THE STONE ANGEL

The Stone Angel

                                                                                    by Margaret Laurence
About THE STONE ANGEL

The Stone Angel is a novel by Margaret Laurence first published in 1964. The heroine of the novel is Hagar Shipley, a 90-year-old woman who is endowed with a sharp mind and a proud, unyielding temper. Hagar is having difficulty coming to terms with her own death, and for that reason, she is desperately resisting her son's efforts to place her in a nursing home, as she perceives this as a symbol of her demise. She decides to run away from home, and, left alone, she becomes immersed in reflections of the past, taking the reader through the story of her life and the many tumultuous events that have shaped her.
The novel was Laurence’s first to be set in Canada, in the fictional town of Manawaka that features in many of her other novels. It is consistently ranked as one of the top Canadian novels of all time. The Stone Angel was also chosen as one of the books in the 2002 edition of Canada Reads. Margaret Atwood, also a notable contemporary Canadian novelist, writes of The Stone Angel: “Hagar’s sheer durability, the irreplaceable woman’s voice, the creative admixture of memory and imagination in a compelling first-person narrative—all these features, plus the fact that the novel turns up on more high school English courses in this country than any other homegrown work, ensure The Stone Angel a foundational place in the English Canadian literary canon.”
The Stone Angel was adapted into a film in 2007, directed by Kari Skogland. The film was not a great commercial success, but it still received a lot of positive critical attention.
CHARACTER LIST
Hagar Currie Shipley
Bram Shipley
Marvin Shipley
John Shipley
Jason Currie
Lottie Dreiser
Doris Shipley
Murray Lees
Matt and Dan
Elva Jardine

THE STONE ANGEL SUMMARY

The book opens with Hagar Shipley, the 90-year-old narrator, describing the Manawaka graveyard, especially the stone angel statue that sticks out for its large size and high quality. Hagar reveals that much like Regina, to whom the statue is dedicated, she has been forgotten. She recalls walking in the cemetery as a girl and the contrast of the more dainty flowers with the wildness of the prairie landscape. Hagar expresses that going back into her memories and smoking cigarettes are some of her only remaining pleasures in her old age.
Hagar recalls being a young girl. She was very much like her stern, store-owner father, while her brothers took after her mother more. She remembers her father whipping her brothers with birch leaves, and how they, in turn, beat her. She remembers a time that her father beat her for saying in front of a customer at the store that there were mice in the sultanas. She did not cry when he beat her, which surprised her father.
Hagar speaks about the other children in town that she grew up with and memories of doing schoolwork, which she always excelled at. Her father would emphasize to Hagar and her two brothers that they must work harder than others to get ahead in life. We learn about her father’s upbringing and how he made his own business from nothing after his own father lost his business after being cheated by his partner. We also learn that Hagar’s mother was not alive during her childhood: she was raised mostly by their housekeeper, called Auntie Doll.
Her father never remarried and she can only remember one time when she saw her father talking alone to a woman, which was when she accidentally saw him while she was reading at the cemetery: he was talking to the mother of a neighborhood girl, Lottie Dreiser. When Lottie’s mother died of consumption and Hagar informed her father, he behaved as if he had never had a relationship with this woman; his comments on her death remained with Hagar all her life.
Hagar describes her brothers, Matt and Dan. Matt was always somewhat of a miser, working and hoarding money until he finally spent it on a fighting cock that lost in a match. Dan, on the other hand, was less inclined to work and was a bit of a hypochondriac. When Dan was 18 years old, he fell into the ice-cold river and later developed pneumonia. As he became weaker, Matt asked Hagar to comfort him. We learn that their mother died in the birth of Hagar and that Dan, the oldest child, still remembers her. Hagar feels distance from her mother and cannot bring herself to soothe her brother like her mother would have.
Hagar’s inability to comfort Dan in his dying moments reminds her of when, as a girl, she visited the town trash dump and saw a bunch of dying, suffering chicks that she also felt unable to help.
