Independence Versus Community: Gendered Contradictions in '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 ' 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. She is saving grace as well as her worst enemy, the no more able to transform Bram into latter especially so when she regrets what she someone who "prospered, gentled, learned has done to those she loves for the sake of it. cravats and grammar" than she is to convince quotes Laurence's wish for her own father to transcend his pride and female independence without sacrificing become involved with his grandchildren family: (1964, 50). The same independence that inspires Men have to be reeducated with the readers to call her a heroine inevitably minimum of damage to them. These isolates her. She eschews social communion are our husbands, our sons, our with other women because of her contempt lovers...we can't live without them, for traditional femininity. To her, willfulness is and we can't go to war against them. a differentiating characteristic from The change must liberate them as conventional femininity, a trait concretized in well. [Laurence] disagrees with her own mother whose more traditional extremists who state as a general passivity made her "a flimsy, gutless creature, principle that women should not have

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 35.1, 2010 61 children, or that women who leave widespread some of these feelings their husbands should dump the were....you weren't supposed to say children on them. (Atwood 1977, 36) those things out loud, to question the assumption that the woman's only In Hagar's life, this tricky negotiation does not role was that of housewife. (Laurence succeed, but her life ends at the beginning of qtd. in Atwood 1997, 36-37) the 1960s, a vantage point from which Laurence could look forward to the possibility Caught as she was between her of a balance of power between men and resentment of domesticity's small compass women, especially within the family and and her guilt about insisting on a career, workplace where their equality had been so Laurence may well have envisioned Tina as a obviously curtailed. step toward resolving the harsh trade-offs Laurence seems to offer Tina Shipley women have traditionally had to make for (Marvin's daughter, Hagar's grand-daughter) either independence or community. Tina has as the embodiment of hope for future a wider range of options, and does not independent wives and mothers. An emblem experience pressure to choose between of equality in her domestic partnership (the marriage and a career. very terrain that Hagar found so treacherous), Yet even as Hagar holds up Tina as Tina appears to be successful in combining a a symbol of hopefulness, her own experience career with marriage. Doris tells Hagar that as wife and mother leads her to question the Tina has gone "hundreds of miles away" to plausibility of this resolution actually working "take a job down East" (1964, 66). According for a woman: "I pray God she marries, to Tina's brother, Steven, "Mom wants her to although the Lord only knows where she'll find be married here, but Tina says she can't a man who'll her independence" spare the time and neither can August - that's (Laurence 1964, 62). Tina apparently does the guy she's marrying. So Mom's going to fly find a man who will bear her independence as down East for the wedding, she thinks" (294). a wife - as Bram may well have done for Evidently, traditional family wishes, no less Hagar had they never had children - but we approval, are secondary to Tina's work do not see how Tina fares as a mother. schedule. Indeed, in the historical world, the Tina seems to have transcended, or uncompromising tension between work and at least delayed, the tension that Laurence motherhood extends into the twenty-first identified in her own life: "[I] felt enormous century, bolstering Hagar's prescient cynicism guilt about taking the time for writing away about the likelihood of women successfully from my family. My generation was brought combining personal and professional worlds. up to believe you had to iron the sheets" (qtd. For Hagar, any idealized resolution of in Atwood 1997, 36). She hearkened back to a woman's independence in a man's world is her discovery in the 1960s of the poisoned by regret. She regards her breaks phenomenon that Betty Friedan explored in with family members as something less than 1963 in The Feminine Mystique. Friedan's glorious and feels guilty for depriving the realization that "most women can no longer fathers - her own father and the father of her use their full strength, grow to their full human children - of opportunities to interact with their capacity, as housewives" apparently made an offspring. She also feels guilty for the damage impact on Laurence (Friedan 1963, 305): she has done to her own male children in the process. She reaches her nadir when she Of course I was writing about the confesses to Murray Lees in the cannery her situations of women; I was dealing unwitting role (but a role nonetheless) in her with a lot of the stuff W omen's Lib is son John's death. Her focus on regret over talking about right now. But at the her parenting mistakes points to a change in time I was doing it I didn't realize how her, away from the Hagar who earlier in the

