Christiallily alld Litemlure

Vol. 59, No.2 (Willter 20/0)

Loyalty Meets Prodigality:

The Reality of Grace in Marilynne Robinson's Fiction
Rebecca M. Painter

There is something about certainty that makes Christ ianity unCh rist ian .... I have cultivated uncertainty, which I consider a
form of reverence.
-Marilyn ne Robinson, "Credo"
Mari lynn e Robinson's novels offer seasoned contemporary explorations
of the mysteries of scripture, by means of characters who embody nuanced
variations on bibli cal roles. Such characters deepen our appreciation of the
mystery of grace as they exhibit striki ng dimensions of loyalty as well as
prodigality. Robinson's fiction uncovers the inner workings of mind and
spirit with convincing displays of religious thinking and struggle, veiled
hypocrisy, individual dignity, courtesy, sympathy, and grace.
The essay "Family" from Robinson's 11te Death of Adam: Essays 011
Modem 71!OlIglIl (1998) equates love with loyalty, declaring loyalty to be
not only "the antidote to fear, distrust, [and] self-interest" but also "[tlhe
balm for fai lure or weakness" (89). Inlhe absence ofloyally, "all attempts to
prop the family economically or morally or through education or otherwise
will fail. The real issue is, will people shelter and nourish and humanize
one another? This is creative work, requiring discipl ine and imagination"
(89). Robinson's novelistic endeavors take up this challenge. Here we focus
on her creation of modern versions of Ruth and the Prodigal Son, whose
stories compel readers to contemplate the realities of loyalty, prodigality,
and grace through a lens of reverent uncertainty.
Robinson's now-classic Housekeeping ( 1980) eludes categorization,
though a typical literary source claims that the novel "represents a feminist
revision of patriarchal traditions ... that suggests that freedom can be found
through nonconformity and transience" (Witalec). The firs t line, "My name
is Ruth" (3), invites comparison to the Bible's Book of Ruth, about a non-

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CHRISTIANITY AND LiTERATURE

Hebrew widow who, rather than returning to her own people after the death
of her husband, chooses to remain with Naomi, her Hebrew mother-in-law.
The story has key uncertainties: whether Ruth had a caring family to return
to, a rationale (or her loyalty to Naomi, whether she had any attraction to the
propertied older man she marries at Naomi's behest, bearing a son to carry
on her deceased husband's name. Robinson's narrative is far more detailed,
exploring depths of female loyalty in response to loss by death as well as
abandonment. Ruth Foster, who narrates HOllsekeeping, is unmarried with
a multi-layered history of traumatic family deaths and separations, bonds
broken and unbroken. She chooses to follow a wandering aunt who belongs
to a nameless tribe of transients who stand for all descendants of Cain. The
loneliness and isolation this novel depicts has a prodigality of its own.
Ruth and her sister Lucille were orphaned when their mother, Helen,
drove off a cliff into the deep watcrs of Lake Fingerbone in the American
Northwest ' that had earlier claimed their grandfather. They were raised by
their widowed grandmother, Sylvia, until her death, then briefly by Sylvia's
two elderly sisters-in-law, who advertised to locate the girls' married aunt,
Sylvie Fisher. When Sylvie returns, husbandless, to take care of her nieces,
she has spent years as a transient and seems drawn back from her vagabond
life not by preference but by family loyalty. Keeping house does not come
easily to Sylvie, but she assures Ruth and Lucille that she will not abandon

them.
Uncertainty reigns nevertheless. Sylvie occasionally disappears into the
uninhabited woods across the lake, where she feels the spirits of lost children;
she keeps time solely by train schedules and serves the girls haphazard
dinners in the dark. Exasperated with Sylvie's erratic care, Lucille moves
in with her home economics teacher, determined to fit in at school and
make new friends. The bereft Ruth, who dislikes school and lacks a strong
sense of self, stays with Sylvie and adopts her habits- evidently not out of
enjoyment or a desire for freedom but out of fealty and compassion. When
well-meaning church women and the sheriff intervene 10 try to save Ruth
from SylVie's influence, Sylvie responds with intense conviction: "Families
should stay together. They should. There is no otber help. Ruthie and [ have
trouble enough with the ones we've lost already" (186).
Sensing that authorities will separate them, Sylvie and Ruth set fire
to their house and escape at night across the railroad bridge that SpatlS
Fingcrbonc Lake. Thc town paper assumes they have drowned, but Ruth's
narration mcntions subsequent short -term jobs and alludes to their life

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323

together traveling by train. Our impression that Sylvie and Ruth survived
their escape becomes less certain near the end, when Ruth imagines Lucille
inhabiting the family house as ifit hadn't burnt down, saying that if Lucille
was there, she and Sylvie have "stood outside her window a thousand times;'
thrown the side door open, brought in leaves, tipped over the bud vase like
ghosts, and left behind "a strong smell of lake water" (2 18). Expressing
Ruth's desire to reunite with lost family members, the author leaves Ruth
and Sylvie's mortality suspended, in favor of characterizing a prodigal,
unworldly form ofloyalty.
Uncertainty also hovers over the critical reception of this novel. Many
perceive Ruth and Sylvie's night passage on foot across the lake on a windblown railroad trestle as an assertion of female self-sufficiency and mystical
release from bondage to earthly desires and ambitions.l Others find this
interpretation troubling, one remarking that "by novel's end Ruth is
obsessed with images of death, coldness, and darkness that make claims
about her "social fulfillment especially dubious," and that the narrative is
"deeply rooted in the trauma of abandonment" (Caver 112).3
Certainly death, loss, and abandonment are traumatic, and escape into
an imaginary world does not constitute genuine healing. But for some, the
possibility of transcendence and an end to spiritual homelessness, suggested
by the ending of HOllsekeeping, points to a trestle of hope over dark waters.
"In the universe that is the knowledge of God;' Robinson asserts elsewhere,
"opposed beliefs can be equally true, and ... complementary because
contradiction and anomaly are the effect of our very limited understanding"
("Credo" 23). This lens might be applied to the above critical disagreements
over Housekeepillg, though the novel leaves questions unresolved about the
limits of loya lty. More certain is Robinson's achievement in giving richly
imagined life to a modern figure of Ruth, one that plumbs the depth of bonds
transfigured by great loss. Ruth, traumatized though she may be, declares
that despite the lake's absorption of her grandfather and her mother, "There
is remembrance, and communion, altogether human and unhallowed. For
families will not be broken .... Memory is the sense ofioss, and loss pulls us
after it. God Himselfwas pulled after us into the vortex we made when we
fell, or so the story goes. And while He was on earth He mended families"
( 194).
In TIle Death of Adam, Robinson broadens her perceptions of nature,
loyalty, family, and other biblical themes first enunciated in Housekeeping,
then in Mother COllntry: Brita;'l, the Welfare State and Nuclear Polllltion

