Housekeeping: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

One spring day, after several months of correspondence with Lily and Nona about Sylvia’s death, the state of the house, and the presence of Ruth and Lucille, Sylvie finally arrives in Fingerbone. Nona greets her at the door and brings her into the kitchen, where Ruth and Lucille lay eyes upon their mother’s sister for the first time. Sylvie is thirty-five years old, tall and narrow, with wavy brown hair. She is dressed unseasonably in a thin raincoat and loafers with no socks. Sylvie greets both the girls warmly, and Lily and Nona help her take her coat off and sit by the stove to get warm. Sylvie is wearing a beautiful deep-green dress, and Lily and Nona both admire it. Ruth and Lucille know that in admiring the dress, Lily and Nona have decided that Sylvie will be an adequate caretaker for the girls.

After eating a poached egg on toast and warming up, Sylvie allows Lucille and Ruth to help her take her suitcases upstairs to her bedroom, a “narrow dormer” with a single round window. Sylvie thanks the girls for their help and kisses them each on the head. She tells them that it’s been a long day and she needs to go to bed—but that tomorrow, she’ll buy them presents.

Ruth writes that throughout her adulthood, she has often wondered what it was like for Sylvie to return to the house where she grew up. Sylvie betrayed little emotion, and always walked with her head down and an “abstracted and considering expression” on her face, so it was often hard to discern how she truly felt. Ruth remembers thinking, when she first met Sylvie, that Sylvie’s beautiful green dress looked as if it were borrowed.

The day after Sylvie’s arrival, Lucille and Ruth wake early to “prowl the dawn”—a custom they both adopt on any day of major significance. They go downstairs to the kitchen, expecting to be alone, but find Sylvie there already awake with her coat on, eating oyster crackers by the stove in the dark. Lucille and Ruth sit on the rug at Sylvie’s feet in the predawn darkness, and she shares her crackers with them. She tells them about the long journey she’s had—eleven hours by train—and when she learns that the girls have never taken a train before, she describes the dining and passenger cars in beautiful detail, promising to take the girls anywhere they want one day. Ruth imagines taking a train journey with delight.

Lucille abruptly asks Sylvie to tell the two of them about their mother. None of the adults have spoken about Helen since her death, and though the girls have grown accustomed to it, they long to know what she was like. Sylvie admits it’s difficult for her to describe someone she “kn[e]w so well,” but tells them that Helen was quiet, enjoyed the piano, and loved cats. She tells them that their mother’s wedding was small, and “just to please Mother.” The girls begin asking questions about the father they never knew, and Sylvie tells them that he was from Nevada and “awfully quiet.” Sylvie asks the girls if they know where their father is, and Ruth says they do not—though once, she remembers, a letter came from him for their mother, but Helen tore it up and threw it into the trash.

As Ruth studies Sylvie, she can’t help but think how much the woman looks like her mother. She even senses the same energy in them—both Sylvie and Helen seem “startled by the […] awareness” that Lucille and Ruth are always watching them. Ruth wonders what Sylvie sees in her mind when she thinks of Helen, and wonders if she’d be able to describe her own sister Lucille if someone were to ask her to. As she reflects on how she sees Lucille, though, she finds herself thinking in snippets and fragments which are “isolated, and arbitrary as glimpses one has at night through lighted windows.”

Sylvie makes Ruth and Lucille cornflakes and cocoa for breakfast, and then tells them she’s going out for a walk through town. She buttons her coat and heads out without a scarf, gloves, or boots—as the door shuts, Lucille tells Ruth that she fears Sylvie is never coming back. The girls run upstairs and put on their jeans, boots, and coats, planning to follow Sylvie to see where she’s headed. As they walk, Lucille begins crying, and Ruth tries to comfort her.

Lucille and Ruth follow Sylvie in and approach her, fearing she’s leaving. Lucille tells Sylvie that she’s left all her things back at the house. Sylvie is surprised to see the girls, but happy as well. She tells them she’s simply come inside to get warm, as nothing else is open yet in town. The girls tell Sylvie that she needs some winter gear, and she responds by telling them that she wants to stay with them. The girls are happy.

When the shops open, the girls follow Sylvie around town as she purchases a plaid scarf and gray gloves. When Sylvie remarks to the girls after leaving one of the stores that the shopkeeper looked familiar, they ask if she still knows people who live in Fingerbone. Sylvie admits she and her sisters, Helen and Molly, never had many friends in town—they mostly kept to themselves. Sylvie admits she’s only been back to Fingerbone once since she left sixteen years ago.

Back at the house, Lily and Nona welcome Sylvie and the girls home, but chide Sylvie for wearing only loafers out on the snowy roads and Lucille and Ruth for going out in their nightgowns and jeans. When the aunts ask why the three of them have been out in the cold, Lucille lies—she says that she and Ruth went out to watch the sunrise, and Sylvie came looking for them to bring them in from the cold. As Lily and Nona gripe about what trouble the girls are, Lucille, Ruth, and Sylvie settle in at the kitchen table. They complete a crossword puzzle together while Lily and Nona pack. That evening, a friend of Sylvia’s comes to pick up the aunts and drive them back to Spokane—Ruth, Lucille, and the house are all Sylvie’s.