62 Atlantis 35.1, 2010 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis novel told the ministering Mr. Troy that her The reader has to be suspicious of son died: "'I had a son,' I say, 'and lost him.' any claim that Hagar resolves the double-bind 'You're not alone,' says Mr. Troy. 'That's of her own independence and the love of where you're wrong,' I reply" (1964, 121). She family members. At her age now, her life is no repeats the same line to Mr. Lees, but longer marked by the social ramifications of acknowledges him as a father who shares her her sexual and reproductive capacities; she experience as a mother: "'I had a son,' I say, could very well be a man living with an adult 'and lost him. 'Well,' he says abruptly, 'then child. All the same, what remains consistent you know'" (1964, 234). On the basis of their is Hagar's pattern of flipping back and forth shared experience of having inadvertently between her independent stands and her destroyed a son, Mr. Lees learns enough consequent regret. If the narrative solution of about her to call her living son, Marvin, to The Stone Angel is to be understood in terms come and get her. Her newfound community of a woman's redemption, then there is a with Mr. Lees provides him sufficient need to discount persistent evidence of the information to block her escape from Marvin same old Hagar that arises in the dilemmas and Doris. Still, the question remains whether she faces at the hospital at the end of her life. Hagar's confession resolves the contradiction On one hand, identifying Hagar as reconciled between independence and community in her to dependence the moment she accepts a life. glass of water on her deathbed invites the A long line of critics believes in reader to make a decision about how Hagar's last-minute redemption after ninety plausible it would be for a woman like Hagar years of being what Marvin refers to as a to do at this particular juncture what she has "holy terror" (Laurence 1964, 304).2 As never managed to do before. As Gordon Vauthier argues, Hagar "has been Graham explains, this assessment is crucial: humanized, and now understands the needs of Marvin, to the extent that she gives up the It is especially important to note that idea of asking him for his pardon and instead the perspective does not arise from tells him what she knows he needs from her" the contention that "people don't do (Vauthier 1990, 65). More skeptical, perhaps, that sort of thing". In imaginative is the observation that the vulnerability Hagar literature we are not presented with shows to Mr. Lees occurs in the context of her generalizations about human pattern of leaving situations where behaviour but with characters. It is dependence becomes intolerable for her, as rather that Dombey, or Micawber, or expressed in her generalization about such Hulot, [or, by extrapolation, Hagar,] leave-takings earlier in her life: "Each venture would not do that sort of thing. and launching is impossible until it becomes (Graham 1998, 202) necessary, and then there's a way, and it doesn't do to be too fussy about the means" Hagar must be assessed according to what (Laurence 1964, 135). Her communion with she has done over the course of the story and Murray Lees occurs in the middle of another within the fictional and historical world that one of these leave-takings, after she had run contains her. Would this old curmudgeon away from Marvin and Doris because they finally embrace community? threatened to make her dependent by placing W ariness about Hagar's her in a nursing home. Although she gestures eleventh-hour conversion arises generally toward community with Mr. Lees, it is in the from the fact that she never stops see-sawing context of her geriatric freedom flight that is between her own need for independence and every bit as doomed as the one she took into her wish to be connected to others. One marriage. She was not likely to have returned moment of possible redemption occurs in the voluntarily to Marvin and Doris without Lees hospital, when Hagar hears her hospital betraying her. roommate, Sandra W ong, whimper in