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CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE

(1989).~ Science, she asserts, can not generate ethics or morality; it "can give
us no reason ... to choose honorable poverty over fraudule nt wealth],] ...
no grounds for preferring what is excellent over what is sensationalist ic.
And that is more or less where we are now" (Adam 71 ).s In the essay "Facing
Reality" Robinson expresses her distaste for the idea of an all-important
Reality derived from notions of objectivity and character, and implications
of science that arc a hundred years out of dale. She feels "smothered by
this collective fiction, this Reality," in which fear becomes the key to our
interpretation of history and experience, and the ugly and the sinister
become more real than the reasonable and the good ..."(77). The essays in
111e Death of Adam arc harbingers of Robinson's later fiction, surpassing in
(lower-case) realism the style and tone of her first novel.
Demonstrating how a good person could be rea listically portrayed,
Gilead (2004) conveys the end-of-life ruminations of a clergyman, who in
the jaded notion of "Reali ty" that repels Robinson, would be the dullest of
characters or the ri pest fo r lampoo ning. As if to counte rba lance a "collect ive
fiction [that] is relentlessly this-worldly, valUing success above all" (84), she
sit uates the narrator-protagonist, a preacher who has never sought worldly
success, in a small prairie town in the m id-1950s. Reverend John Ames is 76
and dying of angina pectoris. After a long ministry that makes him almost
secure in the sincerityofh is consc ience, he spends h is last days writ ing a long
letter to his seven-year-old son who will grow up not knOWing him. Writ ing
what he calls an "experiment in candor," Ames struggles overtly with having
to leave the life he lovcs, his wife, and child, the jewels of his old agc. A more
covert conflict is waged within his conscience. Though a Congregationalist
minister, Ames can hardly bring himself to forgive his godson, John Ames
(Jack) Boughton, for d isgracing his name and the familyofh is closest friend,
Robert Boughton, a Presbyterian minister. Ames' virtue is salvaged largely
because of his openness to the u ncertainty of his knowledge of others, Jack
in pa rticular.
Gilead appears to answer a need Robinson expressed in "Facing Reality:'
whe re she observed that polls indicated that most Americans believe in God,
but the nature of this belief has "dropped Ollt of the cultural conversation"
(Adam 86). People seem to define themselves more as consumers, patients,
or members of interest groups, she observes. " If we do still believe in the
seriousness of being human, wh ile we have lost the means of acknowledging
this belief, even in our tho ughts, then profound anxiety ... seems to me an
inevitable consequence. And this may account for both the narrowness and

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325

the intensity of the fiction [of Real ity[ that contains us" (Adal1l 86). As an
example of someone entirely serious about being human and fully aware
of the mysterious and demanding nature of God, it would be difficult to
outdo Rev. Ames, who encounters a hauntingly credible prodigal son who
challenges his moral seriousness.
In Home (2008) we experience the equally believable, salty piety of
Jack's sister Glory, whose whole nature seems to illustrate Robinson's
assertion that "things differ by the measure of their courage and their
honesty and thei r largeness of spirit, and ... the difference is profoundly
one of value" (Adam 85). Both novels expose depths of home spun discipline
and imagination made poignant by their characters' awareness of biblical
precepts. They pose an antidote to Robinson's perception that "something
has passed out of the culture, changing it invisibly and absolutely ... there
are too few uses for words like humor, pleasure, and charm: courage, dignity,
and graciollsness; learnedness, fa irmindedness, open-handedness; loyalty,
respect, and good faith" (Adam 106). As they transform and expand the
parable of the Prodigal Son, the novels arc graced with the aforementioned
quali ties, while exposing major threats against them within SOCiety's heart.
Set in 1956, before American society was totally immersed in television
and other electronic media, these companion novels speak for Robi nson's
concern that harsh economic theories and the dehumanizing constraints
of "Widget manufacture" have jeopardized our chances at freedom and
happiness, experiences that might include "a long supper with our children,
a long talk with a friend, a long evening with a book" (Adam 106).
Gilead's narrative becomes a prayer of self-scrutiny, a time capsu le of
fatherly wisdom, a plainspoken treat ise on the difficulty of virtue within the
most sincere moral consciousness. It can also be seen as a religious epistle
in the lineage of SI. Paul's letters, a distinctly American contribution to
modern theology. The novel animates a thought Robinson expresses in 111e
Death of Adam:
We have forgotten solace. Maybe the saddest family. properly
understood, is a miracle of solace....
Imagine that someone failed and disgrace came back to his family, and
they grieved with him, and took his sadness upon themselves, and sat
down together to ponder the deep mysteries of human life. This is more
human and beautiful, I propose, even if it yields no dulling of pain,
no patching of injuries. Perhaps it is the calling of some families to
console, because intr3ct3ble grief is visited upon them. (90)

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CHR ISTIANITY AND L I TERATURE

