55 pages • 1 hour read
Marilynne RobinsonHousekeeping
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1980A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Theological Context: Calvinism
Content Warning: This novel contains depictions of death by suicide, mental health conditions, and child abandonment. Characters in the novel engage in stereotypical depictions of nomadic or transient people and unhoused individuals.
Marilynne Robinson’s novels often delve into issues of import to Calvinist Christians. Calvinism is a form of Protestant Christianity that originated with John Calvin in the 16th-century and has undergone various changes over the centuries since his death. As Protestant Christians, Calvinists generally believe that people are justified through faith and not by works. Furthermore, Calvinists believe that Sacred Scripture, or the Bible, is the sole authority on Christianity, as opposed to Roman Catholics, who also rely on tradition as a source of knowledge about God and his teachings.
Two key components of Calvinism are total depravity and predestination. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin describes predestination as:
God’s eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others. Therefore, as any man has been created to one or the other of these ends, we speak of him as predestined to life or death (Calvin, John. Institutes bk. 3, ch. 21, sec. 5).
Meanwhile total depravity refers to original sin and the notion that the effects of this sin effect every part of a person, body and soul.
In the Calvinist faith, it is God who makes the initiative to seek his chosen elect. This is referred to as Divine Initiative. Furthermore, according to Calvinists, Jesus did not die on the cross to atone for all sinners, only for the chosen elect. They believe that even in those initially unwilling, if God has chosen a person for Heaven, he will persist in pursuing them. No one chosen as the elect will fail to achieve salvation.
Authorial Context: Marilynne Robinson
Housekeeping is Marilynne Robinson’s debut novel. Robinson, born in 1943, has written multiple novels as well as numerous essays and nonfiction books on various topics, including the Calvinist religion, a topic pervasive in her novels. Housekeeping was published in 1980 and was a contender for the Pulitzer Prize, but Robinson did not publish another novel until 2004, when she published her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Gilead.
Like the main characters in Housekeeping, Robinson grew up in Idaho. She went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Brown University’s Pembroke College and a PhD in English from the University of Washington. She holds numerous honorary degrees. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has taught at such notable colleges and universities as Amherst and Yale, among others. She started her teaching career teaching at the Iowa Writers Workshop.
Robinson’s fictional works often delve into issues of Christianity, particularly Calvinism. While Housekeeping stands on its own, her next novel, Gilead, introduces her readers to Reverend John Ames. It is tied closely with her next three novels, Home, Lila, and Jack, which all revisit characters that originated in Gilead. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Robinson won the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, the National Humanities Medal, and the National Book Critics Association Award. She was married for just over 20 years to Fred Miller Robinson, and the two had two sons together before they divorced in 1987.
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By Marilynne Robinson
