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Gendered Contradictions in Margaret Laurence's the Stone Angel and the Fire-Dwellers

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Gendered Contradictions in Margaret Laurence's the Stone Angel and the Fire-Dwellers Independence Versus Community: Gendered Contradictions in Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel and The Fire-Dwellers Cinda Gault teaches at York University, Traditionally, critics have aligned where her doctoral dissertation, Female and Margaret Laurence's Manawaka protagonists National Identities: Laurence, Atwood, and with each other in logical but now predictable Engel, 1965-1980, focussed on Canadian patterns. A Jest of God's Rachel Cameron is women writers who came to publishing a repressed spinster trying to reach beyond prominence during the Canadian nationalist her own small-town limits, while her sister, and second-wave feminist movements. The Fire-Dwellers' Stacey Cameron, is the Recent work examines Margaret Laurence's more successful of the two because she critical reception. strikes out for Vancouver with her husband and children. Since these sisters confront the Abstract same hometown and familial challenges, they Hagar and Stacey, two of Margaret are assumed to "constitut[e] a single Laurence's protagonists not usually imaginative unit" (Comeau 2005, 74); they considered together, share a host of inhabit "sister novels [that] end with gendered contradictions in their efforts to live acceptance and affirmation," and are full and balanced lives. They are victimized by ultimately "[r]econciled with the people they their efforts to survive, strive for agency only live with, but accepting [of] their human to find themselves more contained, and meet limitations...[and] ready for a change" (Stovel their needs by contributing to their own 1996, 77). oppression. A second conventional pairing Résumé features The Stone Angel's Hagar Shipley Hagar et Stacey, deux des protagonistes de alongside The Diviners' Morag Gunn, two Margaret Laurence qui ne sont pas courageous and independent women who habituellement considérées ensemble, leave their men behind. Oftentimes The partage un bon nombre de contradictions Diviners is credited with completing The dans leurs efforts pour vivre des vies pleines Stone Angel's symbolic contributions to et équilibrées. Elles sont victimes par leurs Canadian identity (Fulford 1974, H5; efforts pour survivre, elles s’efforcent pour Montagnes 1964, 17), and both novels are l’agence pour se voir encore plus contenues, heralded as triumphant women's stories that et rencontrent leurs besoins en contribuant à "relate the journey through life of a country girl leur propre oppression. into a wise and heroic adulthood" (MacSween 1974, 108).1 One wonders, then, why Margaret Laurence herself crossed these alignments by describing The Fire-Dwellers' Stacey as the "spiritual grand-daughter" of The Stone Angel's Hagar (Laurence 1983, 33). Based on the order in which she began writing her Manawaka cycle of stories, Laurence seems to have made the link between these two characters from the outset. After she completed The Stone Angel, she started writing The Fire-Dwellers, but www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 35.1, 2010 59 burned the draft and did not pick up Stacey's Hagar's Conflicted Independence story again until after she wrote A Jest of God Hagar's confrontational style leaves (King 1997, 246-47). no question about her formidable strength One ironic explanation for why and insistence on independence that flow Laurence paired Hagar with Stacey lies in the from both cultural background and personal author's politic characterization of these two predisposition. Simone Vauthier hypothesizes women as starkly different according to their that, "W hile Hagar's hardness is, in the overall generations, historical circumstances, context, largely induced by her milieu and personalities, and choices. Older generation upbringing, the Scottish Presbyterian ethics Hagar is a curmudgeon who sacrifices and the pioneer experience, putting a high everyone she has ever loved at the altar of premium on courage, independence, her own indomitable independence. 'character', the development of the 'rigidity' Comparatively, Stacey is a willing sacrificial isotopy underlines the personal, psychic lamb taken for granted by her family. These element in Hagar's obduracy" (Vauthier 1990, characters seem to walk through different 57). Her independence is demonstrated early doors to the same contradiction. Whether when as a child she embarrasses her father Hagar regards independence as her highest by drawing attention to the bugs in his sultana value, or Stacey values community, both raisin bin and then withstands his consequent experience the inevitably gendered tug-of-war punishment without tears. Even he recognizes between personal independence and a his style of strength and independence in her: crushing social pressure to trade autonomy "'You take after me,' he said as though that for the larger familial good. Susan Warwick made everything clear. 