The Stone Angel
SynopsisPlot
In The Stone Angel, Hagar Shipley, age ninety, tells the story of her life, and in doing so tries to come to terms with how the very qualities which sustained her have deprived her of joy. Mingling past and present, she maintains pride in the face of senility, while recalling the life she led as a rebellious young bride, and later as a grieving mother. Laurence gives us in Hagar a woman who is funny, infuriating, and heartbreakingly poignant.
Story
About this book
Hagar Shipley is ninety years old and losing her hold on the present, though not on her memory. In Margaret Laurence's novel, Hagar narrates her own life, moving between her days of physical decline and the decades behind her. She grew up as the daughter of a respected merchant, married against her family's expectations, and later knew grief as a mother. The book follows her attempt to understand how the pride that sustained her also cut her off from those closest to her.
Past and present alternate throughout. Hagar recalls her divided feelings toward her husband and the sharp difference in how she treated her two sons, with strong attachment to one and neglect of the other. She is sometimes regretful and rarely apologetic. Fear of appearing unrespectable or of needing too much shaped many of her choices, and her pride worked as both armour and barrier. Laurence keeps her voice funny, exasperating, and exact.
The Stone Angel appeared in 1964 and is set largely in Manawaka, a fictional prairie town that Laurence used across several books. She drew it from Neepawa, Manitoba, where she grew up, so Hagar's remembered prairie has a real counterpart on the map.