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 35.1, 2010 63 discomfort because she needs assistance to rebelliousness. Once again, Hagar has go to the bathroom. Hagar helps her call an perceived community as compromising her unresponsive nurse, and then decides to get independence in ways she cannot abide. She the bedpan herself. Arguably, her motivation has never willingly played the dependent can be seen as anger rather than daughter, wife, mother, or mother-in-law humanitarianism, suggesting she did the good despite myriad social pressures throughout turn as a way of fighting the injustice, by her life to do so, and each expression of extrapolation, of her own dependence. Hagar independence has cost her another human fumes that Sandra has: "never before been at connection. the dubious mercy of her organs. Pain and The point here is that Hagar faces the humiliation have been only words to her. same restricted choices as any other woman Suddenly I'm incensed at it, the unfairness. in her time and place. Indeed, throughout her She shouldn't have to find out these things at life she fights the same gender issues that her age" (1964, 300). Hagar herself sees her eventually spawned the second-wave feminist motivation as complicated: "And now I wonder movement. If Hagar truly realizes that her if I've done it for her or for myself. No matter. autonomy and need for community are I'm here, and carrying what she needs" (301). equally important, and believes she can While it is true that she has done harmonize them both within her life, the Sandra a good turn, no matter the motivation, novel's ending challenges the reader to the argument for Hagar's fundamental change envision how this harmony might be lived out. at this point becomes less convincing if the Although The Stone Angel was published good was collateral to yet another act of more than 45 years ago, feminists continue to rebellious independence. Hagar and Sandra's highlight the struggles women face in resultant conspiratorial laughter together is combining their seemingly incompatible social articulated by Sandra as a response to the roles. Intransigent challenges to women trying nurse looking at Hagar "as though you had to "have it all" characterize Laurence's just done a crime," an idea that would please portrayal of women's lives. Hagar no end since she can once again break What are we to make of Hagar as a the rules (1964, 302). The forbidden act woman? If she is just a cranky and confused makes it even more attractive for this old woman who finally and mercifully dies incorrigible rebel, and might even be a despite her heroic gestures, what does her comfort in a hospital where she must stare unresolved dilemma between independence down the powerlessness and dependence and community mean? The assumption that that comes with imminent death. Hagar resolves anything misses the point Another moment that holds out raised by her ill-fated attempts to incorporate promise for Hagar transcending her independence and community into her life, problematic relationship with independence since an old woman still fighting into her death and community occurs when Doris, an signifies a very different denouement than exceptionally accommodating does a death-bed redemption. Readers daughter-in-law, offers Hagar a glass of expecting inspired representations of female water. Hagar cannot, even at death's door, identity might see her redemption as a symbol seem to accept her own dependence, which of change: if Hagar can finally figure out a she regards as the point of Doris' offer. way to reconcile her lifelong turmoil, perhaps Despite knowing that she defeats her sense women in general might find ways to of familial community by not accepting help, harmonize career, autonomy, love, and she wrests "the glass, full of water to be had family. Significantly, Laurence continues to for the taking. I hold it in my own hands" hold the feet of female independence to the (1964, 308). This reaction can be seen as a flame of sacrifice. Since Hagar's strength deathbed intransigence that demonstrates costs her happiness, her agency causes how committed she remains to her signature regret, and her incorrigibility is ultimately

64 Atlantis 35.1, 2010 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis self-destructive, she positions readers as Then Mac is not too tired just when witnesses to the crushing of an individual she is. He draws her between his consciousness by larger social and legs, and she touches him sirenly so psychological forces as she fights to maintain he will not know. When he is inside her autonomy in a social world that trades her, he puts his hands on her neck, female independence for familial community. as he sometimes does unpredictably. He presses down deeply on her Stacey's Conflicted Community collarbone. Incompatible desires for Mac please independence and community inform similar That can't hurt you not that female characterization in The Fire Dwellers much. Say it doesn't hurt. but within a more contemporary time period It hurts. and in a new generation of historical It can't. Not even this much. circumstances. Stacey, too, pits herself Say it doesn't hurt. against patriarchal containment but uses a It doesn't hurt. different strategy. Hagar could not keep her He comes, then, and goes to sleep. mouth shut, but Stacey chooses to be silent, The edges of the day are blurring in presumably the easiest way to remain Stacey's head now. (1969, 30) enmeshed in her domestic circumstances. As Clara Thomas noted early on, "Stacey is It is difficult to imagine the damage done to always in life, not apart from it, striving to Stacey's psyche in trying to actualize herself reach others, not to separate herself from as a healthy human being in these them" (Thomas 1975, 128). circumstances. She lives the contradiction of Stacey also differs from Hagar in her a woman choosing family community as her decision to stay in her marriage regardless of highest value, and having to sacrifice all her dissatisfaction with everything about her semblance of personal autonomy and dignity life. She sees herself as fat: "for hips like in order to live it out. mine there's no excuse" (Laurence 1969, 8); While at first blush Hagar and Stacey hypocritical: "Funny thing, I never swear in seem polar opposites, with Hagar's front of my kids. This makes me feel I'm independence costing her community and being a good example to them. Example of Stacey's community costing her what? All the things I hate. Hate but independence, closer examination reveals perpetuate" (9); ignorant of her city (10); their engagement with similar dynamics. As poorly dressed, with her "matronly coat, hat they begin to wrestle with their unsatisfactory and gloves" (13-14); old: "Sometimes I feel circumstances, they do so within markedly like a beat-up old bitch (17); by turns a female contradictions, one of which is the neglectful and then angry mother (19); and need to hide their sexuality while still meeting unbalanced (20). She feels like a bad mother their sexual needs. and a bad wife when Mac comes home from Both women hoard secret a business trip and assumes immediately that experiences of sexual pleasure. Hagar did not she is fighting with him: "But I'm bloody tired think she had a right to sexual satisfaction, and I don't feel like starting one of these" evidenced by her appreciation of sex with (1969, 26). He accuses her of babying their Bram as an unanticipated pleasure of sons by going to their rooms when they have marriage: "It was not so very long after we bad dreams. Perhaps most upsetting is the wed, when first I felt my blood and vitals rise depiction of their sex life that does not give to meet his. He never knew. I never let him her pleasure. In fact, Mac often tries to choke know. I never spoke aloud, and I made her: certain that the trembling was all inner" (Laurence 1964, 81). Bram's inability to provide for her consigns her to a prison of

