Marilynne Robinson - 1943
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Advanced English III
Emmett High School, Emmett, ID.
I. Personal and Professional Biography
When thinking of great American authors, Emerson, Dickinson, and Thoreau probably come to mind, but these are just the ones that have been heavily studied. There are many authors overlooked by the masses who are just as good as those mentioned above, one of whom lived right here in Idaho. That author is Marilynne Robinson, who is known by literature students as one of the best contemporary authors in the United States.
Marilynne Robinson started her life in the small community of Sandpoint, Idaho, on November 26, 1943. Robinson and her older brother were raised by their parents, Ellen Harris Summers and John J. Summers (Maguire 252). She grew up in the communities of Sagle, Sandpoint, and Coolin and several other small Northwestern towns, most of which lacked higher education opportunities. In 1962, she graduated from Coeur d'Alene High School. After high school, Robinson went on to further her education at Brown University where her brother was already a senior. She studied religion, as well as creative writing, and received her B.A. in 1966. After she graduated from the prestigious Brown University, Robinson went to teach for a year at the Univesite d Haute Bretagne in Rennes, France (Maguire 253). She then came back to the United States to complete her education at the University of Washington. In 1977, Robinson earned her doctorate with a well-received dissertation on Shakespeare's Henry VI.
During graduate school, she married and had two children (Maguire 252). She has resided in many parts of the United States including twenty years in Massachusetts and various areas in the East (Robinson 165). Robinson is now living and teaching in Iowa City, Iowa (Schaub 231). Though she no longer lives in Idaho, she has never forgotten her childhood environment.
Robinson not only had strong connections with her family but was raised with a deep love of religion (Maguire 258). In fact, the book that she values the most in the world is the Bible (Schaub 234). With this admiration, Robinson has written several essays on different aspects of the Bible (Maguire 258). Her intellect and classic writing style have made her viewpoint, portrayed through these essays, a sensible voice of reason. While Robinson was completing her dissertation and starting a new family, she was also starting her first book, Housekeeping . She began writing the opening of the book during her dissertation and resumed working on it while she was in France teaching (Maguire 253). After much work and low expectations of getting it published, Housekeeping was published in 1981 (Kittredge 488). Robinson never really expected the book to be published; all she wanted was to write a book that she would want to read (Schaub 232).
Upon publication, Housekeeping became an instant American classic and identified Marilynne Robinson as one of the best contemporary writers, though she isn't always given the recognition a writer of her status deserves (Maguire 252). Some considered Housekeeping a feminist book that lacked male characters. Robinson didn't intend to write a feminist book when she started Housekeeping. However, growing up in a maternal dominant family instead of the typical paternal dominant family contributed to the unintentional feminist views of Housekeeping. Robinson wanted to have female characters that were just as strong as their male counterparts (Maguire 256). She molded the book out of her western life experiences and her own family upbringing (Schaub 233).
Even though Housekeeping received some criticism, it still received the P.E.N. / Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award for best first novel and the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award. It was also nominated for the P.E.N. / Faulkner fiction award and the famous Pulitzer Prize (Maguire 254). These awards and nominations for her first novel prove that Robinson's talent for writing mustn't be overlooked.
Growing up in the Northwest helped Robinson care for the environment and what goes on within it (Maguire 252). Though she cares for the environment, she considers all environmental groups useless (Schaub 248). She feels that it doesn't do any good to try to save one small aspect of the world when there are bigger issues that should be dealt with first. Some of these environmental issues that she cares about become clear in Robinson's second book, Mother Country. Mother Country gained almost as much fame as her first but for a totally different reason. Mother Country criticizes the Sellafield Nuclear Processing Plant in England. It has tremendous amounts of documentation that backed up Robinson's critical statements against Greenpeace and the British government (Schaub 231). This book faced many criticisms because of its criticism of the British Government and environmental groups like Greenpeace (Maguire 257).
Greenpeace sued for libel against the British publishers of the book (Maguire 258). All of these factors contributed to the book being banned in England. Even with all of its criticism, the book was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1989. These hard times didn't stop Robinson from continuing to write. She continued to write articles for various magazines (Maguire 258).
With the publication of this book came some hard times for Robinson (Maguire 258). During these problems, Robinson and her husband separated, leaving Robinson to take on the sole responsibility of raising their two boys, James and Joseph. She turned towards teaching as a means to support her family. Robinson taught at New York State Writers Program at Skidmore College during the summers of 1989 through 1991. She then became a faculty member at University of Iowa in the Writers' Workshop and has been there since (Maguire 258).
In 1998, Robinson's last full-length book, The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought was published. In this book, Robinson critiques the ideas of Darwin and that of Social Darwinism in essays on various topics. Though reviewers criticize this book for its lack of footnotes and bibliography, they also point out Robinson's moral and intellectual integrity (Maguire 259).
Robinson loves books that challenge her intellectual abilities (Robinson 165). Even when Robinson was young, she preferred the difficult, lengthy, dull books. She is a picky reader who likes to read authors such as Lincoln and Jefferson (Schaub 246). Along with the Bible, her favorite book is Moby Dick, by Melville (Schaub 234). This love of the difficult books was reinforced by her high school Latin teacher.
Robinson's high school Latin teacher introduced a whole new world of literature to her, a world that was of olden times, full of authors like Horace, Virgil, and Cicero. These great authors from the "Roman" era helped to mold the style of Robinson (Robinson 167). The western education that she received when she was young has set her apart from other contemporary authors (Robinson 167).
Robinson's main influences in her writing have been the Transcendentalists of the nineteenth century (Schaub 231). She doesn't write fiction just to write a book; she writes on a subject that moves her in some form (Schaub 248). In her writing, Robinson considers analogies as a vital part of the thought process as well as crucial to portraying the message at hand (Schaub 244).
Robinson's style and her unique writing abilities have made her into one of the best contemporary American authors in the United States and maybe even the world. Most authors who have been raised in Idaho don't have the sophistication that Marilynne Robinson has shown through her writings and the artistry of her word choices. She is a gifted author who deserves much more recognition.
II. Works Cited
Kittredge, William, ed. The Portable Western Reader. New York: Penguin, 1997. 488.
Maguire, James H. "Marilynne Robinson." Twentieth Century American Authors. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 206. Ed. Richard H. Cracroft. Detroit: Gale, 1999. 251-260.
Robinson, Marilynne. "My Western Roots." Old West-New West: Centennial Essays. Ed. Barbara Howard Meldrum. Moscow: U of Idaho P, 1993. 165-172.
Schaub, Thomas. "An Interview with Marilynne Robinson." Contemporary Literature. 35.2. (1994): n.p.
This essay was submitted by a student of Joanne Davis, an English teacher at Emmett High School in Idaho.