Before the prodigal son appears in Gilead, we read of Ames' father and
grandfather, also named John Ames, who ministered to the same small
Congregationalist church in Iowa. Both served as chaplains in the Civil
War- the older, a fiery abolitionist who shot a man to protect an escaping
John Brown, and who seemed to converse directly with God; the younger
an adamant pacifist who considered his father's act of violence a betrayal
of his ministry. The three generations of Ames clergymen harken to times
in American history when people put into practice their understanding of
biblical virtues. Ames' forefathers' stories prepare us for the poignancy of
Jack's return to Gilead and presage the stronger empathic bond he finally
establishes with his godfather.
The novel then tracks Ames' reactions to Jack's return after 20 years, his
resentment and distrust of one whose childhood was spent escaping from
school, lifting (and later returning) small items of personal importance to
Ames, and discovering an addiction to alcohol. Most galling to Ames is
Jack's fathering a child at 19 with an underage, disadvantaged girl, refusing
to take responsibility. Ames lost the wife of his youth and infant daughter
in childbirth and spent 40 years a solitary widower, suppressing his envy of
happy families like the Bough tons with their eight children.
Ames' late marriage to Lila, a woman of approximately Jack's age, has
brought him unexpected joy, jealously guarded in Jack's casco When Jack
first appears in his church, Ames launches into a vindictive sermon on
Abraham, Ishmael, and the sins offathers who abandon their children. This
event is given greater poignancy in Home, where readers are apprised of the
courage Jack has had to muster, with reinforcement from his sister Glory, to
attend the service. The effect on Jack is enough, in his terms, to break bones
(206). Rev. Boughton had hoped Ames would give Jack a warm welcome
and confides to Glory his deep disappointment that Ames has never shown
a loving concern for his godson. This episode exposes one of Robinson's
compelling variations on the Prodigal Son parable: instead of God as the
symbolic fathe r who receives his wayward son, she presents two earthly
fathers devoted to serving God but failing to show mercy when it is due.
Rev. Boughton's lack of mercy congeals later.
This failing is underlined when Ames and Boughton arc confronted
with Jack's seriousness about the Calvin ist doctrine of predestination. The
same conversat ion appears in Home, from Glory's perspective, with identical
import. One critic describes it as Jack's "patently seeking theological
justification for his own moral lassitude" (Meaney 83). This view overlooks

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327

Jack's remarkable concern, as a non-believer, for the possibility that he

might be one of those "who are simply born evil, live evil lives, and then
go to hell;> or whether his father and godfather believe that "a good person
will go to hell simply because he was consigned to hell from the beginning"
(150). It is a classic example of theological certainty coming up against the
uncertainty of human conduct. In both novels, the two clergymen avoid a
straight answer, until the normally reticent Lila Ames-whose own history
of sorrow is etched in her face but never detailed-ends the stalemate. She
asserts qUietly but firmly: ''A person can change. Everything can change."
Jack thanks her, saying "That's alii wanted to know" (153). Walking home
from the Boughtons, Mrs. Ames lells her husband thai Jack "was only
asking a question:' adding, "Maybe some people aren't so comfortable with
themselves:' which Ames reasonably interprets as a rebuke (154). He later
muses, "[W]hen we think we arc protecting ourselves, we are struggling
against our rescuer:' but admits that he does not know "how to live by it for
even a day, or an hour" (154). The best he can do is remind himself that "the
grace of God is sufficient to any transgression, and that to judge is wrong,
the origin and essence of much error and cruelty" (155). The narrative
probes the reality of this item of faith.
Ames informs his son that Jack's youthful offense was against a }'ounggirl
of a "desolate, even squalid" family situation, with "none of the protections a
young girl needs." He remarks, "It was something no honorable man would
have done" (156). Nowhere in the two novels is there an attempt to justify
Jack's transgression. What clouds his perception is Ames's next remark:
"Sinners are not all dishonorable people.... But those who are dishonorable
never really repent and never really reform" (157). If it were not for his
loyalty to scripture, we see that Ames would be dangerously attached to his
conviction that there is "no help for a dishonorable person"( 157). therefore
no need to forgive him. 6 What invokes the gift of uncertainty is his own
memory of prodigality.
With subtle precision, Robinson depicts the progression of Ames' moral
consciousness by means of his memory of how the boy's mother first came
into his life. He likens Lila's appearance in his church on Pentecost with how
she impassioned and renewed his life and ministry at age 67. Inscribing his
experience of the humbling, death -like passion that overcame him, Ames
achieves a deeper cognition of loyalty:
If I had had this experience earlier in life, I would have been much
wiser, much more compassionate. I really didn't understand what it was

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CHRISTIAN ITY AND LITERATURE

that made people who came to me so indifferent to good judgment,

to common sense .... And I know now that it is passion that moves
them to their prodigal renunciations. I might seem to be comparing
something great and holy with a minor and ordinary thing, that is, love
of God with mortal1ove. Bull just don't see them as separate things at
all. If we can be divinely fed with a morsel and divinely blessed with a
touch, then the terrible pleasure we find in a particular face can certainly
instruct us in the nature of the very grandest love. (Gilead 204)

Seeing this complete stranger, much younger, probably married, he

felt for the first time in his life "snatched out of my character, my calling,
my reputation:' given a "foretaste of death .... And why should thai seem
strange? 'Passion' is the word we use, after all" (205). Ames' lender memory
of the woman he would marry contrasts harshly with his thoughts about
Jack. Referring to the loss of his first wife and child, Ames writes: ""nlat
one man should lose his child and the next man should just squander his
fatherhood as if it were nothing-well, that does not mean that the second
man has transgressed against the firs!. I don't forgive [Jack]. I wouldn't know
where to begin" (164). It does not occur to Ames that Jack's impish behavior
as a boy may have been attempts to establish a bond or at least elicit his
attention. He recalls the boy listening raptly as his father and Ames talked
on the porch, "and from time to time he would look up at me and smile, as
if we were in on a joke together, some interesting conspiracy. I found thai
extremely irritating .... [Wlhen th e business with the young girl came up, I
was chiefly struck by the meanness of it" (184). Thus far Ames' mindset has
precluded compassion toward Jack, but the mingling of prodigal passion
and loyalty to his belief in forgiveness has begun. Ames is honest enough
to admit his fear that Jack will take over his family after his death and harm
them somehow.
Tellingly, it takes the length of the novel for an essent ially kind and
virtuous man to reevaluate his judgment of the godson who might have
relieved Ames of some of his own loneliness, and whose transgressions
might have been mitigated by a more loving bond with his godfather. Ames'
story suggests that before forgiveness can occur, the part more capable of
self-discernment needs to reexamine old forms of certainty. Loyalty, in
other words, must be to truth rather than self. Before Ames is ready to
hear what Jack has experienced in the past twenty years, it seems he mllst
first cleanse his psyche of the bitterness he felt becoming Jack's godfather.
Ames' reconsideration of this event may constitute the revelatory peripeteia

