ORDINARY HAPPINESS: MARILYNNE ROBINSON'S TRAGIC ECONOMIES OF DEBT AND FORGIVENESS

In the wake of the 2008 debt market collapse and the ensuing home foreclosure crisis, the figurative economies that guide common conceptions of the American home as a basic social unit have been radically shaken. After this most recent period of deregulation and market manipulation, there is a renewed urgency to re-imagine the home as the figurative and economic foundation of family life. In the lead-up to this economic tragedy, Marilynne Robinson's novels have employed this familial and economic symbol of the home to define the psychological and spiritual basis of liberal Christian thought without recourse to the fiscal austerity. Analyzing Robinson's depiction of familial and economic symbols in her novels, Mauro opines that the fictional spaces take up a complex aesthetics of forgiveness and refuge that divests them of the symbolic economy of debt and exchange.