The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence (1964)

Let's Talk About It!The story centers around ninety year-old Hagar Shipley, an aging woman living with her son and his wife. Hagar is forgetful, spiteful, remorseful by turns, but always evincing an indomitable spirit. Born and raised on the prairies of Manitoba, Hagar is of the pioneer generation. Her father was one of the early settlers of the town, the fictional Manawaka, and she has inherited his stubborn Scottish resolve and temper which have dogged her all her life.

Laurence skillfully reveals Hagar's past through a series of flashbacks, and the reader is taken on a tour of this woman's life as she struggles with her present failing condition (she suffers from mild dementia, like a child at times in her manner, and she is diagnosed with what appears to be cancer—her precise disease is never mentioned in book) and her angers and resentments about the past. In her memories Hagar sees her childhood and her relationships with friends and family in that small prairie town. She remembers her stubborn streak and her marriage that flew in the face of all her father had hoped for her. She remembers those times when she could not "live and let live," but instead meddled and coerced, resulting in a lifelong series of disappointments and grief. Hagar has always prided herself on being independent and self-sufficient, and in these last days of her life, she realizes what a price she has paid over the years.

The present action of the novel concerns Hagar as she becomes increasingly unable to care for herself and therefore becomes an intolerable strain on her son and his wife. Hagar is full of recriminations and anger, but she is childlike and illogical. She needs assistance with most everything, yet she angrily refuses help; she is incontinent, yet she denies it; she knows she is a burden, yet she denies it even to herself. She is alternately lucid and clouded in her mind, moving back and forth between the present and the past, between her stubborn resolve and the fear and disorientation brought on by her age.

Biography of Margaret Laurence

Margaret Laurence (1926-1987) is one of Canada's finest authors. She has received many awards for her work, including the prestigious Governor's Award for two of her novels, The Diviners and A Jest of God. She was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1971, and has received honorary degrees from several Canadian universities. The Stone Angel is the second in Laurence's Manawaka series.

A documentary, "Margaret Laurence - first lady of Manawaka" was produced by the National Film Board of Canada in 1979. Many of her works have been adapted for radio and television and many of her books have been translated into other languages.

She was born in Neepawa (the town on which Hagar Shipley's Manawaka is loosely based). Her first writing job was as a reporter and book reviewer for the Winnipeg Citizen. She married John Laurence in 1947, and they moved to Africa in the early 50's where he worked as a civil engineer. Margaret Laurence has lived in England, Canada, Somaliland, Ghana, Greece, Crete, Palestine, India, Egypt, and Spain. In general her early work deals with her travels in Africa, while later works are often set in the Canadian West. Her later novels (including The Stone Angel) often include the theme of women struggling for self-realization in a male-dominated world. In her final years, she served as Writer in Residence at the Universities of Toronto and Western Ontario and Trent University, and was appointed Chancellor of Trent for the years 1981 - 83.

Book discussion questions for The Stone Angel

  1. What is the significance of the title, The Stone Angel?
     
  2. When Hagar is visiting the old age care facility (against her will), she has a conversation with a Mrs. Steiner who lives there.

    "Do you get used to life?" she says. "Can you answer me that? It all comes as a surprise. You get your first period, and you're amazed—I can have babies now—such a thing?Is it mine? Did it come out of me? Who could believe it? When you can't have them any more, what a shock—It's finished—so soon?" When the children come, you think—

    I peer at her, thinking how peculiar that she knows so much.

    "You're right. I never got used to a blessed thing."(104)

    How does she mean this? Discuss what things Hagar never got used to and what effect it has had on her life.

  3. Hagar's daughter-in-law Doris tries to care for her in many ways, and she invites the local minister, Mr. Troy, to visit. On page 120, Troy asks if Hagar believes in "God's infinite mercy."

    I blurt a reply without thinking.

    "What's so merciful about Him, I'd like to know?"

    We regard each other from a vast distance, Mr. Tory and I.

    "What could possibly make you say that?" he asks.

    Pry and pry—what does he want of me? I'm tired out. I can't fence with him.

    "I had a son," I say, "and lost him."

    "You're not alone," says Mr. Troy.

    "That's where you're wrong," I reply.

    In what ways does Hagar feel alone? What do her comments about God reveal about her beliefs?

  4. Hagar has struggled all her life to be independent and "right, no matter the cost. When her son John dies (she knows in her heart that she drove him to it), she closes up. When a well-meaning nurse tries to comfort Hagar, she responds with the old resolve.

    She put a well-meaning arm around me. "Cry. let yourself. It's the best thing."

    But I shoved her arm away. I straightened my spine, and that was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my entire life, to stand straight then. I wouldn't cry in front of strangers, whatever it cost me.

    But when at last I was home, alone in Marvin's old bedroom, and women from the town were sitting in the kitchen below and brewing coffee, I found my tears had been locked too long and wouldn't come now at my bidding. The night my son died I was transformed to stone and never wept at all. When the ministering women handed me the cup of hot coffee, they murmured how well I was taking it, and I could only look at them dry-eyed from a great distance and not say a single word. All the night long, I had only one thought—I'd had so many things to say to him, so many things to out to rights. He hadn't waited to hear. (242-243)

    Comment on this passage.

  5. While she is in the hospital, near the end of the book, Mr. Troy comes to visit. He is surprised that she asks him to sing a version of the doxology. He does, and she has this reaction.

    I would have wished it. This knowing comes upon me so forcefully, so shatteringly, and with such a bitterness as I have never felt before. I must always, always have wanted that—simply to rejoice. How is it I never could? I know, I know. How long have I known? Or have I always known, in some far crevice of my heart., some cave too deeply buried, too concealed? Every good joy I might have held, in my man or any child of mine or even the plain light of morning, of walking the earth, all were forced to a standstill by some brake of proper appearances—oh, proper to whom? When did I ever speak the heart's truth?

    Pride was my wilderness, and the demon that led me there was fear. I was alone, never anything else, and never free, for I carried my chains with me, and they spread out from me and shackled all I touched. Oh my two, my dead.. Dead by your own hands or by mine? Nothing can take away those years. (292)

    Discuss her revelation.

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Last updated: October 20, 2006 - 11:19am by eric.hildreth