Back in the present, Hagar is interrupted by Doris, her daughter-in-law, who knocks on her door. Hagar describes Doris as a dowdy woman who fakes timidness and enjoys being a martyr. Hagar gets out of her chair to come down for tea and falls due to the pain under her ribs. Marvin, her son, runs up and helps her get up again. He is annoyed with Doris, who tends to panic when Hagar falls.
The three of them go to have tea and Hagar is surprised by the assortment of cakes that Doris has prepared. She is suspicious of her extra effort and feels that something is amiss. Finally, Marvin and Doris announce that they wish to sell the house and move into an apartment where it will be easier for Hagar to get around. Hagar is angry and insists that it is her house, and they can’t sell it. Marvin reminds her that she actually transferred the title to him years before. Hagar thinks about all of her things in the house and how they would not be able to fit in an apartment. Marvin drops the subject and says they will discuss it another time.
Doris is going to church and asks Hagar to come, but she declines, thinking that the minister does not have much to offer her. She thinks about how her eyes, even now that she is past 90, are still the same eyes she had as a young girl.
In the present day of the story, Hagar is visited by the local minister, Mr. Troy. She is discussing how her father was a very wealthy man but never shared any of it with her. Internally, she feels that Mr. Troy is not able to actually understand her, even though he appears to try. Hagar recalls when she became an adult and her father sent her to the east for college, where she learned so-called feminine skills such as planning a menu and embroidery. Her brother Matt stayed behind and worked at her father’s store. When Hagar comes back from school, she upsets her father by telling him that she wants to work as a school teacher.
She does not end up being a teacher and instead works for her father, acting as a hostess and keeping his accounts. One night at a dance, she meets Brampton Shipley and feels an attraction to him. Brampton’s first wife had died suddenly and left him as a widowed father of two girls. Hagar’s father disapproves of him, calling him lazy. Lottie Dreiser also warns her that Brampton is “common as dirt.” When Hagar informs her father that she will marry Brampton, he is infuriated and does not participate in their wedding, feeling that it is a betrayal of him. Since that moment, she has been estranged from her father.
Hagar moves into the Shipley house, which is musty and dirty. Bram takes her virginity, which is very shocking to Hagar, who never imagined what it would be like. The next day, she scrubs the house clean.
Back in the present, Mr. Troy tells Hagar that it is important for her to have people her age to whom she can speak. He says a prayer and then leaves. Hagar wanders into the kitchen and sees an ad in the newspaper, circled in pen, for a nursing home. She momentarily loses her breath. Doris asks her about her time with Mr. Troy, and Hagar calls him “rather stupid,” which annoys Doris. Hagar again tells her that she does not want the house sold, nor does she want to go to a nursing home. Doris tells her to settle down so that she does not fall again.
Hagar thinks about how Marvin and Doris greedily consider all of her things their own. Through looking at her items, Hagar goes back to different memories. She thinks of her mother and how puzzling it is that she died during her birth rather than during the birth of her brothers. Her father never held it against Hagar, almost as if it was “a fair exchange, her life for [Hagar's].” We learn that Hagar’s brother Matt developed influenza and was cared for by his wife Mavis until his death. Mavis informed Hagar that Matt went quietly, without a struggle for life, which disturbed Hagar. Even after Matt’s death, Hagar still did not hear from her father, nor did she hear from him when Marvin was born.
Hagar starts telling Doris which items she wants left to which relatives, at the same time reminding Doris that she is not going to die anytime soon. Doris tells her not to talk like that in front of Marvin, as it upsets him and makes his stomach ulcer worse. At dinner, Doris and Marvin inform Hagar they are going out to a movie and that a young girl will stay with Hagar to make sure she is okay. This angers Hagar, who does not want to feel like she needs a babysitter. Marvin, frustrated with Hagar, changes his mind and says they won’t go out.
Doris retreats to her bedroom and sits in her much-adored armchair. She remembers going to Manawaka each week with Bram for their shopping. There was one instance when Bram spoke rudely to Hagar’s childhood friend Charlotte Tappen after she asked him a question. This furthered the poor image of Bram within the community. Hagar reconsiders the question of who was in the wrong in that incident. Hagar was frequently embarrassed by the unsophisticated way in which Bram spoke; eventually, she stopped going to town with him.
