Poor Ruth. Poor Lucille.

Even after only reading the first three chapters of Housekeeping, I can’t help but feel great sympathy for Ruth and Lucille. First, they are born under their mother, Helen, and father, Reginald Stone, but, neither of them remember very much about Reginald Stone.  They can only recount the pictures they saw of their mother’s wedding, where he seemed to be unaware that he was even being photographed.  Since the book is narrated by Ruth, we are really only given her perspective.  When describing life at home with Helen, Ruth only tells us what the house looked like and what furniture it had.  She mentions Helen once when she tells us that she “put lengths of clotheslines through our belts and fastened them to the doorknob, an arrangement that nerved us to look over the side of the porch, even when the wind was strong” (21).  Having little to no idea what their mother is actually like (let alone what she truly looks like), Ruth associates her mother with mystery and uncertainty.  

But after Helen drops her kids off on their grandmother’s porch that was “populated  by a cat and a matronly washing machine” (22), and drives off a cliff, it was time for Silvia, their grandmother, to take care of the girls.  Sylvia liked routine and order, and so she lived by this until the day she died.  Their grandmother reverted back to her ways that she practiced with Helen and her sisters were still young girls in this house in Fingerbone.  Sylvia was nervous about the girls leaving too, but she was too deep into her routine to change.  But once Sylvia died, her sisters-in-law, Lily and Nona, took over caring for Ruth and Lucille. According to Ruth’s ridiculous description: “Lily and Nona both had light blue hair and black coats with shiny black beads in intricate patterns on the lapels.  Their thick bodies pitched forward from the hips, and their arms and ankles were plump.. They were, though maiden ladies, of a buxomly maternal appearance that contrasted oddly with their brusque, unpracticed pats and kisses” (29). Even from this initial description, not even hearing them speak, we can already see that both women have not made a good impression on Ruth.  When we do see how both speak, and how they interact with Ruth and Lucille, we can see that they are intent on getting out of Fingerbone and going back to their place at The Hartwick.

But soon, Lily and Nona decide to try and contact Sylvie, one of Helen’s sisters, to come and visit them in Fingerbone.  After a little time, Sylvie does show up, and about twenty four hours later, Lily and Nona head back to The Hartwick, leaving Ruth and Lucille in Sylvie’s care.  Although we have only read a few pages on how Sylvie is with the girls, we can already see that she will (hopefully) be a great influence on them.  I just hope that she stays, since everyone else in Ruth’s and Lucille’s life has left them.  It’s quite sad to think about this, but Ruth and Lucille are like a baton being passed from caretaker to caretaker. This is why I hope Sylvie is there to stay to help the girls come of age and find their own paths.

Bringing the Base (Characters) Back Around

Before I begin, let me be clear that I know I already wrote a blog post about the similarities between characters in The Catcher in the Rye and The Bell Jar, but trust me, this one is different.  Yes, I am about to show another similarity between the books, but just hear me out.  Although I did appreciate the endings of both The Bell Jar and The Catcher in the Rye, in my opinion, there is something off putting about both of them.  Recurring characters, or I suppose lack-there-of I should say.  Both in Catcher and Bell Jar, there is an important character that I wish both authors had considered bringing back in the end.  These are: Catcher’s Jane and Bell Jar’s Jay Cee.

       

In Catcher, Jane is one of the main reasons Holden goes haywire on Stradlater.  We get glimpses of flashbacks where Holden is spending a lot of time with Jane, and how he explains that their relationship was one of the best moments of his life.  Every time Holden would talk about Jane, my longing for her to reappear in the end grew stronger and stronger.  This growing feeling caused me to be disappointed when I read the last page, and there was still no Jane.  We don’t even get to see Jane in the present once.  I think it would have been interesting to see how she would react to the Holden that ran away from his school and wandered the streets of New York.  But alas, Salinger decided to keep Jane out of the end.

       

Now we have The Bell Jar.  I really did enjoy the ending of Bell Jar.  As readers, we were able to see Esther at her lows, and then at her new high at the end.  She has a new positive outlook on the world around her.  But, as you have all probably guessed, I am left with a little disappointment.  In the beginning, Esther is working as an editor at a literature magazine company in New York.  She works aimlessly until her boss, Jay Cee, approaches her and asks “What do you have in mind after you graduate?” This question stumps Esther, for she realizes that she doesn’t actually know what she wants to do with her life.  If it weren’t for Jay Cee, Esther would have still been living a fake life until she had a mental breakdown sometime or another.  In a sense, Jay Cee sped up the process, which in turn helped Esther to have her treatment completed, while still having a life ahead of her.  Because of this impact, I wish Jay Cee had seen Esther after her treatment, or at least had visited her in her asylum.  It would have been interested to see how the two would converse after so much has changed.  But alas, that didn’t happen to Plath, (assuming the whole story is based off a true story), so it didn’t happen to Esther either.

       

In the end, I’ve realized that I am a difficult reader to please.  Although both endings work well rounding up each story, I think bringing those impactful characters back in the end would have made them even better.  But I’m curious to see what you guys think: Would bringing Jane or Jay Cee back have made a better ending to either book? Or was leaving them out in the end a better move?