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329

for Gilead, and perhaps for Home as well, throwing into suspicion and
uncertainty the aura of perdition thai Jack has felt virtually since birth-or
since his baptism.
Early on Ames recorded tbe joy he always felt in the act of baptizing,
which he first performed as a child on a litter of kittens. In Jack's case,
however, he felt extreme discomfort. In the christening ceremony, when
Rev. Ames asked Rev. Boughton the name he wished his son to have, he
froze when he heard his friend say, "John Ames." There was weeping in the
pews and tears on Boughton's face, but Ames confesses: "I thought , This
is flO/ my child-which 1 truly had never thought of any child before. I
don't know exactly what covetise is, but in my experience it is not so much
desiring someone else's virtue or happiness as rejecting it , taking offense
at the beauty of it" (188). Embittered at the loss of his own wife and child,
Ames took offense at his friend's generosi ty, and Jack's baptism was perhaps
compromised. Though Ames does not consider it, his reflection begs the
question of whether his bitterness had somehow cast a pall over the life of
his godson and contributed to Jack's sense of perdition.
Liberated by his own candor, Ames now feels that Jack Boughton is
indeed his son: "By 'my son' I mean another self, a more cherished self"
(189). The fulfillment of Ames' desire for another chance to christen Jack
fore~lightens the conclusion of this narrative, an illustration of grace
received by Ames as well as Jack. Seeing Jack with new eyes, Ames wishes
he could "forget all the tedious particulars and just feel the presence of his
mortal and immortal being:' to "sit at th e feet of that eternal soul and learn"
(197). Ames gets this wish as well, as he accepts the moral precept of respect
for the Other, the unfathomable spirit of fr iend or enemy whom chance or
providence makes our neighbor?
When Jack finally reveals to Rev. Ames that he has a wife, Della. and
a son nearly the same age as Ames' boy, Ames realizes that Jack too has
experienced a prodigal passion. He has had a loving but tragically obstructed
marriage with an African American woman, a schoolteacher whose father
is also a clergyman. Laws forbidding interracial marriage have prevented
their union from being legalized or financially stable. They've been devoted
to one another eight years, but able to live together only "seventeen months,
Iwo weeks, and a day" (Gilead 220). Della's family has never accepted him,
not because he is white but because he-at the cost of their approval-was
honest about lacking faith. The more obvious element of racism in Gilead
and Home should not distract readers from the novels' exposure of the
insidious bias of believers toward non-believers.

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CHRISTIANITY AND L I TERATURE

While Della's family is lining up a black man willing to marry her and

adopt their son, Jack has come home to ascertain the possibility of making
a life in Gilead with Della- Iowa then being one of only three slates lacking
anti-miscegenation laws. Unprepared to find his father so near death, he
asks if Ames thinks his old friend is too frail to hear his story. Tactlessly,
Ames assures Jack that his father was very taken with his first child and
would most likely welcome his second. After some Simi larl y excruciating

repartee, Ames puts his arm around Jack and says he is a good man. Jack,
who has spent len years in prison, I I laughs, saying, "YOLI can take my word
for it, Reverend, there are worse" (23\). Inquiring whether Ames could use
his influence to help him settle with his family in Gilead, Ames answers
frankl y that he might not live long enough. "No matter, Papa;' Jack replies.
"I believe I've lost them, anyway" (232). He suspects-apparently verified
in Home-that Della has succumbed to family pressure and broken oR' with
him. Deeply moved, Ames writes to his son that he has overlooked pastoral
discretion to divulge Jack's story, so he could "see the beauty there is in
him" (232). Looking out on his congregation the following Sunday, where
Jack is sitting next to Mrs. Ames and their son, Ames finds himself wishing
there were grounds for his old dread: "J<.i have bequeathed him wife and
child if I could to supply the loss of his own" (233). "nle tran sfiguration
of Ames' moral subjec tivity merits the term prodigal, as he appreciates his
godson's true nature-a form of loyalty-and exhibits the grace of selfless
generosity.
The author etches another connection between prodigality and loyalty
when Glory drops by to inform Ames that Jack will depart before the other
Boughtons arrive to gather round the patriarch's deathbed. Glory calls it
"Jack's masterpiece" -a phrase we see that she regrets in Home-but Ames
is inspired to see it different ly. In perhaps the most morally challenging-or
prodigally compassionate- passage in either novel, Ames draws deeply
from his own experience of passion and loss:
The house will fill up with those estimable people and their husbands
and wives and their pretty children. How could he be there in the midst
of it all with that sad and splendid treasure in his heart? -I also have a
wife and a child.
[ can tell rou this, that if\{I married some rosy dame and she had given
me ten children and they had each given me ten grandchildren, m leave
them all, on Christmas Eve, on the coldest night of the world, and walk
a thousand miles just for the sight ofrour face, your mother's facc. And

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331

if I never found you, my comfort would be in ... my lonely and singular

hope, which could not exist in the whole of Creation except in my heart
and in the heart of the Lord .... [Jack] would utterly and bitterly prefer
what he had lost to everything they had. (Gilead 237-38)

