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Lisa Blazo (Mainz):
"Defying Society and Escaping Self Practices:
Hoarding in Marilynn Robinson’s Housekeeping (1980)"
Abstract
My paper addresses a fairly recent phenomenon, known as hoarding, in disorder studies. Hoarding is a disorder where the sufferer collects both valuable and worthless objects, unable to part with them. Examining Marilynne Robinson's novel, Housekeeping, my paper demonstrates that her women, suffering from the disorder are given no help or understanding from the community and are ostracized due to their practices. Deconstructed in such a manner, Housekeeping exemplifies what is now officially considered an 'illness' in American society, which it was not when this novel was published. While Robinson's protagonists harmed no one, eventually their disorder caused them to be pushed out of their community into a life of transiency. Using disorder studies practices, my paper demonstrates that Robinson claims that the answer to American over-consumerism is nomadacy. Phrased more succinctly, Americans tend to acquire numerous unnecessary products and because Americans have more possessions, they purchase larger houses in which to store them. Hence, if a person were to have no house, all possessions would be stored on the person and nomadacy would prevent the person from having a chance to hoard. My paper will argue that the women flaunt societal structures not because they are unconditioned, but because they have a different brain pattern or genetic code than women who adhere to society. In doing so, my paper will show that feminist texts are being under-theorized with no allowance for other possible causes behind anti-patriarchal behaviors, such as psychological or genetic abnormalities.
Bio
I first came across Marilynn Robinson's Housekeeping in my undergrad at Aquinas College (Grand Rapids, Michigan) and learned that there are exceedingly few psychological critiques of her characters. Thus, when choosing my dissertation topic for my Master's thesis at the University of Sheffield, I naturally examined Housekeeping and the use of hoarding by the characters, a disorder I learned about from one of my favorite television programs. Now that I am beginning my Doctoral Studies at Johannes Gutenberg Universität, I plan to continue my examination of the hoarding disorder in contemporary American fiction.