Marvin and Doris knock on her door and timidly try to tell her about how a nursing home would be best for her. Doris tells her she is no longer able to care for Hagar daily, especially because Hagar wets her sheets almost every night. They insist on how nice and comfortable a place it is; Marvin even repeats part of the advertisement that Hagar saw in the newspaper, which makes her laugh with scorn. Hagar is in disbelief. They tell her to go to sleep and that they will discuss it more the next day.
As Hagar tries to sleep, her feet cramp and she tries to turn on the lamp, but instead she knocks it over and breaks it. This causes Doris to wake and run over to Hagar, who insists she’s fine and brushes away her coddling. She goes to the bathroom and then sits awake, smoking a cigarette, thinking of Bram and how he was the only person who ever called her by her name instead of titles like 'Mother' or 'Daughter'. She gets into bed and imagines it as a field of snow, drifting to sleep while feeling as if she were “caught in a blizzard.”
Hagar is in Doctor Corby’s waiting room examining his walls and lack of decor, which sends her into a train of thought about the paintings in the Shipley house and Bram’s love of horses. After much argument between the couple, Bram bought a stallion and a few mares. One time, the stallion went missing on a cold winter’s night, and Bram was unable to find it. At that moment, Hagar sympathizes with him and there is a rare moment of emotional tenderness between them, where Hagar finally feels open to engaging in sex with him. But after that, their relationship goes back to its normal coldness.
Back in the present, Doris scolds Hagar for gawking at a painting and speaking loudly in the waiting room. Hagar remembers being at church with Bram and Bram’s loud derision of the new reverend, which embarrassed Hagar. The doctor sees Hagar and she is annoyed with the way in which Doris lists all her symptoms to him. She is also annoyed at the doctor’s fake show of niceness. Doctor Corby examines her, a process which Hagar finds humiliating. He suggests she gets some X-rays.
On the bus ride home, Hagar is near tears. Doris suggests to her that they take a car ride out into the country after supper. On the drive, Hagar is nestled in the backseat; she would be happy if it were not for Doris’s frequent explanation of the sights around them. It turns out that Marvin and Doris are driving Hagar to the Silver Threads nursing home. Hagar goes into a panic and tells them she refuses to go inside, believing they have brought her there to stay. They reassure her that it is just to have a visit with the matron.
The matron gives the three of them a tour through the nursing home, and Hagar is unimpressed. The matron suggests that Hagar have tea with other elderly people while Marvin and Doris speak with her. Being at the nursing home reminds Hagar of being in the hospital to give birth to Marvin. She had believed she was going to die in childbirth like her own mother. Hagar is approached by another old woman who complains about someone in the nursing home who fakes illness to get extra food. Next, another lady comes by named Mrs. Steiner, whom Hagar immediately likes.
Mrs. Steiner tells Hagar about her daughters and how she was also made to come to Silver Threads against her wishes. Hagar tells her she has two sons, one of whom was killed in the war—which is a lie. Mrs. Steiner tells her that she will see her there in the nursing home soon; Hagar, offended, gets up and wanders into the garden, where she sees an old man. Doris comes chasing after her, and Hagar demands to go home.
In the next chapter, Hagar is getting her stomach X-rayed at the hospital; this is an excruciating experience for her. She feels that the technicians are disembodied presences who regard her with boredom. As she is getting the X-rays, she thinks about how she has often waited for something in life that never came. She remembers when Marvin was a child and how impatient she would be with him. Eventually, he would spend less time inside and more time outside working with Bram. Hagar remembers how Bram changed after ten years of marriage, starting to become more boastful to the workers on their land.
Hagar describes what she perceived to be the shabby and neglected quality of their property, and how Bram would sometimes disappear after the harvest to hunt and drink with his friends. His antics frequently led to arguments between the couple, although once they were in bed together, they would engage in a routine sort of sexual encounter that Hagar never protested.
