| Marilynne Robinson(1943-)is an outstanding contemporary American novelist and essayist.Her debut novel Housekeeping,a huge success after it was published in 1980,won the Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.Since its publication,Housekeeping has been studied from many perspectives,such as religion,environmental protection,feminism,philosophy and so on.Robinson grew up in Idaho in the western United States.The unique geographical environment and beautiful natural scenery influenced Robinson's view of nature.When Robinson was in college,she read a large number of American romantic literature and was influenced by Emerson,Thoreau,Dickinson,etc.Robinson regarded American romantic writers as the guide to her writing and called for the return of American Romanticism in contemporary literature.The author of this thesis does some further research on Housekeeping in the light of American Romanticism.The thesis reveals Robinson's inheritance of American romanticism by exploring the American romanticist viewpoint of nature,self-reliance,and wanderings in Housekeeping.This thesis is composed of three parts:Introduction,body part and Conclusion.The first part is the Introduction.It mainly introduces Marilynne Robinson and her Housekeeping,does the literature research review of the novel at home and abroad,and finally points out the research purpose and the significance of this thesis.The main body consists of four chapters.Chapter One introduces the origin and development of American Romanticism,as well as its representatives and main characteristics,and briefly summarizes the influence of American Romanticism on Marilynne Robinson.Chapter Two,with the American romanticist viewpoint of nature,analyzes the beautiful natural environment in the novel and the harmony between Ruth's family and nature.Ruth's grandparents Edmund and Sylvia and her aunt Sylvie maintain close contact with nature.Nature not only makes Ruth enjoy the pleasure brought by the beautiful scenery,but also inspires her to perceive the world through the intuition she acquires in the process of merging with nature.The family's attachment to nature reveals their awe and love for nature.Chapter Three,from the perspective of self-reliance in American Romanticism,explores Ruth's awakening,rebellion and pursuit of self-reliance.Aware of the suppression of her individuality by the traditional family,Ruth has the courage to resist,breaks the shackles brought by the stereotyped female images in the patriarchal society,gets rid of the fetters of conservative social concepts,gains her economic independence through doing a part-time job and finally achieves self-reliance.Chapter Four,focusing on the theme of wandering in American romantic literature,combs the growth and gains that vagrancy brings to Ruth.Ruth,just like the heroes in the American romantic literature in the 19th century,chooses to escape from society and pursue vagrancy when she is in the conflict with society.The materialistic concept of life advocated by the residents in Fingerbone forces Ruth to flee,which conflicts with Ruth's desire for simple life.The wanderings enable Ruth to have an ideal life of freedom,equality,simplicity and independence,to get rid of the loss and grief caused by the death of her family,to harvest the maternal love,to get spiritual growth.The third part generalizes the whole thesis and reaffirms Robinson's inheritance of American Romanticism in Housekeeping.Through the analysis of the American romanticist viewpoint of nature,self-reliance and wanderings in this novel,the thesis emphasizes that Robinson treats the American romantic tradition as the guidance for the relationship between man and nature,personal self-reliance,and individual vagrancy in her literary work.Meanwhile,in the era of pursuing spiritual civilization and material civilization,Robinson's inheritance of American Romanticism causes contemporary readers to have a profound reflection on the state of human existence and the meaning of life. |
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