The Stone Angel Published 1964 I ABOUT THE AUTHOR Canadian author Margaret Laurence was born Margaret

Wemyss in 1926 in Neepawa, Manitoba. Both her parents died when she was a child: her mother in 1930 and her father in 1935. Young Margaret, her step-brother and step-mother then moved into the home of her grandfather, an autocratic man who was the town undertaker. He had a library which must have brought her many happy moments looking through books, at pictures of plants and animals from faraway countries. Though the Trans-Canada Highway runs through Neepawa, it is still a quiet, small town, and when the young people grow up many of them still move away for work or an education. Margaret Wemyss left Neepawa to attend Winnipegs United College, graduating in 1947, and then worked as a reporter for the Winnipeg Citizen. Also in 1947, she married Jack Laurence. He took a posting overseas in Somalia, so the Laurences traveled first to London, England, then to Africa. Margaret Laurence lived in Africa from 1950 through 1957, the first two years in Somalia and the next five in Ghana (before independence, called the Gold Coast), where her husband was working as a civil engineer. She bore two children: Jocelyn in 1953 during a trip to England, and David in 1956 in Ghana. During this time she translated Somali poetry and prose. Her career writing fiction began with stories set in Africa. On returning to Canada in 1957, the Laurences settled in Vancouver. There she finished her first novel, This Side Jordan, her first short story collection, The Tomorrow-Tamer, and a memoir of her two years in Somalia, The Prophets Camel Bell. In 1962, Laurence separated from her husband and moved with her children to England. She sent the only copy of the first draft of the novel The Stone Angel by post, in a box of bulky items (including her sons sneakers) that she could not afford the extra fee to bring on the airplane. She lived in England for a decade, during which time she wrote five books about the people of a fictional town named Manawaka, based on the little town of Neepawa where she grew up. Returning once more to Canada, Laurence settled in Lakefield, Ontario, in 1974. She wrote book reviews and essays as well as four childrens books. All her life, Laurence maintained a lively correspondence with several authors, including Adele Wiseman, Sylvia Fraser, and Al Purdy. In her latter years, Laurence received critical acclaim, including more than a dozen honorary degrees and two Governor-Generals Awards for Fiction. She was the subject of two films released by the National Film Board of Canada, and was celebrated as a grand lady of letters, though she lived simply. Margaret Laurence died at home in Lakefield, Ontario, on January 5, 1987. II OVERVIEW In The Stone Angel Hagar Shipley thinks back over all her ninety years, from her childhood in a small Prairie town, to her marriage to an uncouth man, and the raising of two sons for whom she never learned how to show her love. III SETTING The novel has two settings: a frame and a narrative, both set in a realistic representation of Canada. The narrative is set in Hagar Shipleys memory, mostly in and near the fictional town of Manawaka, Manitoba, where she was born and grew up, and where her husband and younger son

