MANI NASRY LOVED 'THE STONE ANGEL' JUNE/2008 'DID YOU'

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MANI NASRY READS "The Stone Angel" BY MARGARET LAURENCE JUNE 12/2008


Best-known of Margaret Laurence's series of novels set in the fictitious town of Manawaka, Manitoba. In parallel narratives set in the past and the present-day (early 1960s), The Stone Angel tells the story of Hagar Currie Shipley. In the present-day narrative, 94-year-old Hagar is struggling against being put in a nursing home, which she sees as a symbol of death. The present-day narrative alternates with Hagar's looking back at her life. Hagar's Journey A woman’s search for meaning begins in the Currie household and ultimately leads to the cannery by the sea. Trace this odyssey taking intoaccount Hagar’s final stay in the hospital. Finding meaning in one's life can be a very difficult and long journey. In Margaret Laurence's novel The Stone Angel it chronicles the life of Hagar Curry Shipley, a 90 year old woman with a strong spirit and free will who has struggled her whole life to communicate with her true self and with the people around her. The novel is told through her eyes and through her memories, it weaves the past and the present taking you from when Hagar was a spirited, black haired little girl to when she is a senescent, gray haired woman. Throughout her life you see that she cannot show her true emotions because of her pride which blinds her. This repressing of her emotions begins at a very young age when she is growing up in Manawaka. Hagar was raised along with her two older brothers, Matt and Daniel, by their father Jason Currie. Jason Currie was a man who demanded respect, he was as Hagar described him, "a self made man" that "had started without a bean" and "had pulled himself up by his bootstraps." He owned his own store and was very proud of it and the prestige it brought him, you can see this when Hagar says, "Father took such pride in the store - you'd have thought it was the only one on earth. It was the first in Manawaka, so I guess he had due cause. He would lean across the counter, spreading his hands, and smile so wonderfully you'd feel he welcomed the world." As you can see Jason Currie's pride is very apparent and it is this pride and the idea of status that he passes onto Hagar. Very early on in the story we see Hagar bottling up her emotions as a little girl. When her father punishes her in the store for speaking aloud infront of a customer and not minding her manners she refuses to cry. She beleived that by crying she would show that he had won and because of the pride instilled upon her by her father she would not let him have this victory. It is after this punishment that Jason Currie tells her that shes takes after him and that she's "got backbone." Another instance when she could not show her emotions at an early age was when her brother Daniel at age eighteen fell into a hole in the ice while skating backwards and was later dying of pneumonia. Matt wanted Hagar to comfort her brother by wearing her mother's shawl but Hagar could not do it. Even as Dan was dying, they were afraid to call their father for help because they were scared he might view it as their mistake and punish them. This shows how Jason Currie pretty much prohibited emotional expression in the family because of his stern discipline which stemmed from his sense of pride. When Hagar is sent to college in Toronto she beleives that her brother Matt "should be the one to go." But she is unable to tell him before she leaves and later on she starts crying because she wanted to express this to her brother but could not. She has thus missed one of the first of many oppurtunities in her life to express her feelings. Jason Currie was a major factor in shaping Hagar's emotional landscape and would continue to be a factor in her life as she became a young woman. When she came back from college a new man entered her life, Bram Shipley. Hagar met Bram at a charity dance, one of the few dances she was allowed to attend since her father did not approve of them. But she was allowed to attend this one because it was for charity and she was accompanied by Auntie Doll. Bram and Hagar decided to get married even though Jason Currie did not think Bram was good enough to marry her. After the marriage Hagar's relationship with her father was effectively over. This is another indication of Jason Currie's pride and it also show Hagar's rebelious nature towards it. But even though Hagar attempt to be rebellious towards her father you will see that in her life she becomes exactly like him. During their marriage, Hagar rarely showed emotion towards Bram . Even when they were making love Hagar would shut in her emotions and not show that she was enjoying it. This was a perfect oppurtunity for Hagar to share a closeness with Bram but she does not capture it. Hagar and Bram eventually had two children, Marvin and John. When Marvin went off to the war she wanted "to beg him to take care of himself," but instead she criticizes Marvin "for being less than eloquent in his speech at this moment." Also when John was going to marry Arlene, Hagar does not approve because she beleives they are not right together, thinking that they did not have money and that John drank far too much. This non approval of her son's marriage and her inability to communicate with her children can be seen as a parallel to her own father, Jason Currie. Hagar tried to stop the marriage by conspiring with Arlene's mom, Lottie Dreiser, to send her down east to work. This leads to John getting drunk and attempting a daft stunt with his car which leads to his and Arlene's tragic demise. After John died, a matron at the hospitol put her arm around Hagar and said "Cry. Let Yourself. Its the best thing." But Hagar shoved her arm away and refused to cry in front of strangers no matter what it may cost. That night when she was home she still could not cry, stating "The night my son died I was transformed to stone and never wept at all." Hagar does not begin to realize the meaning of her life and how she lived it until she is ninetie years old. Now living with her son Marvin and his wife Doris in the old Currie household. She has become a "holy terror" for them acting unreasonable and being an overall burden. For example when Marvin and Doris wanted to go out to the movies they got a neighbor to come over to watch Hagar but Hagar protested stating "You think I need a sitter, like a child." The comment spurred an argument and the eventual end to Marvin and Doris's evening plans. Marvin and Doris plan on sending Hagar to an old folk's home named Silverthreads, but Hagar escapes to Shadow Point. It is there that she finds and stays at a cannery and makes jewels out of dead June bugs. An act Hagar when she was young would never do. Later on in the cannery she meets a man called Murry F. Lees. Murray Lees starts talking about his life and invites Hagar to do the same. Hagar mistakes Murry Lees for her son John and talks aloud about her feelings of his death to Murry Lees. After she is done telling her story she is crying and tells Murray Lees that John's death was "Pointless. Done for a bet." Hagar is finally expressing her emotions openly and talking about John's death honestly. Her speaking about this, symbolically absolves Hagar for the responsibility of John's death. She is finally beginning to discover the meaning to her life. Hagar's transformation has begun and it continues when she pardons Murray Lees the next morning for breaking his promise of not telling Marvin and Doris. At first Hagar wants to pardon him but cannot as her stoic self comes out. "…He is waiting for me to pardon him. I'm about to say the words - I know, I know, you really couldn't help it - it wasn't your fault. But these are not the words that come. 'Can't stop - ' The first I've spoken today, and my voice croaks. 'Born in us - meddle, meddle - couldn't stop to save our souls'" But after remembering the conversation they had the night before Hagar does the following, "Impulsively, hardly knowing what I'm doing, I reach out and touch his wrist. 'I didn't mean to speak crossly. I - I'm sorry about your boy.' Having spoken so, I feel lightened and eased. He look surprised and shaken, yet somehow restored." This one meeting with this stranger has allowed Hagar to do something she could not do her whole life, and that is to show real emotion. Hagar was taken to the hospital after leaving the cannery. It was discovered from her X-rays that she was ill and would not survive much longer. At the hospital she stayed in a room with three other women. At first she did not like her environment and requested to change rooms but after getting to know the patients, most notably Elva Jardine she started to feel a sense of community with them. Elva Jardine helped her out alot in the hospital and Hager says to her, "“I’m obliged to you, Mrs. Jardine.” It was a genuine show of gratitude from Hagar and another example of her shedding her stone shell. Later when transfered to a semi private room, Hagar meets sixteen year old Sandra Wong who was due to have her appendix taken out. Hagar assures the girl that it would be okay and that having your appendix out is not painful, even though Hagar never really had experience with this type of surgery. After the girl came back from surgery she was in pain and sounded reproachful towards Hagar saying, "I feel just perfectly awful. You said it would'nt be bad." Later that night Hagar is awaked by Sandra Wong's crying and discovers that she needs to go to the bathroom but the nurse does not here her call. Hagar attempts to get the nurse by putting on her light but the nurse does not come. Hagar feels sympathy for the girl thinking that, "She's never been at the dubious mercy of her organs. Pain and humiliation have only been words to her. Suddenly I'm incensed at it, the unfairness. She should'nt have to find out these things at her age." And with that thought Hagar was determined in getting her a bedpan, so Hagar with all her strength and fueled by her own pride got up and got the bedpan for the girl. Just then the nurse walked in and was shocked that 'Mrs. Shiply' was out of her bed. Later on Sandra and Hagar laughed together at the nurses reaction towards Hagar getting up. This laughing was a show of an outward show of emotion Hagar rarely had during her lifetime. Another situation where she shows her emotion was when Marvin visits her in the hospital and asks how she is, she replys, "'I'm - frightened. Marvin, I'm so frightened-' …I think it's the first time in my life I've ever said such a thing." The old Hagar would have never admit that she was scared becuase her blinding pride would make her cover up what she really felt. Hagar also tells Marvin, "“You've not been cranky, Marvin. You've been good to me, always. A better son than John," as a way of pardoning him even though she knows in her heart John was always her favourite. In the last days of her life she is finally coming to terms with herself and her emotions. The stone angel which marks the grave of Hagar’s mother becomes a symbol for Hagar. It represents her blindness, stubborness, and inability to express emotion. Hagar’s identification with the stone angel emphasizes how inhuman and alone she felt throughout her life. Like the stone angel who is without sight, Hagar did not have sight to see herself as she really is. As her journey unfolds before us we see her change from the stone angel to a human being able to show emotion in the last few days of her life. She did this through meetings with new people and remembering the past, this then allowed her to gain a deeper understanding of herself. Many parts of her life were tragic and she cannot change what happened in the past. But the fact that she finally discovered herself in the end makes her story a herioc and inspiring one.
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MANI NASRY MESSAGE TO YOU IF YOU LIKE TO READ IT: MY TEACHER "Karen Leslie-Lyttle -She was in the film called "The Toy (1982)" AT HB STUDIO GAVE TO TO ME AS AN IN INSPIRATION-