The Reverend's trust in the prodigality of divine compassion-even at the

expense of marriage vows-takes the Prodigal Son story into territory that
reverberates with Aquinas' view that true knowledge of God begins when
we realize that we cannot know Him. "There is no justice in love," Ames
asserts, "no proportion in it, and there need not be, because ... it is only a
glimpse or parable oJ an embracing, incomprehensible reality ... the eternal
breaking in 011 the temporal. So how could it subordinate itself to cause or
consequence?" (238). Ames' reflection on the prodigality of passion enables
him to reassure Jack that he truly understands why he has to leave, making
him more loyal to his godson than is Jack's father. As Ames blesses Jack he
finds himself wondrously grateful for all his "old bitterness of heart" (240).9
Seeing Jack at the bus stop, Ames gives Jack his dog-eared copy of
Ludwig Feuerbach's TIle Essence o/Christianity (1841). Jack laughs and says
he remembers it "from-forever!" (239). Ames drolly thinks it must have
been one of the items Jack had pilfered and returned in his youth, so in
that way it might belong to him already. How generous the Reverend has
become with his prized possessions, when spiritual ownership is at stake!
Hen marked a passage for Jack: "Only that which is apart from my own being
is capable of being doubted by me. How then can I doubt of God, who is my
being?" In the outpouring of Ames' heart, so much for Jack's fruitless search
for faith. 10 In the exquisite scene of his farewell blessing, Ames finishes a
traditional prayer that the Lord be gracious to him and give him peace, but
Jack leaves his head resting on Ames' hand. This moves Ames to continue,
asking that Jack be blessed as a "beloved SOil and brother and husband
and father" (Gilead 241). He tells Jack it is an honor to bless him, writing
that he would have gone through seminary, ordination, and all his years of
ministry for that one moment (242). Rev. Ames has, in effect, re-baptized
his namesake as he sets out in abject sorrow and hopeless bravery for a
life without those he cherishes. Jack's is a living death, while heart disease
will soon force Ames to leave the world and family he dearly loves. Of the
two men, the one without faith has met greater injustice. Ames has been
soothed by the balm of Gilead, lOVing the place so much that he considers
being buried in its soil his "last wild gesture of love" (247). The prodigal has
sought its balm almost in vain, and cannot come home to stay. II

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CHR I STIANITY AND LITERATURE

More than any character, Glory Boughton signifies Robinson's

important recasting of the Prodigal SOil siory. Her perspective frames the
narrative of Home, providing a glimpse of how we might address some of
the homclcssncss of the Jacks among us. Glory inhabits what Robinson has
called the "real issue" of loyalty, whether people will "shelter and nourish
and humanize onc another" (Adam 89), The real-ness of Jack's awkward
but genui ne rapport with his youngest sister is perhaps the novel's mosl
extraordinary feature, that and her dry wit and endless loyalty to those she
loves.
AI thirty-eight Glory has come home to take care of their father,
humiliated by a long engagement to a man who finally admitted to being
married, haVing consumed her life savings. Without her deep sense of
shame and failure, one doubts whether Jack would be able to divulge some
of his most guarded thoughts and details of his troubled life. '2 Glory's
accOLlnt of Jack's return to Gilead adds a female dimension lacking in the
biblical parable. Her Sisterly devotion to the family's wayward son, refusal
to pass judgment, and all-embraCing mercy most resembles the father's
unconditional welcome in the original. Glory's loyalty to Jack and her family
also makes her the second indelible Ruth figure in Robinson's oeuvre.
Loyalty, however, does not preclude honesty, attested by Glory's gimleteyed vision of the Boughton family as "good in fact, but also to be seen
as good," with "something disturbingly like hypocrisy;' something "meant
only to compensate for Jack, who was so conspic uously not good as to cast
a shadow over their household" (Home 6). In Robinson's nuanced variation
of the biblical parable, suspicion is cast on the family's righteous attitude
toward their sensitive and gifted son that might have alienated him from
the beginning. The patriarch's mindset eVidently impinged upon Glory as
well. She earned a Master's degree and taught high school English in Des
Moines for thirteen years before returning to Gilead but wonders what she
has done with her life. She was a good teacher, but now reflects that if shea
been a man she might have chosen the ministry. "She seemed always to have
known that, to their father's mind, the world's great work was the business
of men ... ordained in some reasonably respectable denomination. Women
were creatures of a second rank, however piolls, however beloved, however
honored" (20). The realization that she has limited herself to her father's
unspoken estimation of a daughter's lesser potential becomes "part of the
loneliness she felt, as if the sense that everything could have been otherwise
were palpable darkness. Darkness visible. lll<lt was Milton" (20). Out of

THE REALI T Y OF GRACE IN ROBINSON'S F I CTION

333

blinkered loyalt y to her father she has denied herself what only seemed like
a prodigal ambition.
Glory's candor enriches our understanding of Jack's afflicted youth. She
recalls how she and her siblings would run 10 Rev. Ames, their falher's al ler
ego, to tell on their "poor scoundrel brother, who knew it, and was irritated
and darkly am used, and who ... inspired urgent sllspicions among them
which they fe lt they had to pass, whatever their misgivings, to spare their
fathe r having to deal with the sheriff again" (5). Their tattling and Jack's
alienation made them all feel less than comfortable in their childhood home.
In Glory's memory, Jack discerns bei ng unfai rly judged yet is remarkably
tolerant of his family's lack of understanding and compassion. Readers
may surmise that a few prankish tastes of forbidden liquor triggered Jack's
genetic predisposition to alcohol ism. ll
Glory was mystified by Jack's impregnating a poor neighborhood girl
near Glory's age, then 15. After heo returned to college, Glory wrote to him,
"draw[ing] upon every resource her sixteen~year indoctrination in moral
sincerity had conferred o n her;' to come home and speak with their fathe r
about the child. Perhaps out of respect for her, Jack did come home. When
Glory asked ifhe was going to marry the gir\' he went pale.
He smiled-that strange, hard shame of his-and said, "You've seen

her:'
She said, "Well, what is Papa going to do-"
"Do to me? Nothing. I mean, he's going to forgive me:' He laughed.
''And now I have a train to catch."
"You won't even stay for supper?"
He said, "Poor Pigtails;' and smiled at her and walked out the door.
(HOllie 57)

This passage captu res Jack's awareness of guilt and his assumption of at least
outward forgiveness on the part of their fatber. But it also reveals his feeling
for Glory's loneliness. "Poor Pigtails will be all alone" is what Jack said when
her sister Grace was sent to Minneapolis to study music seriously (55), and
there were other times Jack was the only family member to extend to her
the loyalty of compassion.
The whole matter of loyalty has been confUSing to Glory. As a girl she
had not understood, "imbecile as she was with loneliness and youth ... why
her father shou ld feel that arrogance had a parI in [Jack's transgression]
or cruelty. Or why he whispered those words with such bitter emphasis"

