5. Passing Through: Marilynne Robinson

Abstract

Marilynne Robinson’s first novel Housekeeping, this chapter argues, attempts something remarkable in that it appears as if it were being told by someone after their death, so that its narrator is not so much a ghost writer as a spirit writer. Studying this spirit work, its Transcendentalist influences, its use of analogy, and its references to water, darkness, fire, and the house, Coughlan argues that Robinson presents her characters as transient ghosts, spirits housed in flesh which they must finally transcend. However, considering also her representation of time, Coughlan questions if a spirit writing is possible or if, in writing, the spirit returns as spectral “spirit.”