The Housekeeper and the Professor

The impact of memory on personal relationships is one way the novel interrogates relationships, but the novel explores these relationships in other ways, as well. All of the characters come from dysfunctional relationships and must overcome the challenges that come with such situations. The narrator grew up without a father, and also mostly without a mother, as her mother worked long hours; likewise, Root is growing up without a father, and spends long hours on his own while his mother works. The Professor, too, comes from an atypical family: His brother was much older, and he lost his parents young; not long after earning his doctorate, the Professor lost his brother as well.

However, these characters develop a rather familial relationship—father figure, mother figure, and child—showing that family isn’t limited to bloodlines or convention. The Professor’s love for Root is unconditional—he believes in the purity of children and our need to protect them; it doesn’t matter to him that Root is the child of his housekeeper. This, in turn, instills warmth in the narrator that had previously been lacking—she felt a duty toward Root, but now begins to show love and respect for him as well. The Professor’s love makes the narrator respect him in ways that cross the boundaries of employer-employee relationships. Finally, the widow, who was unable to believe anyone could care for the Professor as she did, comes to realize the impact they’ve had on him, as well as the other way around.

The novel leaves ambiguous the relationship between the Professor and the widow, though Ogawa hints that there might have been a romantic relationship between them at one point. The true nature of their relationship may be irrelevant—perhaps it’s enough to show that they are able to be close without defining that closeness as romantic, much as the narrator is able to become close with the Professor despite being his employee.

The Professor’s love of mathematics transcends traditional boundaries between art and science, and the novel frequently portrays mathematics as something fundamental to our understanding of the universe. At the start of the novel, the narrator sees things in practical terms: As a single mother, she is concerned mostly with doing her job and making ends meet. However, the Professor’s approach to numbers greatly affects her, and she begins looking for the hidden secrets of the everyday numbers she comes across the way he does. Even when she moves on to new clients, she carries a pencil to explore numbers whenever she comes across interesting ones.

The hidden beauty of everyday numbers underlies the Professor’s belief in number theory as the driving force of the universe. He argues that numbers and mathematics have always existed in “God’s notebook”—all we do is peek inside, discover what’s there, and bring it back to the human realm. The Professor approaches problems with an exploratory attitude; as a result, he’s just as fascinated by what he doesn’t know as he is by what he does know (perhaps more so).

However, the novel also brings these impulses into conflict. For example, while the Professor is able to get lost in his puzzles, the narrator must choose between her housekeeping duties and her interest in numbers—if she’s thinking about math, she isn’t working for her clients. We also see this conflict in the Professor’s love for baseball, which he has only experienced through numbers and statistics—despite his devotion to the Tigers and Enatsu, he’s never seen the actual game played. As a result, the narrator is able to give him the beauty of the game as it appears before her eyes, while the Professor is able to show her and Root the beauty of the numbers behind the game.