334

CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE

(17-18), After all. Jack was the son for whom her father would wait to
appear in the pews before beginning his Sunday sermon, his head drooping
when Jack did not appear, and perking up whenever he did, his sermon
at once focusing on joy and God's goodness regardless of the text. Glory
does not decipher this contradiction but provides telling information: Rev.
Boughton's insistence on the finest quality shirts, ordered from Chicago and
worn with elegant cufflinks, his (and therefore his family's) greater disgust
at errors in taste than at breaking the Ten Commandments. Her father's
righteous insensitivity emerges when Jack has returned, as they watch the
Montgomery race riots on their first television. Appalled at black women
and children being fire-hosed, Jack exclaims "Jeslls Ch rist! "; his father takes
more offense at Jack's apparent disrespect for the Lord's name, and assures
him that the uprising wil! soon be forgotten (HOllie 97). Significantly unlike
his old friend, Rev. Ames has inherited his grandfather's concern for racial
discrimination and takes Jack's side on the issue.
In James Wood's opinion , Home is powerful precisely because in it
Rev. Boughton is not the soft-spoken sage that Rev. Ames is in Gilead. "He
is a fierce, stern, vain old man, who wants to forgive his son and cannot.
He preaches sweetness and light, and is gentle with Jack, like a chastened
Lear ... only to turn on him angrily:' Wood observes, "The novel quietly
mobilizes the major Biblical stories of father and son: Esau, denied his
birthright, begging for a blessing from his father; Joseph, reunited, finally,
with his father, Jacob: the Prodigal Son, most loved because most errant."
Wood is especially apt to link Jack's variation of the Prodigal Son story with
the denial of Esau's birthright, if we consider as a birthright an unassuming
view of one's character. This denial is unveiled in a tormented scene when
Jack's father asks him 10 come and hear something he has to say. something
that he'll probably have to forgive him for. Jack says he'll try, and the old
man leads by claiming he hasn't felt like a good father:
Jack cleared his throat. "I really don't know what to say. I've always
thought you were a very good fa ther. Much better than I deser\'ed.~
... [His father takes Jack's hand and studies his face, laying the hand
against his chest.]
"You feel that heart in there? My life became your life, like lighting one
candle from another. Isn't that a mystery? ... And yet you always did
the opposite of what I hoped for, the exact opposite. So J tried not to
hope for anything at all, except that we wouldn't lose you. So of course
we did. That was the one hope I couldn't put aside."

THE REALITY OF GRACE IN ROBINSON'S FICTION

335

Jack withdrew his hand .... ~11lis is very difficult;' he said. "What can I
do- I mean, is there something [ can do now?~
... "Not a thing to be done. I'm sorry I brought it up.... All that old
grief coming back on mc. I'm tired now, though. It scems like J'm
always tired." And he settled into his pillows and turned onto his right
side, away from Jack, toward the wall. (Home 115-16)
Unfortunately, Rev. Boughton's loyalty appears tethered to himself. Simon
Baker sees Boughton as aligning himself with the doctrine of forgiveness
"to appear worthier than he actually is:' his outbursts against Jack
"accumulat[ing[ into an assassination of character which his son scarcely
deserves:' Glory's reverence for her father precludes this accusation, but
evidence presented through her eyes supports it.
Glory displays a prodigal compassion for wh ich forgiveness is forgone
or moot. She discovers Jack in the garage at a ghastly nadir of his life, after
an unsuccessful attempt to kill himself, having received a letter from Della
breaking off with him. Glory's tenderness restores her brother to a semblance
of dignity- throughout and follOWing about an hour of righteous fury.
She bathes him. hides his soi led clothes. shaves him because his hands are
trembling, and advises shortening to remove the dark stains from his hands.
Their father senses something gone dreadfully wrong, but Glory protects
him from that knowledge. Having sent Jack to bed to sleep off his suicidal
hangover, she cooks a meal of roast chicken and dumplings to fill the house
with aromatic comfort.
Trllsting her kindness, Jack tells Glory he cannot stay while the rest of
the family arrives for the death watch. He cannot trust himself not to "do
something-unsightly" and make everything much worse, adding softly, "I
really can't deal with the thought that he will die" (303). In this version
of the story, Glory instantly regrets telling him that leaving now is his
masterpiece. She looks into his "pale and regretful" face, realizing that "the
grief he always carried with him was as much as he could bear" (303). Later
she muses appreciatively that Jack, "God bless him;' had understood the
depths of her hopes for children and her longing for her own sun lit home,
"that she had been diligent at discerning virtues and suppressing doubts"
about her fiance, "ready to give up mere money if it could put aside the
obstacles to her happiness .... Jack had understood it all and laughed, a
painful bllt companionable laugh, as if they'd been whiling away perdition
together telling tales of what got them there, to forestall tedium and the
dread of what might come next" (307). With such fellow feeling, forgiveness
seems irrelevant.

336

C H RISTIANITY AND liTERATURE

For Glory, perdition is not the final judgment she will face in the
afterlife, but the loss of her dreams of a husband and children in this life.
What part ially relieves Glory's misery is a testament to her loyalty: the hope,
not for her own happiness, but the possibility she will one day prOVide a
family refuge, if not for Jack then for his SOil. Glory decides to remain in
Gilead because she perceives Ihal Jack values the old homestead enough to
have restored its yard and garden to the condition of his you th. She plans
to teach school again, keeping the big dark hOllse ready for family visits,
however infrequent. This kind ofloyalty has a solitary grace redolent of what
Rev. Ames perceived in Jack's abject exh from the family home-guarding a
secret of love more precious because it may be lost to the world, saved only
in the hearl.
As Jack leaves, Glory observes "a peacefulness about him that came with
resignation, with the extinction of that last hope, like a perfect humility
undistracted by the possible, the unrealized, the yet to be determined." It
resonates wi th her own humble lucidity that "It may have been the saddest
day of her life, one of the saddest of his. And yet, all in all , it wasn't a bad
day" (309). Hers is a real and homely grace, which could be found in legions
of unsung survivors of great loss, nurturers quietly prodigal in sllstaining
homes for others, and prodigals who try but cannOI come home. Glory's
example is a contemporary re-visioning of the biblical parable that places
divine mercy and acceptance in human hands-often female hands at that,
an example somewhat lacking in Scripture. \-1
Glory's fealty to Jack imports a potentially slLstaining grace. This reader
is grateful that she is nearby in the kitchen when Jack comes to bid his father
good-bye, hat in hand. She sees the old man look at him, "stern wi th the
effort of attention, or with wordless anger:' As Jack extends his hand, their
father draws his own hand back. turning his head away. "Tired of it!" he says.
They are the last words Jack will hear from his father, so it is an exquisite act
of forgiveness that Jack nods, saying, "Me, too. Bone tired" (317). He stands
meekly absorbing the blow, looks at his fathe r fo r a minute, then bends
to kiss his brow. It seems profoundly merciful Ihal Jack can retreat from
this wrenching scene to the kitchen where his sister weeps, haVing heard
everything. He can wipe a tear from her cheek with his thumb and say "So
long, kiddo" (317). One hopes Ihal Glory's fierce love for him, the memory
of her tears and her command that he must take care of himself, will buffer
the terrible impact of Jack's rejection by his father. One suspects that it will,
alleast as much as the bleSSing Jack receives from his godfather.