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 35.1, 2010 65 domesticity and prompts her to hide the fact then. W hores don't want it that he met more of her sexual needs than he that much. Only women like knew. She jettisons her appreciation for this me, who think there may not communion they do have so that she can be that much time left. continue to rail against the sacrifices she has Luke-Luke? Am I begging? to make. In effect, she loses twice. All right, so I'm begging. Stacey's version of this contradiction is to exercise her agency to meet her own Despite the fact that Stacey wants sexual needs with someone other than her nothing more than sex with Luke, Mac husband. A child of her times in her remains tied to his rigid perceptions of women no-strings-attached encounter with hippie as emotional rather than sexual beings. He Luke on the beach, she engages in an affair also reports that he had sex with Delores that is remarkable in large part because she because he mistakenly thought Stacey had never has to suffer for it, indicating a measure done the same with Buckle. Presumably, of social freedom more conventionally though, Mac does not now expect Stacey to granted to men. As Thomas has noted, run out and have sex with someone else "[Luke] sees her quite simply and exclusively because of his mistake. While the text might as a woman; therefore, he helps her to see gesture to Stacey's sexual independence with herself momentarily as a singular being, freed Luke, the novel turns on Stacey's resignation of the kaleidoscopic to live within Mac's stereotypes of women. wife-mother-housekeeper roles in which Even the narrative presentation of others see her and with all of which, Mac's and Stacey's affairs demonstrates the simultaneously, she constantly tries to identify cost of Stacey's independence because of her herself" (Thomas 1975, 123). connection to Mac. Although Mac's affair Stacey's sexually liberated affair with occurs prior to Stacey's affair with Luke, the Luke highlights the double-standard that text introduces his affair after hers. This underpins the community she lives out at ordering of the plot is important in that it home. Mac minimizes his extra-marital sex draws attention to Mac's erroneous with Delores Appleton as unimportant assumption about women needing long-term because it was only once, and what Dolores care rather than sex. Stacey's need for an really needed was "to be cared about by affair is a response to the constraints on her some guy over a long time" (Laurence 1969, as an oppressed and self-less housewife. Her 220). His pity for Delores belies an awareness that her interest in Luke is assumption that men want sex, but women overwhelmingly sexual argues for a new want emotional commitment. The depiction of explanation of women's sexuality: loosened Stacey's affair highlights the flaw in his from the moorings of biological attachments thinking, since she is a true desperate to the family, Stacey is capable of housewife, desperate for sex, not emotional demonstrating the kind of independence commitment. She admits her own desperation evident in stereotypic male sexuality. to herself as she recognizes she may seem Significantly, mutual confessions are overly enthusiastic: juxtaposed, accentuating the fact that Mac's can be articulated while Stacey's cannot. She is surprised by the force of her Laurence does not allow Stacey to make her own response, the intensity and confession to Mac, implying that, despite a explicitness of her pleasure. woman's insistence on her own freedom, a man's response to his woman's infidelity --Stacey, ease up. Not so would be less understanding or forgiving than fast....Rein in, Stacey, or a woman's response to her man's infidelity: Luke will think you're a whore. Well, he'll be wrong,