Hagar’s X-rays are finished. Later, they get the results; Marvin and Doris tell her that the doctor has recommended she be put in the nursing home so she can get the proper care. Once again, Hagar resists, and Doris sets up another meeting with Mr. Troy. During their conversation, Mr. Troy encourages Hagar to be open to the new possibility of the nursing home and to pray to God for strength, but Hagar is skeptical of having faith in anything.
Hagar recalls giving birth to her son John, who was much younger than Marvin. John was the child whom she favored. He was very curious and strong. She would often tell John about his grandfather, her father Jason, and how he would have been proud of him. Hagar starts to sell eggs from the farm so she can earn cash independently of her husband—an idea she gets from Bram’s daughter, Jess. One day, she delivers eggs with John to Lottie’s house and feels ashamed that she is called the “egg woman” by Lottie’s child. After that, Hagar speaks badly of Lottie and her husband; John tells her to “shut up.” Hagar later sells her mother’s valuable dishes to Lottie to earn some money and to be able to escape from Bram’s house.
Back in the present, Hagar is awoken by Doris for dinner. After dinner, she goes with her to the corner shop and is outraged to see a young woman with black nail polish. When they return home, Marvin tells Hagar that he has already arranged for her to stay at the nursing home and that she will be going in a week’s time.
After being informed she will be going to the nursing home, Hagar starts to think of schemes for how she can escape this fate. She considers traveling to a nature spot she remembers called Shadow Point, using money from her old-age pension check. She pivots back in memory to when she sold her dishes and earned enough money to leave Manawaka. She packs her bags with the 12-year-old John and discusses how she might find a job as a housekeeper on the coast. John is nervous to leave Manawaka for the first time. Hagar informs Bram of her plans to leave, and he does not seem to care at all. Hagar and John board the train to leave. On the ride, John tells her that he has traded her father’s plaid pin for a jackknife.
In the present, Hagar wakes up the next morning and takes her check. While Doris is out, she sneaks off to the bank and gets her money. She goes to the bus depot and tries to find her way, having to ask people for help often. She takes the bus to her location and buys food items from a convenience store, where she has a tense conversation with the clerk. A man gives her a lift to Shadow Point. As she walks towards the beginning of a huge stairway, she is suddenly hit by exhaustion, realizing she has not brought any water. She makes it to the top of the stairs, feeling pain throughout her body.
She takes a nap on the floor of the abandoned house there and wakes up a bit later, almost forgetting where she is. She eats but is very thirsty and desires a cup of tea. She looks through the house and sees it has previously been occupied by tramps. Despite this, she enjoys being in a new place. She flashes back to becoming the housekeeper for Mr. Oatley, a rich, older man who lives on the coast. She kept his house very neat, although no one ever visited him, and he entertained her with stories of his days in the shipping industry.
John helps Hagar in Mr. Oatley’s garden and goes to school, where he adapts well and makes many friends—or, at least, that is what he tells Hagar. Soon, she realizes that he is often lying about having friends and what he does after school, but she never directly confronts him about it. When John is in high school, he starts making actual friends and girlfriends, but he always keeps his social life distant from Hagar. John becoming a man is something she does not like to think about in the daytime, put in the same unthinkable category as Bram and her intimate relationship with him. Though their life there was calm, Hagar now reflects on how she can never like or accept fully how her life turned out.
Chapter 6 begins with Hagar waking up in the moldy bed of the abandoned house with rain coming through the window and falling on her. It is very cold and dark. She fades in and out of knowing where she is at the present moment, forgetting things and believing she is back at her family house, blaming Doris for the coldness. When she doesn’t hear Marvin and Doris moving downstairs, she feels again as if she has been abandoned.
Hagar remembers when John was college-age and she tried to save up so he could get an education. She invested money in the stock market, but the market crashed during the Great Depression and she lost everything. John gets temporary jobs that don’t last, and it’s hard to find full-time work during such harsh economic times. He decides instead to return to Manawaka, to the Shipley house, which outrages Hagar. John has been in correspondence with Bram, who has had a girl there to cook for him. Bitter, Hagar tells John that his father never much cared for him.