THE REALITY OF GRACE IN ROB INSON'S F ICTION

337

It is the alcoholic wanderer, bereft of wife and child, who offers the most
compelling example of grace in th is story, matched only by G lory's loyalty
to him. Jack. like Rev. Ames, has named his son Robert after his father,
and has shown extraordinary tenderness to the old man in his fra il ty. Is
he, nevertheless, doomed to perdition? O n the eve of his departure Glory
thinks, "If I or my father or any Boughton has ever stirred the Lord's
compassion. then Jack will be all right. Because perdition for him would
be perdition for everyone of us" (316). Robinson has opined recently in an
interview printed in this journal that a good predestinarian would point ou t
that Jack cannot know whether he is destined for perdition or whether he
will be among those whom God loves no matter what (Robinson, "Further
Thoughts" 489). Regarding the seeming d issonance between the concept of
free will and the doctrine of predestination, she suggests that free will implies
we will be judged on the basis of what we do, and can "at least tentatively
judge ourselves and one another;' whereas predestination keeps God's view
mysterious, a grace He reserves to Himself. My comments here suggest
that Robinson's novels elucidate a conciliatory biblical concept, that we will
be judged according to the in tent ions of our heart, known only to God,
whose wisdom takes into account our ignorance, illness, selfishness, and
bumbling attempls 10 care for others. Withou t sllch fullness of knowledge
and compassion. our best perspective is uncertainty. As Glory reflects, "the
soul finds its own home if it ever has a home at all" (Home 282). Perhaps
most of us will be greeted as prodigals returning from hells of our own
making. Among us may be persons like Ruth Foster, Glory, Jack, and the
Reverends Ames and Boughton, whom Robinson has gifted us to appreciate
the uncertain but real dimensions of prodiga lity, loyalty, and grace.

Marymouflt Manhattan College

NOTES
' Robinson grew up in Idaho. near the vast. deep Lake Coeur d'Alene, which
itself has a railroad bridge similar to the one described in Housekeeping.
2Anne-Marie Mallon writes that "Ruth's transience, her realignment with the
natural laws of movement and change, has freed her to see that 'what has perished
need not be lost: Indeed her whole journey testifies to the truth that death is not the
final event and loss is not the final word. Ruth knows that the seeds of resurrection
lie in the earth, and she knows that the rragments of every human life, however
scattered by the major catastrophes and minor adjustments which are its due, can
be remembered [sic] by those who are willing to conjure its presence" (104).

338

CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE

lldentifiablc post-traumatic stress reactions might include Sylvia's mute

isolation for days after her daughter Helen's suicide, her trance-like repetition of
maternal chores as she looks after Ruth and Lucille, having lost her own daughters.
Ruth's childhood memories reveal that Helen was abandoned by her husband, and
before her suicide was living a bleak, isolated life with her daughters in a city far
from Fingerbone. What Ruth describes as her mother's exceptional calm might be
seen as a lack of affect resulting from trauma, and her suicide as an expression of
despair. In a similar light, Helen's leaving to get married could have been a painful
blow that marked the commencement of her sister Sylvie's rootless life and her
disconnected personality a response to trauma.
~ The mending offamilies, loyalty to family in the midst of uncertainty, in Ruth's
mind and Robinson's, is holy. Also holy is the water that embraces death and is
necessary for life on the earth it nourishes. The holiness of water and those who
drink it leads us to briefly mention Robinson's next work, Motlier Cormtry: Britain,
tile Welfare State alld Nuclear Pollution (1989), an impassioned, meticulously
referenced critique of Britain's secretive long-term dumping of long-lived
radioactive waste on its shores and in neighboring seas. [n it Robinson informs
us that the Sellafield nuclear processing plant , jerrybuilt during World War II in
the race to build the atom bomb, should have been demolished afterward. Instead
it has been kept running purely for government profit, its lethal effects hidden or
obscured by secrecy laws. The facility has dumped its wastes into waterways of
England's beautiful Lake District and the Irish Sea, endangering countless lives
and quite possibly the entire planet. It has been doing this for decades with nary a
protest from the United States or other major nalions, several of whom are glad 10
unburden themselves Ofloxic waste that would otherwise pollute their own waters.
Of all her more celebrated texts, Robinson consistently claims to be proudest of
this volume. In it she avows, "I am angry to the depths of my soul that the earth
has been so injured while we were all bemused by supposed monuments of value
and intellect. ... The grief borne home to others while I and my kind have been
thus occupied lies on my conscience like a crime" (32). With this work the author
becomes a contemporary female Noah, warning the world of the dire consequences
of their disregard for the waters that may not flood the world so much as poison it
with radioactive pollutants. Naming her book Mother COlilltry evokes a historical
reverence for England, and displays a Ruth-like loyalty to the earth and to poor
people who cannot protest as eloquently or dig up the ominous obscured facts as
skillfully. The British government banned publication of the book in the United
Kingdom.
~H er concern, expressed in the 1990s, that econom ic value was being created
at the cost of just wages for workers and the abuse of natural resources, seems
prophetiC: "A global economy organized on these principles will be full of poor,
sick, d ispirited people, and shoddy goods, since they will be cheapened to suit the
dwindling property of the workforce, who are also the buying public. ... Human
limits to exploitation of people would solve the problem, but they would also

