I've been neglecting my blog recently, it slipped my mind like a weasel sliding off a rock into a pond.
There's a lot to talk about in Housekeeping. It's a book that at first I didn't think would be relatable at all for me, as a teenage male who slacks on chores and stuff. Strangely enough the book is making me think a lot about the nature of ambition and the end goal of the track that I'm on. The novel really focuses on the transition between the comfortability of domesticity and past generational values conflicting with the new ideas of what satisfaction should be. The end goal of the housekeeping lifestyle is totally free of ambition, and in my opinion that's not true happiness.
I think the easiest way to be satisfied is to always have something to aspire to so that you can gain satisfaction from completing goals. Time is the enemy of the domestic lifestyle and it constantly moves forward. I believe that along with time people should be moving with time. As I approach the end of my high school life I realize that as one track is ending I just still continue on a new, similar track without ever actually knowing exactly what my end goal is. Success, I guess.
When Sylvie's character was introduced I was instantly drawn to her because she found a way to really leave the track and still be happy with herself. In the way that Holden is likable, I think people are naturally drawn to people with different lifestyles to see how other paths and decisions can impact someone's character.
I've really enjoyed the discussions we have had about the novel so far and look forward to discussions sto come.
Wait, do you mean Housingkeeping lifestyle as in Ruth and Sylvie's lifestyle or the domestic lifestyle? Regardless, I don't think that either are without ambition. If you're talking about actually house keeping, your ambition may be to keep this dust free, and it may be a big ambition since that's all your life revolves around. If you're talking about Housekeeping, the ambition is to live without being held down by tradition and social norms. Although it is more of a passive ambition. Anyways, I think that ambition is very much present in the novel, but it's not one of the main themes though.
ReplyDeleteI definitely get what you mean about the different lifestyles. This book makes me wonder about the different roads people take in life; going to college vs not going, living in a house vs wandering, doing what you want vs following societies expectations. Sylvie does what she wants and seems to do what can to be happy with herself, and throughout the book I've been trying to figure out if this is a good thing or a bad one.
ReplyDeleteWhen Sylvie's character was introduced I was more intrigued than instantly drawn to her. She seemed like the breath of fresh air that both Ruth and Lucille needed. However, I think her transient lifestyle soon put me off. There is a fine line between "not caring" and leading a transient life. At some points I felt that Sylvie's lifestyle impeded upon her new responsibilities. It was as if I was waiting for her to wake up and smell the coffee. So although she is living a life of happiness and fulfillment, it seems to be lack ambition and any sense of responsibility.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most difficult challenges this novel poses to conventional thinking, for me, is the way it raises questions about the value of an ambitious, socially engaged life--pitting these efforts to make an impact on the world and be connected in some way to society as essentially deluded and no more valuable in the end than invisibility and transience. The fact that Sylvie is appealing--that she seems content, which is actually quite rare in the annals of fiction--is a big part of this. We imagine a person who lives like she does suffering most of the time, lonely, disconnected. But she somehow confronts us with the image of someone who is pretty much fine with only meeting people in passing, hearing their stories (which may or may not be true; doesn't matter), and moving on. And she's fine with it, the novel implies, because that's actually a more realistic assessment of how the world works.
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