FROM ME TO YOU DON'T QUIT WHEN THINGS GO WRONG AS THEY SOMETIMES WILL, WHEN THE ROAD YOU'RE TRUDGING SEEMS ALL UP HILL, WHEN THE FUNDS ARE LOW AND DEBTS ARE HIGH AND YOU WANT TO SMILE BUT YOU HAVE TO SIGH, WHEN CARE IS PRESSING YOU DOWN A BIT, REST, IF YOU MUST, BUT DON'T YOU QUIT. LIFE IS QUEER WITH ITS TWISTS AND TURNS, AS EVERYONE OF US SOMETIMES LEARNS, AND MANY A FAILURE TURNS ABOUT WHEN HE MIGHT HAVE WON HAD HE STUCK IT OUT; DON'T GIVE UP UP THOUGH THE PACE SEEMS SLOW- YOU MAY SUCCEED WITH ANOTHER BLOW. SUCESS IS FAILURE TURNED INSIDE OUT- THE SILVER TINT OF THE CLOUDS OF DOUBT, AND YOU NEVER CAN TELL HOW CLOSE YOU ARE, IT MAY BE NEAR WHEN IT SEEMS SO FAR, SO STICK TO THE FIGHT WHEN YOU'RE HARDEST HIT- IT'S WHEN THINGS SEEM WORST THAT YOU MUST NOT QUIT.