Home-Space and Politics of Gender in Housekeeping

Authors

  • Yi Hu Shanghai International Studies University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1110.21

Keywords:

Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping, home, space, gender

Abstract

Focusing on female characters of Foster family, Marilynne Robinson’s debut novel Housekeeping presents a tension between stability and mobility within the home-space, and in terms of a fixed, bounded gender identity ascribed by domesticity and social convention with a fluid, non-essential one. Drawing on critical theories of Judith Butler, Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, Tim Cresswell, etc., this paper attempts to analyze how the protagonist Sylvie successfully subverts normative politics of gender by redefining the spatial order of home-space and conducting spatial practices.

References

Burke, William M. (1991). “Border Crossing in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping”. Modern Fiction Studies 37, 716-724.

Butler, Judith. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge.

Certeau, Michel de. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cresswell, Tim. (1996). In Place and Out of Place: Geography, Ideology and Transgression. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Cresswell, Tim. (2006). On the Move: The Politics of Mobility in Modern West. London: Routledge.

Downey, Dara and Elizabeth Parker. (1992). Landscapes of Liminality: Between Space and Place. London & New York: Rowan & Little Field.

Enloe, Cynthia. (1989). Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. London: Pandora Press.

Foucault, Mitchel. (1986). Of Other Space. (Jay Miskowiec, Trans.). Diacritics 16.1, 22-27.

Kirby, Joan. (1986). Is There Life After Art? The Metaphysics of Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 5, 91-109.

Leed, Eric J. (1991). The Mind of The Traveler: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism. New York: Basic Books.

Lefebvre, Henri. (1991). The Production of Space. (Donald Nichoson-Smith, Trans.). Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell.

Robinson, Marilynne. (1981). Housekeeping. Great Britain: Faber & Faber.

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Published

2021-10-01

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Section

Articles