![]() ![]() She cooks for her, serves her breakfast in bed if she is too weak to come down in the morning, makes her tea in the afternoon and bakes her cakes and cookies. They are both in their sixties and as Doris grapples with her own gradual physical decline, she is Hagar’s primary caregiver, while Marvin continues to work as a paint salesman.ĭoris, a religious woman, is dutiful in caring for Hagar, even as she becomes increasingly exhausted by the strain. Doris and Marvin would be empty nesters, with their own children now adults leading their own lives, but they’re hardly living their golden years. It’s her house, furnished with her things, but her son and daughter-in-law have lived with her for many years and are now tasked with caring for her. ![]() She lives in British Columbia with her eldest son Marvin and his wife Doris. And in Hagar’s twilight years, her fragility and vulnerability - her desperate struggle to overcome the awful indignities of ageing - soften the sharpest edges of her character, as does the knowledge that we gain of the tragedies she experienced in life. Yet she’s also self-aware it’s her sense of quiet remorse that makes her likeable. This harsh, aloof woman is quick to judge and slow to forgive and understand. Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel, New Canadian Library, McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, 1993 edition, 316 pgs.Īt first glance it’s tough to like Hagar Shipley - the narrator of Margaret Laurence’s 1964 novel, The Stone Angel. ![]()
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