"Darkness Falls from the Air"

Although the role of "darkness" in Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping conveys multiple connotations, one such interpretation is its representation of "oblivion," in the sense that one perpetually carries the underlying fear of being ultimately unable to understand, define, or be fully aware of their own reality. In all of the novels we have read thus far, significant scenes have described the terror of this sensation. The inner sense of disappearance and disintegration among the relentless activity of the world is apparent when Holden begs Allie to "not let him disappear," as Esther feels herself shrinking in the company of Doreen and Lenny, and Stephen's silent and panicked inner repetition of objective facts like his name, his father's name, and where he lives, when he feels lost in the company of his father during their return visit to Cork. This sensation of disappearance is perhaps derived from this pervasive and undefinable darkness, the "blue volts" and sour air Esther speaks of, or "the terror of sleep" ("oblivion") and the "unseen sleepers"-- like Ruth's perception of the "children" -- Stephen fears. What is so intriguing about Robinson's novel then, is her suggestion that the "darkness" is not "pervasive" because there aren't any natural perimeters and boundaries separating darkness from light, memory from history, or dream from reality. One can disappear in a room of light and laughter or while walking on a concrete street. This lack of boundary is what Esther, Holden, and Stephen all arguably fear, and yet, Robinson suggests that understanding this lack of distinction between seeming unawareness in the context of "dream" and the objective awareness of "reality" is true self-awareness as opposed to seeming "oblivion." In this way, she recognizes that through understanding the omniscient presence of the darkness one doesn't have to be completely claimed and  terrorized by it, instead mutually claiming the darkness for oneself, as Ruth and Sylvie do. As Ruth says of her night out with Lucille, "I simply let the darkness in the sky become coextensive with the darkness in my skull and bowels and bones."

Before his conversation with Cranly towards the end of the novel, Stephen watches the girl perpetually on his mind pass through the dusk and thinks, "Darkness falls from the air," remembering incorrectly the line, "Brightness falls from the air." Subsequently, he thinks, "Could his mind then not trust itself...All the images it awakened were false. His mind bred vermin..." In significant contrast, Ruth conversely thinks,  "Everything that falls upon the eye is apparition" and in such a way proposes the idea that a concrete and objective reality is nonexistent. It is not the subjective images our individual minds internally conjure that are false but the seemingly straightforward images we directly absorb from the external world. As such, Robinson suggests that reality is whatever we individually and subjectively perceive it to be -- evocative of some aspects of Plath's bell jar though Robinson might dispute the metaphor of the bell jar as a boundary between darkness and light -- and the distinction between dreams and "reality," memory and history, is consequently either nonexistent or meaningless in its existence. If Ruth perceives the Sylvie before her to be Helen, then she "might as well be" because it matters only what Sylvie/Helen means to her. 

Nevertheless, in arriving to this conclusion, Ruth recognizes and feels the unfavorable and sinister aspect of this concept. As Stephen contemplates the terror of death through being forgotten and this sort of living death, Ruth contemplates the terror/potency of memory and thought -- like the fluidity of water -- so arbitrary and capable of creating haunting phenomena, for example the Helen that Ruth constructs with Helen's death, or the constructed idea of Mercedes/the girl that plagues Stephen in his distance from her. Though she accepts it, Ruth expresses similar frustrations of being unable to trust her own mind, "Darkness is the only solvent. While it was dark...despite what must have been dreams (since even Sylvie came to haunt me), it seemed to me that there need not be relic, remnant, margin, residue, memento, bequest, memory, thought, track, or trace, if only the darkness could be perfect and permanent."

Significantly, Ruth recognizes the transience of the "darkness," nothing, not even that feels permanent. And as Sylvie and Ruth go on to live what has arguably been interpreted as a living death Stephen would have feared, it is notable that Ruth implies Lucille's inability to escape her constructed memory of them. In this way they are permanently alive in a sense, though this true and subjective permanence is one which Ruth and Sylvie seem to particularly fear.