I brought this up in class on Thursday, but I wanted to work through this idea some more on the blog, so here goes: I think the character of Sylvie is unrealistic. I don't think a person could, in the real world, live the kind of transient life she lives while keeping her mental approach to life. I don't think with Sylvie's mental approach to life she could get herself enough food and shelter to survive in a state of pure transience. In addition to this, I don't think it is possible to live life with the mental approach to life that Sylvie has.
First, I don't believe it would be possible for Sylvie to function economically from what we have seen of her spending habits and what we know of her employment. We don't know a whole lot about her employment except that she is a "migrant worker" (31), but we do learn that at various times she has worked picking berries and at a canning factory (88). I am no expert about the job market in the 1950s, but I can't imagine they pull down a large salary. And I can't picture Sylvie holding a job down for very long; it seems more likely to me that she would take a job for a while and then quit or be fired for daydreaming. This impression is reinforced at the end of the book when Ruth, Sylvie's disciple in transience, describes how she can't work in a place for very long. "Now and then I take a job as a waitress, or a clerk, and it is pleasant for a while. Sylvie and I see all the movies. But finally the imposture becomes burdensome, and obvious" (214). As a result of this, it doesn't seem like Sylvie and later Ruth have a lot of money.
This by itself would not be a problem. Lots of people get by with little money. But I can't see Sylvie getting by with little money, based on the way she shops. On page 86 there is a description of what a supper with Sylvie looks like. She buys a whole bunch of unhealthy, processed sweet food that would be more expensive (at that point in time) then vegetables. She buys "pre-sliced cheese" instead saving money by making the tiny effort to slice the cheese herself (87). An even worse example of Sylvie's spending can be seen when Sylvie shops for shows for the girls. "Sylvie never bought things of the best quality, not because she was close with money (although, since the money was ours she spent it timidly, even stealthily), but because only the the five-and-dime catered to her taste for the fanciful" (93). "However, a day or a week's use might have maimed the velvet bows and plastic belts, the atomizers and gilt dresser sets, the scalloped nylon gloves, and angora-trimmed anklets, Sylvie always brought us treasures" (94). I have a hard time reconciling this free-spending and impractical person to the person who picks berries. If Sylvie has lived on limited income for 20 years, shouldn't she have developed some sense of thrift by now? Or at least, it should not be true that "the deterioration of things were always a fresh surprise" (94). I don't think it is feasible that Sylvie can exist with these spending habits with so little income while retaining the naivety she seems to possess.
My second argument is a little bit more abstract. It might be helpful to introduce it by comparing Sylvie to Lucille. For Lucille, "Time that had not come yet...had the fiercest reality for her" (93). We talked at length about this. By contrast, Sylvie "inhabited a millennial present" (94). I, however, don't believe it is possible to actually live in such a millennial present. It might seem pleasant at first, but a life with nothing to look forward to or dread quickly becomes a life without meaning. A life completely devoid of meaning is impossible to live. Ruth gets her first taste of a life with no meaning when she goes out on the lake with Sylvie and then Sylvie leaves her by herself next to the abandoned house. At least the way I interpreted the scene by the lake, Ruth was bothered by the loneliness and the purposelessness. "I pulled them out and tossed them onto the ground behind me, for all the world as if I had some real purpose or intention. It was difficult work, but I have often noticed that it is almost intolerable to be looked at, to be watched, when one is idle. When one is idle and alone, the embarrassments of liveliness are almost endlessly compounded" (158). Sylvie's approach to life stands in stark contrast to Lucille's self-improvement, and even Ruth cannot at first handle this wandering approach to life. I don't think anyone can truly live this way, so this only gives me more reason to disbelieve in Sylvie.
It took me a long time to come to the realization that I didn't believe in Sylvie. Before then in class discussions I found myself siding with the grandmother, but not really knowing why. After all, I couldn't find anything wrong with the way Sylvie lived. But know I figured out exactly what was wrong with Sylvie: nobody in real life lives that way. This makes me like the book a little less than I did, if Marilynne Robinson is not completely dealing with reality. It is an interesting thought experiment, though, to see if someone like this could truly exist. In my book, the answer is no.
I balk at stating categorically that any kind of character "couldn't" exist, but I do see the objections you raise, and they're valid. But there are monastic traditions in various religions around the world where people live in a way that, at a glance, we might find "unbelievable," and I do see Sylvie at least partly in this kind of category. Robinson challenges the assumptions we reflexively make about people who live on the margins, and what grounds do we really have to contradict her?
ReplyDeleteSylvie's lack of practical knowledge is perplexing, given the fact that she has to be a survivor to live as she has. But the crappy ballet slippers and costume clothing she buys for the girls isn't particularly expensive--it's just frivolous, and not at all practical (more like toys than clothes). She seems perfectly capable of holding down work in a canning factory or at harvest time, and then taking what money she earns and paying for a room and a meal. What we see in her typical Fingerbone meals is more total randomness, no sense of *planning* a meal, than indulgence in sweets. It's like she went to the store and picked out stuff that appealed to her at random (and these are tastes that formed on the road--she doesn't make meals, per se, she opens a can of sardines or a baggie of oyster crackers).
Sylvie is certainly a singular character--she's like no one else I've met in a book or in life--but I wouldn't go so far as to declare her impossible. One of the central themes of the book is that the conventional way of living isn't the only way of living, and many people do in fact choose to live in an alternate way. One cost of this (as Robinson discusses in the novel) is that their experience isn't communicated to those of us on the "other side." They are invisible to us, and so we find their experiences incomprehensible.
I understand your reasons for wanting to disbelieve Sylvie as a character, and sometimes, I too, found myself skeptical of her actions. That being said, I don't think it's impossible for a person like her to exist. The reason Sylvie seems like she is from another world is because throughout the novel, she fancies herself as actually from another world. Reality to Sylvie is a dream, and Sylvie's dreams are reality. For example, she firmly believes that the children in the mountains exist, but could care less about whether the girls go to school or when their school even ends. Sylvie is a character who is more attached to the world she makes up in her head than actuality, and this influences her actions so much that she seems like she can't be real.
ReplyDeleteWhile I am not sure that I agree with your assertion that a character like Sylvie cannot exist (mostly because I don't think a fiction character must exist in the real world to be believable), I understand your feeling that her way of life is a little off. Her version of a transient lifestyle, at least the way she shows it the girls in her stories and anecdotes, seems to have all the romantic elements (friendships, interesting interactions, seeing the world, just the idea of freedom in general), but she never seems to have any of the basic concerns for money, shelter, or food that one must be thinking of if they are going to live as she does.
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