After John has been back living with Bram for 2 years, he sends Hagar a letter informing her that Bram is unwell and may not live much longer. Instantly, Hagar knows she must travel to Manawaka and visit. When she arrives, she sees that Bram’s property has been affected by the ongoing drought, and she is dismayed at the neglect of the house. John is also dirty and malnourished. He is now in the business of making champagne and he drinks all the time. Hagar goes to see Bram, who is shrunken and does not even recognize her, clearly suffering from some sort of mental deterioration. John gives Bram “medicine” that is just alcohol, and this infuriates Hagar.
Hagar, staying at the house, quickly discovers that John has adopted the same coarse way of speaking and acting that his father has. When they come across the daughter of Lottie Dreiser, Hagar is appalled at the way John speaks to her. Another day, Hagar asks John to take her the cemetery so she can see how her father’s grave has been cared for. There, she is upset to see the stone angel statue toppled over. John helps her to push it back up. She discovers it also has lipstick smeared all over it and she wipes it clean, wondering who could have done such a thing.
Marvin comes to visit in Manawaka; he and John frequently bicker. Bram does not recognize Marvin nor Hagar—to whom he starts to refer as “this woman.” One night, she hears Bram call her name in his sleep and she momentarily wishes she could converse with him and say sorry. Soon after, they find Bram dead. Against the wishes of Bram’s daughters, Hagar is inspired to have Bram buried at the Currie family plot and adds the Shipley name to the headstone. When she asks John if this was the right thing to do, he seems apathetic. Yet after Bram is buried, it is John who cries rather than Hagar.
Hagar wakes up the next morning feeling parched and momentarily contemplates leaving and trying to get back home. She quickly decides against this, feeling too proud to admit she was wrong. She finds some rainwater to drink in a pail outside and takes a walk to the sea. At the beach, there are a little girl and boy playing. Hagar approaches them, offering them food, which frightens them—they run away. Hagar then falls while walking and is left on the beach, in pain and helpless. She becomes angry, which gives her the strength to pull herself back up.
Hagar remembers telling Mr. Oatley that she will stay a few weeks more in Manawaka after Bram’s death. She doesn’t want to leave John alone. She spends her time there cleaning the house and, one time, finds a small box that had belonged to Bram’s first wife, Clara. Hagar brings the box to her daughter Jess’s house and is surprised to find John there. She overhears them speaking about Bram, and Hagar is angered that Jess has taken on a sort of motherly role with him.
John is often going out with Arlene and drinking a lot of alcohol. One night, Arlene brings him back to the house, and he is extremely drunk. Hagar is ashamed of him, mostly because she is worried that others in town have seen him in this state and that her reputation has been ruined. Hagar goes back to the coast, to Mr. Oatley’s house; she tries to persuade John to join her, but he refuses. Hagar returns to Manawaka the following summer while Mr. Oatley is on vacation and sees that Arlene is now spending time at the Shipley house, often cooking for John. Neither of them has a job or money. Hagar has an argument with Arlene after warning her that John is not right for her.
One night, Hagar overhears a conversation between John and Arlene where they talk about how they will get married once Hagar leaves in two months. Arlene also tells John she wants to have his baby, but he reminds her that they are broke. Hagar is unable to move, lest she is caught eavesdropping, and has to overhear them making love. Later, Hagar finally pushes herself to go talk with Lottie Dreiser about John and Arlene’s relationship. The conversation starts off with both of them undermining the other with snide remarks, but they quickly realize they are in a similar position: they both care about their child’s future.
Back in the present, Hagar makes her way back from the beach and decides to stay in the old cannery instead of the abandoned house. The cannery is full of old things and Hagar makes herself at home, finding a blanket and a table at which to eat. She sees dead June bugs that have pretty colored backs, and she puts them in her hair. There is a seagull trapped in the house and its panic disturbs her. She throws a crate at it and injures the bird; she only feels annoyed. She hears dogs barking loudly outside and fears they will come to get her.
