Different Types Of Housekeepers In Housekeeping By Marilynne Robinson

Within society, there are many types of housekeepers. There are the cleaners, those who run the household, and those who keep the family together. All types of housekeepers have been seen throughout the ages. They are also able to be seen throughout the story Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. In the story Housekeeping the cleaner of the family was the mother, Helen then the grandmother, then it was Lucille and lastly it was Sylvie. Helen kept the apartment clean enough so that her two children didn’t worry about clean clothes or ratty hair. The grandmother kept the house clean because she had a particular schedule and didn’t like deviation. Lucille really only did the cleaning so that she would get out all of her embarrassment of having her aunt fall asleep on the bench. Lastly Sylvie does a special kind of cleaning; she uses old cans, leaves tea towels in a solution for weeks and airs out the house regularly. These differ from how it is in modern times, the cleaners are the owners of the household or a cleaning crew depending on the owners income. Generally the person who runs a household would be the adult or the authority figure. That was true for the first three adults who took care of Lucille and Ruth. Helen, their birth mother, …show more content…
The novel began with Helen being the housekeeper, and then the grandmother, then Ruth who is the only one who managed to keep true to who she was and still manage the household. Although Helen, the grandmother, the aunts, Lucile, and Sylvie all had a part in being the housekeeper they all abandoned the “household” at one point. In order to be considered a true “housekeeper” you must stick with the family even when you want to quit. In modern times the housekeeper is the “authority” figure which is generally a parent because, most of the time, the parent stays through the households life