Housekeeping

by

Marilynne Robinson

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Lucille is Ruth’s sister and the novel’s main antagonist in many ways. Redheaded, opinionated, and concerned deeply with manners, propriety, and appearances, Lucille is Ruth’s opposite in almost every way. Nevertheless, the girls are steadfast companions, and for the first half or so of the book, they function almost as a unit. They perceive the world in the same way and have the same likes, dislikes, and fears. After the arrival of Sylvie, however, the girls begin to diverge, and Lucille’s jealousy over Ruth and Sylvie’s connection turns her against both of them. Though Lucille is a year younger, she begins developing into a woman faster than Ruth—in an attempt to rebel against Sylvie’s eccentric ways, quiet wisdom, and bizarre methods of housekeeping, the flourishing Lucille becomes obsessed with dressmaking, cleaning, and dieting, and makes a group of girlfriends in town who replace both Ruth and Sylvie in her affections and attentions. Lucille, who once skipped school with Ruth gleefully, turns on her sister when they’re called into the principal’s office to explain their truancy, and one night when Lucille sees that Sylvie has fallen asleep on her side of the bed, she takes her things and moves out to live with her Home Economics teacher, Miss Royce. Impetuous, headstrong, and desperate for idealized versions of love, domesticity, and perfection, Lucille is one of Housekeeping’s most compelling characters and a perfect foil for the quiet and changeable Ruth.

Lucille Stone Quotes in Housekeeping

The Housekeeping quotes below are all either spoken by Lucille Stone or refer to Lucille Stone . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Women and Sisterhood Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

Lucille and me she tended with scrupulous care and little confidence, as if her offerings of dimes and chocolate-chip cookies might keep us, our spirits, here in her kitchen, though she knew they might not.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Lucille Stone , Sylvia Foster
Related Symbols: Housekeeping
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Lucille and I took our skates to school, so that we could go to the lake directly and stay there through the twilight. Usually we would skate along the edge of the swept ice, tracing its shape, and coming finally to its farthest edge, we would sit on the snow and look back at Fingerbone.

We felt giddily far from shore, though the lake was so solid that winter that it would certainly have supported the weight of the entire population of Fingerbone, past, present, and to come. Nevertheless, only we and the ice sweepers went out so far, and only we stayed.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Lucille Stone
Related Symbols: The Lake
Page Number: 33-34
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

We had planned to try Sylvie, but perhaps because Sylvie had her coat on and appeared so very transient, Lucille did not wait till we knew her better, as we had agreed to do.

“Oh, she was nice,” Sylvie said. “She was pretty.”

“But what was she like?”

“She was good in school.”

Lucille sighed.

“It’s hard to describe someone you know so well.”

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Sylvie Fisher (speaker), Lucille Stone (speaker), Helen Stone / Ruth and Lucille’s Mother
Page Number: 51
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Altogether [the snowwoman’s] figure suggested a woman standing in a cold wind. It seemed that we had conjured a presence. We took off our coats and hats and worked about her in silence. […] We hoped the lady would stand long enough to freeze, but in fact while we were stamping the gray snow all smooth around her, her head pitched over and smashed on the ground. This accident cost her a forearm and a breast. We made a new snowball for a head, but it crushed her eaten neck, and under the weight of it a shoulder dropped away. We went inside for lunch, and when we came out again, she was a dog-yellowed stump in which neither of us would admit any interest.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Sylvie Fisher, Lucille Stone , Helen Stone / Ruth and Lucille’s Mother
Page Number: 61
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

I was content with Sylvie, so it was a surprise to me when I realized that Lucille had begun to regard other people with the calm, horizontal look of settled purpose with which, from a slowly sinking boat, she might have regarded a not-too-distant shore. She pulled all the sequins off the toes of the blue velveteen ballet slippers Sylvie bought us for school shoes the second spring after her arrival. Though the mud in the road still stood inches high and gleamed like aspic on either side where tires passed through the ruts, I had liked the slippers well enough.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Sylvie Fisher, Lucille Stone
Page Number: 92-93
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

