Karina Garcia

The Stone Angel Analysis Assignment

5. Analyze and interpret the theme of pride as it reveals significant aspects of the
central characters personality.
Pride is such an intriguing yet simple word. It is truly extraordinary how one word can
lay the foundation for the reasoning behind of peoples daily decisions. Pride shapes many of
their most beloved characters in many of their most beloved stories. Not only pride uses to
rationalize the decisions that they make regarding themselves. Pride can also be derived from
many of the decisions they make that impact their relationship with others. People often let pride
mask their true feelings. Pride is defined as the quality or sate of being proud. This definition
can't be more applicable than it is to Hagar's character in the short story The Stone Angel, by
Margaret Laurence. Throughout The Stone Angel, it is clearly apparent that whether it being
negative or positive, pride has a significant effect on many of Hagar's relationships with other
characters. The main character is Hagar Shipley refused to compromise which shaped the
outcome of her life as well as the lives of those around her. Pride was my wilderness and the
demon that led me there was fear [I was] never free, for I carried my chains within me, and
they spread out from me and shackled all I touched. (Laurence, 292). Hagars pride and
stubbornness were the causes of her failed relationships and lack of love in her life. Her
excessive pride destroyed her relationships with her father, brother and husband. It also led to
the death of her son John. Her stubbornness caused her marriage to dissolve, Marvin to be
unhappy, her daughter-in-laws frustration, and her own death. Hagars overwhelming pride was
the reason she could not show love or affection to those around her. She inherited her pride from
her father and from an early age she always refused to show emotion because she was too proud
of let anyone see her weaknesses. Her father made aware that she had backbone and that she
took after him (p.10). The first sigh of Hagars excessive pride was shown when her father
scolded her for telling a customer that there were bugs in the barrel of raisins. She refused to cry
before and after the punishment: I wouldnt let him see me cry, I was so enraged (p.9). She
continued to build a wall around herself to hide her emotions. Her pride interfered with many
relationships in her life. Hagars pride and her lack of emotions ruined her relationships with her
father, brother, husband and son. Hagars stubbornness was another cause of her and her familys
unhappiness. Due to her stubbornness Hagar didnt find true love. In addition, Hagars
stubbornness got in the way of her and her familys happiness and destroyed her and the lives of
those she cared about. In conclusion, Hagars Shipleys refusal to compromise, due to her
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excessive pride and stubbornness shaped the outcome of her life and those around her. Her pride
destroyed her relationships with her father, brother, husband and her son John. Her stubbornness
denied happiness for her marriage, Marvin and Doris. It also led to the cause of her death.

2. To what extent is Hagar responsible for her isolation from society in The Stone
Angel.
In life, one sees that a person is often solely responsible for her/his own isolation from
society. In The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence, the author illustrates that various traits in
Hagars personality ultimately cause her isolation in all her relationships. The pride she inherits
from her father gives her a false sense of superiority. As a result, she keeps herself emotionally
distant from the people she loves the most, and consequently, the choices she makes drive her
deeper and deeper into solitude. These aspects of Hagars personality are what prevent her from
making true human connections.
Indeed, Hagar is controlled by her pride. Laurence uses Hagars attachment to her
pride to demonstrate that the adversity that one faces is responsible for shaping character and
identity. The resulting consequences of Hagars extreme pride define her character by causing
her to judge others, have a lack of emotion, and suffer from self-imposed isolation. The
challenges that Hagar faces throughout her life ultimately mould her character and define her to
be a stone-cold woman who holds no joy in her life. Henceforth, Hagar Shipley endures many
trials and eventually comes to the fruition of her redemption. The road to redemption, the
changes that she experiences, is shown by the entire plot of the story.
In essence, Margaret Laurences The Stone Angel, the story of Hagar tells of a very
elderly woman and her struggle as she comes to terms with her past. The imagery associated with
the motif of escape in The Stone Angel, found throughout Hagars journey, emphasizes her own
self-centred personality. Hagars escape from the various men in her life has led to her strong
independence, her destructive selfishness, and her undeniable pride.

4. Analyze and interpret Laurences use of flower imagery as it reveals significant

aspects of the central characters personality.
Margaret Laurence uses image of prim peonies and wild cowslips along the Manawaka
cemetery. Hagar is the protagonists in the novel of The Stone Angel, describes the funeralparlour perfume of the planted peonies, dark crimson and wallpaper pink, the pompous blossoms
hanging leadenly bowed down with the weight of themselves and the weight of the rain. This
foreign flower is planted along the side of cemetery by men, not nature; they serve to civilize
the land. This image is contrasted by Hagars description of the cowslips, whos scent would
rise momentarily through the hot rush of disrespectful wind. They were tough-rooted, wild and
gaudy flowers. Although they were torn out by loving relatives determined to keep the plots clear
and clearly civilized, for a second or two a person walking by could catch the faint, musky, dust
tinged smell of things that grew untended and had grown always. The image of these flowers
evoke the contrast of civilized versus uncivilized, foreign and native, Jason Currie versus
Brampton Shipley. Though Hagar understands that the planted peonies must be left to decorate
the earth, she has a subtle inclination towards the wild and musky cowslips. But despite her
inclinations, both are now a part of the cemeterys surroundings. Consequently, though Jason
Currie represents the kept and upright values that helped to civilize Manawaka, Bram is
something more liberating and closer to the earth. Hagar signifies the connection of both natures
within herself when she joins their names on her family plot in the cemetery, so the stone said
Currie on one side and Shipley on the other, connected by the hyphen that is Hagar (184). This
is the symbol of two pioneering families brought together for the purpose of growth,
transformation, and reconciliation. Hagar is the medium between the two archetypical extremes,
which represents the essence of the prairie pioneer. By the very fact that Hagar is a woman
coming into her own, she reflects the notion of a young country coming of age. Struggling
between English and French, native and foreign, Canadian and not British or American, Canada
similarly establishes itself with its own identity. It has become a nation of pluralistic elements,
integrating the histories of century-old settlers alongside newly received cultures to create an
ever-changing meta-culture that continues to evolve even today.

