Park Ridge Library Discussion Questions
HOUSEKEEPING by Marilynne Robinson

  1. What is the significance of the title?

  2. At the end of the novel Ruthie wonders when she became different - when she escapes with Sylvie, when her mother abandoned her or at her birth (p.214). What do you think?

  3. Contrast Lucille and Ruthie.

  4. What effect does the train wreck have on the girls? On the reader?

  5. How are men portrayed in the story?

  6. Comment on Robinson's style (language, descriptions, tone, characterizations, etc.)
  7. How would Ruthie, Lucille, and Sylvie fit into today's world?

  8. What is the role of nature?

  9. How does the weather affect the characters?

  10. Were Sylvie and Ruthie in the wrong? Did they have to burn down their house? Can society exist with oddballs?

  11. Why did Sylvie keep all the junk?

  12. Did you notice a change in the writing style after Lucille leaves?

  13. What are Sylvie's views on transience (p. 94)? What are the author's?

  14. What does darkness represent (p. 387)?

  15. One reviewer feels that Ruthie's tragic life has "sharpened her sense of impending disaster, alienated her from her stolid neighbors and curiously blurred her ability to distinguish between nightmare and memory, thought and experience." Do you agree?

Questions created by Vivian Mortensen, Head of Reader Services at the Park Ridge Public Library.