John died. The frame is set in Vancouver, British Columbia, where Hagar lives with her older son Marvin and his wife Doris. IV THEMES AND CHARACTERS In all five novels that Laurence wrote about people from the fictional town of Manawaka, there are a few ongoing charactersin particular the half-breeds who lived outside the community, up Galloping Mountain way as the local expression went. The Tonnerre family function to some extent in The Stone Angel as what the esteemed author Robertson Davies called fifth business: an opera term for the character who is neither the hero nor heroine, rival nor villain, but one who holds an important part of the story. Without the fifth business character, the hero does not win and the story cannot be completed. If Hagar could ever know why Bram Shipley and his son John walked away time and again from the farm labor to be with the Tonnerres, talking and trading and drinking with them, she might have known why she married Bram and why she later left him. Among the friends with whom Margaret Laurence corresponded about writing and about their lives was Adele Wiseman. When this novel was still a rough draft, Laurence wrote to Wiseman several times about the process of composing and editing Hagars story. This book of mine, you see, has been written almost entirely without conscious thought, Laurence wrote in 1961, and Wiseman quotes her in an afterword to the 1988 New Canadian Library edition of The Stone Angel. Although the conscious thought will enter into the re-writing, on the first time through I simply put down the story as the old lady told it to me (so to speak) & let it go where it wanted, & only when I was halfway through did I realize how it all tied together & what the theme was. I didnt know it had a theme before, nor did I know the purpose or meaning of some of the events & objects in the story, until gradually it became clear. The theme, simply, is Hagars unbending pride that will not allow her to reach out to take or to give the simple human comfort that is all any of us have of value. Ancestors (good or bad) are dead, inheritances wither, material wealth is spent or sold, finery clothes bodies that reach out for touching, and our children are lost to us through work, time and even death. When Hagar learns to understand herself and her past, she begins at last to be able to be kind to others. It is a small and hollow comfort, but there is no other. V LITERARY QUALITIES When Laurence began her literary career, to describe oneself as a Canadian female writer from the Prairies was almost to apologize three times. The emergence of womens writing during the latter half of the twentieth century was different in Canada from the powerful polemics written in America or Britain; in Canada, the writers characteristically expressed themselves in fiction. The early novels of Margaret Laurence were not instantly highly esteemed by all critics, some of whom preferred the work of Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer. Now it is those reviews that seem narrow-minded and small, compared to Laurences precise and compassionate depictions of realistic women like Hagar, at a particular time of life. If such lives are worth living, it seems Laurence is telling us, then it is certainly worthwhile to write and read about them. Laurence transcended the narrow-minded world in which she lived, even as she wrote about narrowminded Hagar. The Stone Angel is the most widely read of Laurences novels, partly because it is included on secondary school curriculums across Canada. It is not the finest example of her writingthat is arguably her novel The Diviners, which has even more autobiographical elements. It is, however, the most accessible of her Manawaka novels: quicker and lighter than The Diviners, less complicated than the multiple tracking of thoughts, spoken words and radio news broadcasts in

The Fire-Dwellers, and far less depressing than A Jest of God. The narrative is very visual in focus, though easily read aloud. Her use of language is correct and precise; her characters are identifiable and highly realistic; and her plot finds merit in the substance of real life experiences. VI SOCIAL SENSITIVITY The character Hagar holds strong moral beliefs and forms lasting opinions about the merits of every person she knows. She is not shy about expressing these opinions, in spite of the fact that her words rarely help the situation. This is a good novel to read before discussions about consequences to moral or ethical choices. We are shown the consequences of every choice Hagar ever makes. Hagar believes that her morals and ethics are the best, and it is devastating to her to discover when her clothing, statements or behavior are no longer proper. Hagar learns little regret throughout her long life, but what she learns of compassion redeems her. Many novels have been written about murder, religious conversion, or betrayalsbut only a master author could write about a woman looking in the mirror and have the readers as profoundly affected by the consequences as we would be if Hagar had fired a gun. Throughout her writing and her life, Laurence worked passionately for what she believed in, but she resisted all political or social labels. Her novels were never didactic, though her characters wrestled with timely moral dilemmas. Sylvia Fraser wrote of Laurence in an afterword to the 1988 New Canadian Library edition of The Fire-Dwellers that her basic themes were universaldecent, recognizable people groping for understanding of themselves and others, struggling through lost innocence to maturity, through pain to wisdom and an acceptance of their unique, often humble place in the universe. VII TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 1. What was the actual life expectancy for people born the year that the character Hagar was born in this novel? What factors influence life expectancy? Based on her longevity, what can you infer about Hagars lifestyle? 2. Was it a reasonable fate for the author to have Hagar live with her grown son and his wife after Hagar retired? Were such living arrangements usual or unusual in Canadian and North American families? 3. Colognes and perfumes are used casually today by many women, and some men. In Biblical times, expensive scents were used to anoint the dead. Can you think of any meaning Hagar might find in the gift of lily-of-the-valley perfume from her granddaughter Tina? What about when Sandra (who shares a room with Hagar in the hospital) dabs some of her own perfume on Hagars wrists? 4. Did growing up without a mother mean that Hagar had no chance to develop her abilities to nurture and give comfort? 5. Hagar never missed a meal nor wore rags in her life, but there was a human need that was never really filled in her, and which she never learned to satisfy in others. What might have changed in her relationships if she had somehow learned to give comfort? 6. Why did Hagars father object so bitterly to her marriage, if she was twenty-four and her new husband already owned a house and farm? 7. What are moral obligations? To whom are they owed? Hagar had answers, but were they correct? 8. What did a moral upbringing give Hagar that Bram Shipley or Jules Tonnerre lacked? Was it the moral upbringing that made such a social gulf between the Curries and the Shipleys? 9. Why were the Tonnerres completely off the social scale in Manawaka?

