I know there is a chance that some of you looked at this passage for the notebook prompt last week, but this particular thought by Ruth really stood out to me when out with Silvie:
If there had been snow I would have made a statue, a woman to stand along the path, among the trees. The children would have come close, to look at her. Lot's wife was salt and barren, because she was full of loss and mourning, and looked back. But here rare flowers would gleam in her hair, and on her breast, and in her hands, and there would be children all around her, to love and marvel at her for her beauty, and to laugh at her extravagant adornments, as if they had set the flowers in her hair and thrown down all the flowers at her feet, and they would forgive her, eagerly and lavishly, for turning away, though she never asked to be forgiven. Though her hands were ice and did not touch them, she would be more than mother to them, she so calm, so still, and they such wild and orphan things.
This description of the statue is a great illusion to Ruth’s ideas and ideals of motherhood. This passage does three things: tells about how Helen was and what Ruth has wanted from Helen as well as demonstrate Ruth’s maturity as a part of the coming of age proces.
What we can learn about Helen is that she turned away from them in the eyes of Ruth. I believe this is Ruth’s interpretation of the suicide. She feels abandoned. And at that moment of turning away, she is frozen in Ruth’s mind, thus the statute imagery. However,
However, Ruth shows many things she wishes that Helen had done. She depicts the mother looking back. She imagines and idealizes regret in her mother. She talks about the kids forgiving which shows how she would have forgiven her mother if she got to talk to her again.
Continuing on the ‘what ifs’, Ruth talks about the flowers that cover the figure to show how even if her mother was this cold wanderer, she would still have beautiful qualities. She would have done well for them.
Unfortunately, they did not touch, as Ruth points out, but this passage is still very significant. It shows a her maturity to contemplate all of these abstract concepts about her mother who has been shrouded in mystery up to this point. It is very difficult to think about a suicidal parent, much less articulate it, so this large metaphor demonstrates a step in the coming of age process.
There are so many nuances and symbols in this passage that I could not begin to talk about them all. What did you see in it?
That's a really beautiful scene you bought up here. Throughout the novel I always was mazes by the maturity of Ruth's narration and the passage you brought up really encapsulates a lot of those ideas. I think mostly it reinforces the idea that Ruth has difficulty forming connections with other people and her trainsient outlook on life.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point. She is not able to make connections with people but she does seem to understand how a lot of things work . This passage is really intricate and full of symbolism which shows how maybe this understanding of people just stays inside of her.
DeleteI definitely see some of the connections you brought up. Like Lot's wife, Helen may have had loss and mourning. I don't think it's any coincidence that she died in a very similar way to her father. His death may have affected her a lot. And the loss of Edmund Foster may have made Helen barren and empty, like Lot's wife. Her potential emotional emptiness could have been the reason she "abandoned" her children. I definitely see what you mean when you mention the kids forgiving Helen being similar to the children forgiving Lot's wife. Based on all of Ruth's mentions of Helen and motherhood, she seems to really want to see her mother again, even if her mother "abandoned" her.
ReplyDeleteThis hypothetical statue Ruth "would have" built might be discussed alongside the snow-woman she and Lucille actually do build in an earlier chapter. In that passage, Robinson seems to be exploring (among other things, probably) a metaphor for the transience of all human relationships, the fleeting nature of any and all human presence in the world. She uses the word "presence" to describe what the girls have "conjured" with mere snow, and the woman has identity, personality, a distinctive tilt or posture. But as she begins to melt, inevitably, we have one more potent image of how people simply come and go (especially so, it seems, in Ruth's life). So maybe she's thinking (in part) of that actual snow statue, which also evokes her mother's presence and then absence and eventual fading from memory, in this later passage.
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