Lucille had startled us all, flooding the room so suddenly with light, exposing heaps of pots and dishes, the two cupboard doors which had come unhinged and were propped against the boxes of china. […] Everywhere the paint was chipped and marred. A great shadow of soot loomed up the wall and across the ceiling above the stove, and the stove pipe and the cupboard tops were thickly felted with dust. Most dispiriting, perhaps, was the curtain on Lucille’s side of the table, which had been half consumed by fire once when a birthday cake had been set too close to it. Sylvie had beaten out the flames with a back issue of Good Housekeeping, but she had never replaced the curtain.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Sylvie Fisher, Lucille Stone
Related Symbols: Housekeeping
Page Number: 101
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Lucille’s mother was orderly, vigorous, and sensible, a widow (more than I ever knew or she could prove) who was killed in an accident. My mother presided over a life so strictly simple and circumscribed that it could not have made any significant demands on her attention. She tended us with a gentle indifference that made me feel she would have liked to have been even more alone—she was the abandoner, and not the one abandoned.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Lucille Stone , Helen Stone / Ruth and Lucille’s Mother
Page Number: 109
Explanation and Analysis:

“I was a baby, lying on my back, yelling, and then someone came and started wrapping me up in blankets. She put them all over my face, so I couldn’t breathe. She was singing and holding me, and it was sort of nice, but I could tell she was trying to smother me.” Lucille shuddered.

“Do you know who it was?”

“Who?”

“The woman in the dream.”

“She reminded me of Sylvie, I guess.”

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Lucille Stone (speaker), Sylvie Fisher, Helen Stone / Ruth and Lucille’s Mother
Page Number: 120
Explanation and Analysis:

“I just want to go home,” I said, and pushed the door open. Lucille grabbed me by the flesh above my elbow. “Don’t!” she said, pinching me smartly for emphasis. She came with me out onto the sidewalk, still grasping the flesh of my arm. “That’s Sylvie’s house now.” She whispered hissingly and looked wrath. And now I felt her nails, and her glare was more pleading and urgent. “We have to improve ourselves!” she said. “Starting right now!’ she said. And again I could think of no reply.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Lucille Stone (speaker), Sylvie Fisher
Page Number: 123
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

I knew why Sylvie felt there were children in the woods. I felt so, too, though I did not think so. […] I knew that if I turned however quickly to look behind me the consciousness behind me would not still be there, and would only come closer when I turned away again. […] In that way it was persistent and teasing and ungentle, the way half-wild, lonely children are. This was something Lucille and I together would ignore, and I had been avoiding the shore all that fall, because when I was by myself and obviously lonely, too, the teasing would be much more difficult to disregard. Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house. Those outside can watch you if they want, but you need not see them.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Sylvie Fisher, Lucille Stone
Related Symbols: The Lake
Page Number: 154
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

No one watching this woman smear her initials in the steam on her water glass with her first finger, or slip cellophane packets of oyster crackers into her handbag for the sea gulls, could know how her thoughts are thronged by our absence, or know how she does not watch, does not listen, does not wait, does not hope, and always for me and Sylvie.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Sylvie Fisher, Lucille Stone
Page Number: 219
Explanation and Analysis:
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Lucille Stone Quotes in Housekeeping

The Housekeeping quotes below are all either spoken by Lucille Stone or refer to Lucille Stone . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Women and Sisterhood Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

Lucille and me she tended with scrupulous care and little confidence, as if her offerings of dimes and chocolate-chip cookies might keep us, our spirits, here in her kitchen, though she knew they might not.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Lucille Stone , Sylvia Foster
Related Symbols: Housekeeping
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Lucille and I took our skates to school, so that we could go to the lake directly and stay there through the twilight. Usually we would skate along the edge of the swept ice, tracing its shape, and coming finally to its farthest edge, we would sit on the snow and look back at Fingerbone.

We felt giddily far from shore, though the lake was so solid that winter that it would certainly have supported the weight of the entire population of Fingerbone, past, present, and to come. Nevertheless, only we and the ice sweepers went out so far, and only we stayed.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Lucille Stone
Related Symbols: The Lake
Page Number: 33-34
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

We had planned to try Sylvie, but perhaps because Sylvie had her coat on and appeared so very transient, Lucille did not wait till we knew her better, as we had agreed to do.

“Oh, she was nice,” Sylvie said. “She was pretty.”

“But what was she like?”

“She was good in school.”

Lucille sighed.

“It’s hard to describe someone you know so well.”