10. Does Hagar share any moral responsibility for the past actions of her employer, Mr. Oatley, who was a profiteering human smuggler? 11. In many scenes we are told the season, the temperature and the weather. Why was Hagar so aware of rain or snow or heat or drought when she lived in Manawaka? Why is the weather still important to her when she is ninety and living in Vancouver? VIII IDEAS FOR REPORTS AND PAPERS 1. In North American families, what living arrangements are commonly made by and for people of advanced years? When mobility, health or disability is a factor, what options are available in large cities? What about smaller communities or rural populations? 2. What forms of family planning, birth control and abortion were available to people born in a similar time and place to Hagar? How many pregnancies could women (married and unmarried) expect to have? What percentage of women died in childbirth? 3. Tuberculosis is a far more contagious disease than AIDS/HIV. How many people contracted tuberculosis in 1900? In 1950? In 2000? What factors influence the number of people becoming ill with tuberculosis each year? Why is the number currently increasing? 4. What sexual behaviors were considered possible options for men and for women when Hagar was a child? When she was a woman? When her sons were growing up? What were the consequences if a man behaved in socially acceptable ways? Or unacceptable ways? What were the consequences for a woman? 5. A family history book can be more than just a family tree with names and dates. See if you can find photographs of each personindividual pictures, candid and informal or group photos. Try to collect a story about each person, to be a piece of personal history such as an important life event, a favorite joke or recipe. 6. A community history book can also be more than just a list of names and dates, although some names can go back to a towns founding. What changes have come to your community since it began? Is the geology of the region important to local industry or to the layout of the buildings and roads? Is your community known for an unusual reason or a famous person, or can you say what makes life there ordinary? 7. What opportunities for education existed when Hagar was a girl? What did an education cost then, in dollars (compared to the cost of a loaf of bread or a wedding ring or a small house)? What did it cost in time spent away from family? What life choices were possible with an education? What factors kept such opportunities from being available to anyone? 8. What land was given to settlers in the province of Manitoba? Who lived there before the land was sectioned out and the railway laid? What Father of Confederation was born in the Red River colony that he later represented as a province in the confederation of Canada? Why was it possible that twenty years later he could be hanged as a traitor? 9. Where did the settlers come from, who farmed and built towns in Manitoba? Were they different from the people who settled in other western provinces? How did they interact with the aboriginal people and the Metis? 10. How is climate a determining factor in our lives? How does climate affect industry, housing and activities in your own community? Is there an ideal climate for human living? IX RELATED TITLES AND ADAPTATIONS There was a made-for-television movie based on The Stone Angel broadcast on CBC-TV, which also adapted other Manawaka novels by Laurence. Videocassettes of these movies are not commercially available.

The four other Manawaka novels are A Jest of God (1966) also known as Rachel, Rachelthe title under which it was filmed for CBC-TV, The Fire-Dwellers (1969), A Bird in the House (1970), and The Diviners (1974). There are some characters in common among the stories, and time progresses from the turn of the twentieth century to the mid-1970s. More than an interesting study of a period in history, as a whole this series is a master-work of Canadian fiction and of feminist writingfeminist not as in man-hating but in having realistic female protagonists leading believable lives. The series is similarly Canadian not just because the author is Canadian born and raised, and the stories are set almost entirely in Canada, but because the stories are about Canadian lives. Not even in America did people come from so many places to try to begin new lives while retaining their own authentic natures. The people changed and adapted of course; the land and climates of Canada allow for nothing less, and cultural imperialism from Britain and America changed even Scots settlers like Hagar Curries father. But to read novels like The Stone Angel in the last decades of the twentieth century was for Canadian readers like finding their own voices in bookstores filled to a great extent with books from America and Britain. Margaret Laurences novels are regarded as cultural treasures.