1. Analyze and interpret the following statement. Hagars inability to express her
inner emotions inevitably leads to unhappiness and regret.
Throughout her lifetime, Hagar faces a self-inflicted emotional isolation that can be
likened to the harsh physical isolation of life in the prairies. Hagar values her independence over
her relationships with others, and this sternness of character damages her relationship with her
two brothers. When her brother Matt asks Hagar to act as their mother during the final moments
of Dans life, she refuses to do so even though it would comfort Dan. To play at being her it
was beyond. Hagar was crying, shaken by torments he never even suspected, wanting above all
else to do the thing he asked, but unable to do it, unable to bend enough (25). Hagars inability
to bend causes her relationship with her brothers to deteriorate because she is not willing to make
a sacrifice or compromise her own strength for their sake. She becomes as solid as stone. Her
actions reflect the inevitability of solitude in the prairie lifestyle, because the strength of
character. Particularly, Hagar takes after her father, who is harsh and unyielding, whereas her
brothers Matt and Dan take after their mother and exhibit a weakness that Hagar detests. Though
Hagar may be the source of her own isolation, just as her father had been for himself, who never
remarried after his wifes death, and never had a lasting relationship with any of his children
this isolation provides her with the ability to subsist in her environment. Consequently, Hagar
uses isolation as a means of protection. Hence, it is easier for Hagar to repress her emotions
rather than thoroughly experience them. She admits that her stone-like exterior is a means of
self-protection. She has to be strong and self-sufficient in order to survive, for only she could
secure her own well-being.
In conclusion, Hagar is unreconciled to old age and approaching death, relentlessly
critical, unable to reach out to others, always ready to think the worst of people. Hagar is a stone
angel indeed and imprisoned in her own mind. She is unable to bring light to herself or to those
around her. However, although the weight of the novel is on the negative aspects of Hagar's
behavior, she eventually goes some way towards breaking down the walls she has built around
her, and finding redemption. By the end of The Stone Angel it is a ruined reminder of how a life
spent standing firm and upright has not led her anywhere and like her pride, it is wounded and
harmed. Never for a moment does the novelist imply that transformation is easy, or that the long
habits of the past can simply be discarded without a trace.

6. With reference to The stone Angel, show how Laurence develops a central
character who is unable to charger her course of action.
Margaret Laurence, in her novels, presents human life to predict the dilemma of man
by planting humanity in all its nakedness bringing the real picture out of the social and
environmental conditions. Laurence places human life in the situation where people respond with
vitality. In The Stone Angel, the novelist presents the personal account of the last few years of
the ninety years old protagonist, Hagar Shipley. With memory in form of chaotic energy, the old
narrator responsively twisted episodes and events of her past life into the agonizing present one.
The novel's structure follows the development process of Hagar's mind and character. In the
beginning, Hagar is blind and lifeless like the statue of The Stone Angel in the graveyard of
Manawaka. Throughout her life she conceals her emotions to protect her sense of pride and
position, and lives in her own world of self-sufficient isolation. She encounters with her personal
demons, struggles to provide meaning and purpose to her life through the process of selfexamination. At the extremity of her life, though Hagar's recognition of need to rejoice and her
restraining pride are very much personal, yet, at the same time, her situation can be generalized
as a description of the situation of a whole generation. According to Patricia Morley, Hagar
Shipley is the first in a series of memorable women. Laurence presents universal concerns in
terms of Canadian experience over four generations. She allows us to see into the hearts of her
individual characters, their society and ourselves. Hagar's life journey moves from spiritual
blankness to redemption, from resistance and revolt to acceptance and adaptation. In the very
beginning of the novel, Hagar looks odd due to fat and old age, and appears harsh, arrogant,
ailing and frightened old woman with a sharp tongue to sting and satire others as well as herself,
and her nature is battered by the self-willed surprise of her life. Presently, she is nearing her
death with almost nothing to look back on with pride. It seems that her life has been governed by
her concern of outward appearances and manners, but she is still exceptionally full of enthusiasm
for life. Towards the end of the novel, she struggles to maintain her dignity, independence and
finally her hesitant, unwilling, rebellious journey towards her self-knowledge. The way Hagar
confronts the life situations and problems testifies to the fact that she has dismaying strength of
both mind and body, and strong sense of independence that flow from both cultural background
and personal fondness.