66 Atlantis 35.1, 2010 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis But I did with Luke, and you don't why..." (1964, 295). Her responsibility for know that and I can't tell you because childcare and his textbook inability to would it do any good to tell you? I articulate his feelings undermine her domestic don't think so. I want to, but I can't. happiness. One would hope that if Mac is Maybe it'll come out twenty years capable of change toward domesticity, then from now just like this about Buckle Stacey's acquisition of more personal has come out now. In the meantime, freedom is also possible. Disappointingly, and we carry our own suitcases. How was despite Mac's fatherly gesture to Duncan, this it I never knew how many you were interpretation is ultimately difficult to justify, carrying? Too busy toting my own. given the ending. (1969, 220) Mac's response to Duncan's near drowning does not change the nature of his Stacey contributes to the double-standard by domestic involvement. The reader does not remaining silent, knowing that her ability to see Stacey and Mac living the kind of continue living in her family depends on it, relationship in which they meet each other's thereby enabling Mac's sexism. needs, nor providing Stacey with new Stacey and Mac never get close to freedoms: he forgets her fortieth birthday understanding each other. Mac expresses (1969, 277); she gives up on dancing only mild surprise when her response to his anywhere else but in her head (276); he does confession of infidelity with Dolores is, "I don't not pay attention to her nervousness about mind honestly," and his rhetorical strategy is taking Duncan back to the beach (270-271); to change the subject quickly (1969, 221). he has a lackluster response to Stacey's Just as Hagar hoarded her sexual excitement about Jen talking for the first time appreciation of Bram, Stacey hoards her own (273). This story of a housewife who decides confession of sexual independence, to stay with her family ultimately details the conveying the unspoken message that costs of such a commitment. whatever freedom she experienced via the The end of the novel finds Stacey as affair is available to her only because she can she was at the beginning, unhappy and hide it from a world that is less forgiving of constrained by her gender, notwithstanding women's sexual transgression. Instead of her ability to cobble together a way to meet Mac and Stacey appearing reconciled at the her needs as a wife, mother, and lover. Her end of this sequence (because they have continued silence about her secret love life experienced similar lapses), they seem more raises the question of whether her interests estranged than ever. as a woman can ever be satisfied within her Like Hagar in the hospital with Sandra marriage, particularly when her marital sexual Wong, Stacey also experiences moments relationship has been less than satisfactory. when change seems possible. For example, After making love with Mac at the end, Stacey the prospect of Mac's fatherly devotion replays her usual experience of lying stiffly introduces in the novel a possibility of more and having difficulty settling for sleep, while flexible gender roles. W hatever hope there is Mac immediately rolls over and descends into for Stacey to reconcile the contradictory regular breathing (280-281). This pressures of independence and community interpretation counters the persistent critical comes in a moment of trauma about their son view that "[u]ltimately, Stacey and Mac are Duncan when both parents are terrified that reconciled and truly make love for the first he might have drowned. Stacey time in the narrative" (Stovel 2008, 223). acknowledges that Mac has "never held In this novel, Stacey does not triumph Duncan before, not ever. Why did I think he in a new and more liberated time, but rather didn't care about Duncan? Maybe he didn't endures much as women always have. once. But he does now. Why didn't I see how Rather than offer solutions, Laurence seems much, before? He never showed it, that's more inclined to explore women's need to

