Representations of space in Marilynne Robinson's novels

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the different representations of female characters in contemporary American women's literature in the interior and exterior spaces, and to show that these representations are related to the gender roles that are imposed on them and the ways in which they follow while rejecting these roles. Marilynne Robinson's novels, Housekeeping (1980) and Lila (2014), which were examined in the thesis, revealed that the representations of women inside and outside the house were different. In the analysis of these novels, two different theories were applied. The first of the them is space theories. It claims that the concepts of space and place are different from each other and they are formed by the gender roles. As many theorists have pointed out, space is flexible, open, blurred and has no boundaries; the place is closed, sheltered and surrounded by borders. Therefore space connotes freedom, but the danger and rootlessness because the boundaries are not clear; the place evokes both constraint and security. Mostly men are defined with space and women with place. Men are represented by external life and globality, and women by private life and locality. The other theory used in the thesis is the feminist theory. It shows that this has been differentiated by the spread of Second Wave Feminism in the 1960s and 1980s, and the involvement of women in the post-World War II labor force, and the shift in gender roles and the concept of family. In particular, the Third Wave Feminism and the feminine definitions attributed to women have been criticized in a more radical and political discourse. Women will no longer be associated with their only place, the "home," but instead they have taken action by destroying this locality and stability. American female writer Marilynne Robinson tried to reflect the relationship between space and place by female characters in her novels. In both of her novels, Robinson redefined the notion of women under the influence of feminist waves. She represented female characters in different places and reflected their desire to cross borders. Robinson's women did not submit to traditional codes, on the contrary, rebelled against social norms. In this thesis, the female characters in Marilynne Robinson's two novels written after 1980, Housekeeping and Lila, are examined based on these two theories. The female protagonists in the novels are open to change and progress. They cannot find a place in the society in which they live neither socially nor religiously. Rather than being trapped in a restricted place, such as a home, they desired more free and unlimited places. It has been shown how our heroines cope with this patriarchal order and, where appropriate, cross the borders in the west of the United States.