'You've got backbone, sheds light on why such turmoil has not been I'll give you that'" (Laurence 1964, 10). the focus of critical inquiry when she notes This same "backbone" makes sense that critics have tended to be "[l]ured to of Hagar's stand for independence years later discover coherence, order and harmony in when she rejects her father's attempts to [Laurence's] fiction" rather than focus on the make her a dependent angel in his house "contradictions the writing presents" (Warwick rather than allow her to accept a teaching 1998, 184). And yet it is in the contradictions post out in the world. Father and daughter where Laurence's insight is razor sharp. steam towards each other like trains on the Hagar and Stacey experience a host same track: she balks at his pressure to of gendered contradictions in their efforts to sacrifice her independence for the sake of his live full and balanced lives - both women are bookkeeping, and he insists on her victimized by their efforts to survive, both compliance in a world where women cannot strive for agency only to find themselves more vote, are not considered persons, and are contained, and as both insist on having their subject to a Victorian middle-class conviction needs met they contribute to their own that women's work is subordinate to men's. oppression. By considering these two novels An inspiration for female resolve, she reduces together, we can conclude that their the oppressive patriarch to pleading: protagonists do endure, but painfully so in a society that undermines the autonomy of "'Hagar-' he said. 'You'll not go, wives and mothers. The women's doomed Hagar.' The only time he ever called efforts to create fully human lives - no matter me by my name. To this day I who they are as individuals or how they go couldn't say if it was a question or a about trying - seem to argue implicitly for command. I didn't argue with him. women's widespread resistance to the forces There never was any use in that. But that diminish them. I went, when I was good and ready, all the same." (1964, 49) 60 Atlantis 35.1, 2010 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis When her father attempts to break her bland as egg custard" (1964, 4). She bases engagement to Bram Shipley by pointing out her sense of strength and independence on that marrying without family consent is "not exactly this difference when she declares, "I done," Hagar can almost taste her own used to wonder what she'd been like, that power: "'It'll be done by me,' I said, drunk with docile woman, and wonder at her weakness exhilaration at my daring" (1964, 49). and my awful strength" (1964, 59). At the Until she marries Bram, Hagar's same time, she distances herself from the independent streak seems promising. men closest to her in a campaign to deploy Regardless of obvious limitations in her ability her considerable strength in fighting the to nurture, evidenced by her unwillingness to unfairness of patriarchal privilege. As Brenda comfort her dying brother, she seems capable Beckman-Long points out, "[h]er opposition is of carrying through with her determination to motivated by an attempt to protect the live her own life. Promise eventually dissolves vulnerability of her position in society as a into despair because her act of standing up woman. Precisely because she is a woman, for herself against her father slowly but surely part of her self-discovery is that she has had backfires as she becomes a ground down to live 'alone and against' in order to preserve farm wife humiliated by her coarse husband. her autonomy in a male-dominated society" While iron-willed independence wins her (Beckman-Long 1997, 63). father success as a pioneer merchant, the However, in yet another narrative turn same trait costs Hagar a woman's ultimate of the screw, the same independent spirit that measure in her society - her father, husband, costs her human affinity also wins her and son. whatever small measure of power she attains: Hagar's marriage to Bram entrenches she goes where she wants, speaks to whom her in contradiction because, despite his she wants, and actively avoids situations she appreciation of her rebellious spirit, he cannot does not like. Hagar cannot complain about reward her bid for independence from her not having a voice when she acknowledges, father with anything beyond a hard physical "I can't keep my mouth shut. I never could," life of minding the hearth and bearing his and is recognized by her husband as the babies in an age before electric stoves and rebel who determines the fate of the family: washing machines. He does not have the "Bram looked at me. 'I got nothing to say, personal or financial resources to give her a Hagar. It's you that's done the saying'" (1964, life other than the one that wore down and 90; 142). In this context of her desperate fight most likely killed his first wife. Hagar's bids for for autonomy, she begins to understand the independence are marked by doomed contradiction of her independence: it is her attempts to change the men in her life.
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