THE REALITY OF GRACE IN ROBIN SON'S FICTION

339

interfere with competition, which is the great law of nature, supposedly, and which
therefore functions as a value, because 'science' has supplanted religion"(74).
6'fhe connection between personal and intra national forgiveness appears in
Robinson's writings, e.g. in her essay in 71le Detl/il of Adam on Lutheran theologian
Dietrich BonhoelTer, murdered by the Nazis a few months before the end of World
War II. In it Robinson praises Bonhoeffer'scritique of the self-defeat ing exclusivism
of the official church. Advocating a chu rch without boundaries, he predicted,
presciently, the eventual disappearance of religion in Europe if those boundaries
remained in place. Apparently referring to the war's aftermath but not limited
to it, Robinson remarks that "we have not learned the heroic art of forgiveness,
which may have been the one thing needful" (III). She states that Bonhoeffer's
understanding of the otherness of God was precisely to be found in His boundless
compassion, believing that "the failure of the church and the evil of the world are
revealed in their perfect difference from this force of forgiveness, which they cannot
weary or diminish or evade" ( 110).
7"fhe works of Emanuel Levinas come to mind, among others.
8We are never informed of his crime, but we do learn that Jack has had blackouts
from drinking and may not remember what he did, enough to mention it to Glory,
who never asks.
'lNot for nothing have readers of both volumes recommended that those who
have not yet read them start with Home and finish with Gilead, as Frank McCourt
might say, for the uplift in it.
IOAmes' refusal to condemn Jack's inability to share his family's faith reflects
Robinson's admiration, expressed in 71,e Deatll of Adam, for Bonhoeffer's "steadfast
refusal to condemn the 'religion less' world, and his visionary certainty that it is
comprehended in the divine presence" (124).
IIThere is a quality about lack's sad departure that resists cynicism or nihilism.
As Robinson has stated in 711e Death of Adam, cynicism is the great antidote to
morality, the understanding of how arbitrary, unpredictable, unenforceable and
"insecurely grounded in self-interest" it is (170). While justified, it should not be
allowed to descend into nihilism, despite the "amazing wrongness" of the human
condition: "ifit is agreed we are in this respect mysterious, then we should certainly
abandon easy formulas of judgment" (171).
IlTheir relationship recalls that of Raskolnikov and Sonya in Dostoevsky's
Crime and Punisllmellt (1866), wherein another prodigal son can only trust a
devout woman who bears an almost equal stigma of shame. It is amusing that Glory
tells Jack at one point that he resembles Raskolnikov because he is becoming gaunt,
when earlier she'd called him Cary Grant.
ll'J"hough Rev. Boughton has mentioned that drink was the ruination of some
of their relatives, the Boughtons, like most of society until recently, seem to have
viewed alcoholism as a flaw in character rather than a genetically susceptible disease
of the brain, impairing the ability of those affiicted to act upon their knowledge of

340

CHRISTIANITY AND LITERAT URE

right conduct. See Enoch Cordis, M.D.,

the

~Imaging

and Alcoholism: A Window on

Brain.~
'~For

reasons of space, I do not explore the brotherly support attempted and

seldom accepted from Jack's older brother Teddy, a physician, who has always cared
for and tried to help Jack. This older brother figure is clearly an opposing variation
of the biblical parable's jealous and resentful older brother. Though mentioned in
passim, Teddy appears in person on ly toward the end of Home, and Jack remains
distant and awkward with him, refusing his financial help. Jack does call him,
though, to make sure Glory is not left alone when he leaves Gilead.

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Baker, Simon. "Homeward Bound." Rev. of Home by Marilynne Robinson. TIle
Observer,S Oct. 2008. \Veb. 29 Dec. 2008.
Caver, Christine. "Nothing Left To Lose: Housekeep;'lg's Strange Freedoms.~
American Uteralllre68.1 (1996): 111-37.
Gordis, Enoch. "Imaging and Alcoholism: A Window on the Brain." National
Ins/illlle Oil Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. April 2000. Web. 22 December
2009.
Mallon, Anne-Marie. "Sojourning Women: Homelessness and Transcendence in
Housekeeping." Critique 30.2 (1989): 95-105.
Meaney, Thomas. "In God's Creation:' Rev. of Home by Marilynne Robinson.
Commentary Oune 2005): 83.
Robinson, Marilynne. "Credo: Reverence, a Kind of Humility, Corrects Belief's
Tendency To Warp or Harden." Harvard Divillity BlIlIetill 36.2 (2008): 22-32.
_ . 11le Death of Adam: Essays on Modem TI/OlIght. 1998. New York: Marinerl
Houghton Mimin, 2000.
_ . "Further Thoughts on a Prodigal Son Who Cannot Come Home, on
Loneliness and Grace: An Interview with Marilynne Robinson." Interview by
Rebecca M. Painter. Chris/iallity and Literatllre, 58.3 (2009): 484-92.
_ . Gilead. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2004.
_ . Home. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2008.
_ . HOllsekeeping. New York: Picador, 1980.
_ . Motller Coulllry: Britai", the Welfare Stale a"d Nuclear Pol/lltio". New York:
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1989.
Wood, James. "The Homecoming: A Prodigal Son Returns in Marilynne
Robinson's Third Nove!." Rev. of Home. Jhe New Yorker. 8 September 2008.
Web. 29 Dec. 2008.
Witalec, Janet, cd. "Robinson, Marilynne-Introduclion:' Contemporary Literary
Criticism. Vol. 180. Gale Cengage, 2004. eNotes.com. 2006. Web. 20 January
2009.

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Title: Loyalty Meets Prodigality: The Reality of Grace in Marilynne Robinson's

Fiction
Source: Christ Lit 59 no2 Wint 2010 321-40
ISSN: 0148-3331
Publisher: Christianity and Literature
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