Hagar then hears someone enter the cannery. It is a man named Murray F. Lees. At first, Hagar is sure that he has been sent by Marvin to get her, but Murray assures her that he has just come to the cannery to get some peace and escape the dogs. He informs her that the dying seagull served as bait for the dogs and allowed him time to run away from them. Murray settles in and shares some wine with Hagar. He speaks on and on about his life, but Hagar finds his voice soothing. He says certain coarse things that rub the Hagar the wrong way, but she continues to listen, drinking more and more wine and starting to feel lighter. The drinking softens her attitude towards Murray.
Murray tells Hagar the story of he and his wife’s dabbling in an apocalyptic Christian cult and how they put their lives on hold, believing through this cult that the end of the world was near. One night, Murray and his wife left their baby son at home to go to a church meeting. Murray returned home from the meeting to find that their house had caught on fire and their son had been killed. When he expresses this to Hagar, there is a quiet moment between them and she reveals that she has also lost a son. Hagar reassures Murray that there is no one to blame for the situation.
Hagar flashes back to when John told her that Arlene was moving east to work in the house of a family member. One night before Arlene leaves, John takes the truck out to see her and never comes back. Henry Pearl appears at the house to inform Hagar that John has been in an accident after making a bet. He drunkenly drove his truck across the trestle bridge and was hit by a freight train. Arlene was also in the truck with him and died. Hagar suddenly realizes that such an incident is no one’s fault: it is merely fate unfolding. She sits with John in the hospital as he is dying. In pain and slowly dying, he asks her if she can do something for him, but he quickly realizes she cannot.
Back at the house, Hagar cannot even cry and realizes at this moment she has been transformed into stone. After John's death, she can’t bear to go to the graveyard and see where he was buried. She eventually sees Lottie, but their relationship is now broken and Lottie is in deep grief. Hagar sells the Shipley place and returns to Mr. Oatley’s house on the coast. World War II starts and Hagar reads in the newspaper that many of the boys in Manawaka are killed in battle.
Back in the present, Hagar embarrassedly realizes she has told the whole story of John’s death aloud to Murray. He reassures her that it is good to get it out. Hagar emphasizes how pointless his death was. Murray and Hagar fall asleep and in the middle of the night. Hagar wakes up, feeling sick. She has thrown up due to all the alcohol she consumed. Woozy, she wakes up Murray and talks to him as if he were John. Murray comforts her, and they fall back asleep.
The next morning, Hagar wakes up in the cannery and Murray is gone. Hagar feels faint and cannot exactly remember the conversation from the night. She feels bereaved, as if she had lost someone recently. Suddenly, the door opens and in walks Marvin and Doris, who have been led there by Murray. Doris fusses over Hagar, but all Hagar can do is remain quiet. In her heart, she does feel somewhat grateful to see Marvin. Hagar acts snippily towards Murray, and Doris reminds her that he has saved her life. She apologizes to him and apologizes about the loss of his son, and he responds in kind. Marvin and Doris take her in the car and tell her that she is going to be placed in the hospital. Marvin also reveals that the X-rays found a serious disease—one which Hagar, as our narrator, does not name.
Hagar is placed in the public ward of the hospital because there is no room anywhere else. A nurse forces her to swallow two pills. Around her, the other women in the room groan, pray, sing, and make other types of noises. She wakes up and some of the other patients tell her that she has been talking and stirring all night, which Hagar can hardly believe to be true. She speaks to one particularly small and shriveled old woman named Elva Jardine. Elva has no children and no financial means to stay anywhere but the public ward.
Marvin comes to visit Hagar and Hagar complains about the ward, asking him to move her. Doris is not well and Marvin is worried about her; as he leaves, he promises to ask about the private room. Elva is visited by her husband Tom, and she tells him that she is doing well and will be home soon. Later, the nurse tells Hagar that Elva is actually not healthy and is not going home anytime soon, if at all. Hagar tries to go to the bathroom on her own, but the nurse insists she is not well enough to do so.
Hagar and Elva have a conversation, discussing their lives and their husbands. Hagar is surprised by Elva’s kindness and expresses this to her. In the middle of the night, Hagar wakes up in pain and calls for the nurse. The nurses cannot give her the pain pill that she desires and Hagar can’t help but lash out at the nurses in frustration. Later, the pain subsides; she calls back the nurse and apologizes. The next morning, she is visited by the doctor; at first, Hagar tries to lie about her condition. Then, she realizes the absurdity of this, and she tells him honestly about her pains.
Doris and Marvin visit Hagar, bringing her roses and her nightgown. They inform her that her granddaughter, Tina, is going to get married. Doris is worried that she is perhaps not marrying the right person, but Hagar is happy to hear the news. She takes her sapphire ring and asks Doris to give it to Tina. Marvin announces to Hagar that he has been able to secure a semi-private room for her; Hagar is annoyed and sad to hear this, having become accustomed to her company with the women in the public ward. Marvin is frustrated that she changes her mind so many times.
Hagar moves to the private room and makes a morbid remark to the nurse about how her next room will be even smaller, referring to the "room" where she will be buried. She chats amicably with a young nurse and blurts out that she is lucky to be so young and healthy. Hagar notices something troubled in the nurse’s eyes and can’t imagine what she has to be sad about, but then she instantly realizes that there are “plagues” in every generation.
Hagar is sleeping and temporarily forgets where she is, waiting to hear Bram’s voice. Instead, she hears the nurse calling her name. Hagar has been sleepwalking, and now the nurse puts a restrictive bed jacket on her so that she does not fall again. Hagar is appalled, finding the measure to be cruel and oppressive. She falls asleep anyway and wakes up to find a 16-year-old girl named Sandra Wong in the bed next to her. The girl is nervous, there to get her appendix removed, and Hagar tries to assure her that it is not a painful procedure. Hagar can’t believe how much concern the girl has about something that is so minor compared to Hagar’s predicament.
Doris visits Hagar, bringing Mr. Troy to speak with her. Mr. Troy does not know what to say and asks if Hagar wants to pray. Hagar instead suggests he sing a hymn about coming before God and rejoicing. The hymn moves Hagar greatly, making her realize that she has spent a lifetime in pride motivated by fear instead of listening to her heart. She is moved to tears and tries to explain this to Doris, who does not understand. Then her grandson Steven visits and they speak. She senses the distance between them and his inability to tell her what is really happening in his life. She wishes she could tell him that she would love him no matter what he did in life.
Hagar’s roommate is done with her operation and is in pain. Sandra is mad at Hagar for telling her that it would not hurt very much. Hagar tells her that she would be lucky if that were all the pain she experienced in life, which offends the girl. Later at night when Sandra desperately needs a bedpan and the nurses won’t come, Hagar gets up from her bed to get her one, hating to hear the girl suffering. The nurse discovers Hagar out of her bed and is shocked. Her shock brings Sandra and Hagar much laughter. As Sandra recovers from her operation, she helps Hagar with small things.
Hagar speaks with Marvin and she tells him that he’s been a good son; he, in turn, apologizes for being cranky to her. Later, she hears him call her a “holy terror” to the nurse with a mixture of anger and tenderness. Hagar thinks about the sole two moments in life when she has felt free. She also recalls when John was born and he gasped for air, not yet accustomed to breathing. She is in pain and calls for the nurse. She demands water and takes the glass, feeling reassured. The book ends with “And then—“, leaving the reader to imagine what is next for Hagar.
Symbol: The Stone Angel
At the beginning of the novel, the narrator introduces a stone statue of an angel, ancient and battered by the ravages of time and the elements. Hagar, the narrator, identifies strongly with the statue. Hagar is rigid and unbending in her attitudes, abrasive and hard to many of the other people around her, and disinclined to express her feelings or to consider the well-being of others. Yet she is not completely without emotion: she feels the negative emotions of guilt, sorrow, and regret; she is simply unwilling or unable to express them, even when she is alone.
That Hagar should choose a stone angel as a symbol for herself is also a reference to her excessive pride. An angel is a more exalted and holy creature than a human being, and as a literal angel, so too does Hagar believe herself to be superior to the people around her.