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Sylvie Fisher (speaker), Lucille Stone (speaker), Helen Stone / Ruth and Lucille’s Mother
Page Number: 51
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Altogether [the snowwoman’s] figure suggested a woman standing in a cold wind. It seemed that we had conjured a presence. We took off our coats and hats and worked about her in silence. […] We hoped the lady would stand long enough to freeze, but in fact while we were stamping the gray snow all smooth around her, her head pitched over and smashed on the ground. This accident cost her a forearm and a breast. We made a new snowball for a head, but it crushed her eaten neck, and under the weight of it a shoulder dropped away. We went inside for lunch, and when we came out again, she was a dog-yellowed stump in which neither of us would admit any interest.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Sylvie Fisher, Lucille Stone , Helen Stone / Ruth and Lucille’s Mother
Page Number: 61
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

I was content with Sylvie, so it was a surprise to me when I realized that Lucille had begun to regard other people with the calm, horizontal look of settled purpose with which, from a slowly sinking boat, she might have regarded a not-too-distant shore. She pulled all the sequins off the toes of the blue velveteen ballet slippers Sylvie bought us for school shoes the second spring after her arrival. Though the mud in the road still stood inches high and gleamed like aspic on either side where tires passed through the ruts, I had liked the slippers well enough.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Sylvie Fisher, Lucille Stone
Page Number: 92-93
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

Lucille had startled us all, flooding the room so suddenly with light, exposing heaps of pots and dishes, the two cupboard doors which had come unhinged and were propped against the boxes of china. […] Everywhere the paint was chipped and marred. A great shadow of soot loomed up the wall and across the ceiling above the stove, and the stove pipe and the cupboard tops were thickly felted with dust. Most dispiriting, perhaps, was the curtain on Lucille’s side of the table, which had been half consumed by fire once when a birthday cake had been set too close to it. Sylvie had beaten out the flames with a back issue of Good Housekeeping, but she had never replaced the curtain.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Sylvie Fisher, Lucille Stone
Related Symbols: Housekeeping
Page Number: 101
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Lucille’s mother was orderly, vigorous, and sensible, a widow (more than I ever knew or she could prove) who was killed in an accident. My mother presided over a life so strictly simple and circumscribed that it could not have made any significant demands on her attention. She tended us with a gentle indifference that made me feel she would have liked to have been even more alone—she was the abandoner, and not the one abandoned.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Lucille Stone , Helen Stone / Ruth and Lucille’s Mother
Page Number: 109
Explanation and Analysis:

“I was a baby, lying on my back, yelling, and then someone came and started wrapping me up in blankets. She put them all over my face, so I couldn’t breathe. She was singing and holding me, and it was sort of nice, but I could tell she was trying to smother me.” Lucille shuddered.

“Do you know who it was?”

“Who?”

“The woman in the dream.”

“She reminded me of Sylvie, I guess.”

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Lucille Stone (speaker), Sylvie Fisher, Helen Stone / Ruth and Lucille’s Mother
Page Number: 120
Explanation and Analysis:

“I just want to go home,” I said, and pushed the door open. Lucille grabbed me by the flesh above my elbow. “Don’t!” she said, pinching me smartly for emphasis. She came with me out onto the sidewalk, still grasping the flesh of my arm. “That’s Sylvie’s house now.” She whispered hissingly and looked wrath. And now I felt her nails, and her glare was more pleading and urgent. “We have to improve ourselves!” she said. “Starting right now!’ she said. And again I could think of no reply.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Lucille Stone (speaker), Sylvie Fisher
Page Number: 123
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

I knew why Sylvie felt there were children in the woods. I felt so, too, though I did not think so. […] I knew that if I turned however quickly to look behind me the consciousness behind me would not still be there, and would only come closer when I turned away again. […] In that way it was persistent and teasing and ungentle, the way half-wild, lonely children are. This was something Lucille and I together would ignore, and I had been avoiding the shore all that fall, because when I was by myself and obviously lonely, too, the teasing would be much more difficult to disregard. Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house. Those outside can watch you if they want, but you need not see them.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Sylvie Fisher, Lucille Stone
Related Symbols: The Lake
Page Number: 154
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

No one watching this woman smear her initials in the steam on her water glass with her first finger, or slip cellophane packets of oyster crackers into her handbag for the sea gulls, could know how her thoughts are thronged by our absence, or know how she does not watch, does not listen, does not wait, does not hope, and always for me and Sylvie.

Related Characters: Ruth Stone (speaker), Sylvie Fisher, Lucille Stone
Page Number: 219
Explanation and Analysis: