone bridge of the boundary line of society/nature as a faithful follower of her aunt Sylvie and becoming the existence with a transparent voice despite of her absence. This novel is to rewrite the American pastoral. Based on the patriarchical way despite of the absence of Edmund Foster, Sylvia’s conventional housekeeping is to divide between inside and outside of the house. Nevertheless,Sylvia’s relentless efforts to keep her house intact turns out to be fragile. Contrasting with Sylvia, Sylvie’s housekeeping is to recognize the continuity of inside and outside. She willingly accepts the reconciliation of the self, the nature and the society. After Ruth and Lucille’s staying at night in the lake,they are diverged into going their own way. Ruth accepts Sylvie as a substitute mother. Lucille leaves the house voluntarily and go to her Home Economics teacher, Miss Royce, pursuing the ideal mother of symbolic society. Sylvie and Ruth has the more intimate bond, with their trip to the deserted house in the valley. Ruth meditates on the non-solidity of house and the resurrection of her family. Leaving their house to escape from the town people’s legal enforcement,Sylvie and Ruth become transients. Although their history is completed by the drown-death publicly, they always want to visit Lucille’s well kept house in Fingerbone. Therefore the method for making Ruth and Sylvie as the existences of ecological imagination return to the real world is to accept the reconciliation of nature and society. This novel is not limited as the binary opposition of vagrance/stability and transience/durability. The significant element of fluid identity can be composed of the interactions with transience and stability.