Symbolism in The Stone Angel Essay

The Stone Angel

Margaret Laurences novel The Stone Angel is a critically acclaimed novel, as well as a major Canadian text. It has remained in Canadian English courses in both high schools and universities for many reasons, to the delight many English teachers and professors. The novel is ripe with beautifully worded and simply sublime metaphors and illusions. The novel is excellent for students, as it leaves them with little morsels of questions to chew at and pick over. The most immediate question that generally springs to mind is one of the namesake of the book; the stone angel, and which character in the novel she represents. Through various illusions and metaphors, Margaret Laurence uses the stone angel within the novel to represent Hagar Shipley; the narrator and further more unregenerate sinner of the novel.

Over the course of the novel, both Hagar and the stone angel degrade in value throughout novel aesthetically, and socially. Although starting out as pure white marble(p.3), the stone angel quickly becomes dirtied by the fierce seasonal changes in Manawaka: Her wings in winter were pitted by the snow and in the summer by the blown grit, decades later into the novel the stone angel has fallen, the marble angel lay toppled over on her face, among the peonies, and the black ants scurried through the white stone ringlets,(p.178). Hagar herself is degraded not by time, but the harsh realities of life. Hagar moves from the upper social class within Manawaka to the poorest through her marriage to Bram Shipley. Even Lottie Drieser whom Hagar feels is both and lower class calls Bram common as dirt, as everybody knows(p.47). With her marriage to Bram, Hagar is disowned losing immediate value in the social structure of Manawaka.

Both the stone angel and Hagar are blind to the world around them. Summer and winter she viewed the town with sightless eyes. She was doubly blind, not only stone, but unendowed with even a pretense of sight.,(pg.3). The stone angel is obviously literarily blind, but also the

artisan who made the statue carved her eyeballs blank. Hagar too, in a sense is doubly blind. She is blind both to the other people around her, It hurt and hurt, and afterwards. . .Because I had not known, as well as blind to her own needs, It was not so very long after we wed, when I first felt my blood and vitals rise to meet his. He never knew. I never let him know. I never spoke aloud.(p.81) Hagar cant understand anything around her, as she is blinded by her own refusal to look at life properly.

Throughout the novel, both the stone angel and Hagar wear masks, that cover up their true nature. The angel wears a mask of makeup, whereas the one Hagar wears is clothing. Someone had painted the pouting marble mouth and the full cheeks with lipstick,(pg.179) Although the makeup on the angel is an act of vandalism, John concludes that She looks a damn sight better, if you ask me.(p.179). The stone angel is pitted, old and worn by that point in the novel, the makeup hides some of these flaws, making the angel appear more whole than she is. Upon returning to Manawaka to care for her dying estranged husband, Hagar dons her mask of clothing. She tries to insure she is always extremely well dressed, projecting an image of wealth and status, compaired to the people in Manawaka.

Works Cited

Laurence, Margaret and Adele Wiseman. The Stone Angel. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988.