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 35.1, 2010 67 combine love and autonomy. Any progress in experiment with gender evident in Laurence's Stacey's development is limited to growth in work. Rachel does not have a husband or her understanding that "all the people around children, while Morag tries the husband her are also living in burning houses, in without the child and then the child without the persistent states of emergency" (Grosskurth husband. Hagar and Stacey are both wives 1970, 92). Societal states of emergency here and mothers, and, although they fight against mark women's building political resistance to confining gender roles, they are trapped as a life limited by domesticity. Yet, Stacey's mirror images of each other in the same decision to stay in her marriage signals that conflicted space between what they need and Laurence does not locate an easy solution in what they get: Hagar is crippled by the costs leaving the home for fulfillment in an of her independence, and Stacey by the costs independent career. of her family. Rather than rendering different Considering Hagar and Stacey choices as leading to different fates, Laurence together allows us to see not only why depicts Hagar and Stacey - surprisingly, and Laurence saw them as spiritually connected, perhaps depressingly - making different but also how she used them to explore the decisions that lead to the same failure to find choices available to women who wanted to a way of being in their social world that allows change the lives available to them. Since them to enjoy whatever happiness they might Hagar played the part of the heroine who otherwise have earned for themselves as free refused to be dominated by a man and who individuals. defiantly chose independence, she is easier to celebrate as strong, despite her regrets. Endnotes Stacey is more difficult to see as inspirational, 1. For additional discussion of connections in part because she approaches the same between The Stone Angel and The Diviners limitations from a different angle. Seen as a see Hildegard Kuester's The Crafting of protagonist whose "thoughts, in the first Chaos: Narrative Structure in Margaret person, are a rebellious and anguished Laurence's The Stone Angel and The protest against the falseness of her Diviners. wife-and-mother façade," she mounts her 2. For wider reading about whether Hagar protest still caught within the familial system develops toward redemption or continues to that oppresses her (Hehner 1977, 47). resist personal change, see (among others) As Warwick illuminates, contradictory Hildegard Kuester's The Crafting of Chaos: images of women as victims and survivors Narrative Structure in Margaret Laurence's have been seen by decades of feminist The Stone Angel and The Diviners; J. David scholarship as describing "the basic nature of Stevens', "The Gypsies of Shadow Point: Meg female experience in the world that Laurence Merriles, Murray Lees, and Laurence's The could not resolve" (Warwick 1998, 184). Stone Angel"; Constance Rooke's "A Feminist These two female characters struggle by Reading of The Stone Angel"; Paul Comeau's turns as victims and survivors, are bogged "Hagar in Hell: Margaret Laurence's Fallen down by their agency, and subvert their own Angel"; W.H. New's "Every Now and Then: power no matter what choices they make. Voice and Language in Laurence's The Stone Superficial differences of personality and Angel"; Shirley Chew's "'Some Truer Image': generation pale in comparison to the enduring A Reading of The Stone Angel"; Brenda societal pressures on women to sacrifice their Beckman-Long's "The Stone Angel as a independence for family life in a different way Feminine Confessional Novel." from men. Stacey and Rachel are, indeed, References created as sisters, and Hagar and Morag are Atwood, M. "Face to Face," Margaret notable for their independence, but these Laurence, W . New, ed. Toronto: McGraw-Hill traditional pairings obscure an ongoing Ryerson, 1977.

68 Atlantis 35.1, 2010 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis Beckman-Long, B. "The Stone Angel as a _____. The Fire-Dwellers. Toronto: Feminine Confessional Novel," Challenging McClelland and Stewart, 1969. Territory: the Writing of Margaret Laurence, C. Riegel, ed. Edmonton: University of Alberta _____. "Ten Years' Sentences," A Place to Press, 1997. Stand On: Essays By and About Margaret Laurence, George Woodcock, ed. Edmonton: Chew, S. "'Some Truer Image': A Reading of NeWest Press, 1983. The Stone Angel," Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Margaret Laurence, C. Nicholson, MacSween, R. J. Rev. of The Diviners. The ed. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Antigonish Review 18 (Summer 1974): Press, 1990, pp. 35-45. 107-08.

Comeau, P. "Hagar in Hell: Margaret Montagnes, A. "Piercing Canadian Symbol." Laurence's Fallen Angel," Canadian Literature Rev. of The Stone Angel. The Globe and Mail 128 (1991): 11-22. 13 (June 1964): 17.

_____. Margaret Laurence's Epic Imagination. New, W.H. "Every Now and Then: Voice and Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2005. Language in Laurence's The Stone Angel," Canadian Literature 93(1982): 79-96. Friedan, B. The Feminine Mystique. New York: W. W. Norton, 1963. Rooke, C. "A Feminist Reading of The Stone Angel," Canadian Literature 93 (Summer Fulford, R. "It's Fascinating Despite the 1982): 26-41. Flaws," Rev. of The Diviners. The Toronto Star (18 May 1974): H5. Stevens, J. "The Gypsies of Shadow Point: Meg Merriles, Murray Lees, and Laurence's Graham, G. "Lukács and Realism After The Stone Angel," Journal of Canadian Marx," British Journal of Aesthetics 38.2 (April Studies 28.4 (Winter 1993-1994): 88-101. 1998): 198-207. Stovel, N. "'Sisters Under Their Skins': A Jest Grosskurth, P. "Wise and Gentle." Rev. of of God and The Fire-Dwellers," New The Fire-Dwellers. Canadian Literature 43 Perspectives on Margaret Laurence: Poetic (Winter 1970): 91-92. Narrative, Multiculturalism, and Feminism, G. McCormick Coger, ed. Westport, Connecticut Hehner, B. "River of Now and Then: Margaret and London: Greenwood Press, 1996: 63-79. Laurence's Narratives," Canadian Literature 74 (Autumn 1977): 40-57. _____. Divining Margaret Laurence: A Study of Her Complete Writings. Montreal and King, J. The Life of Margaret Laurence. Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1997. 2008.

Kuester, H. The Crafting of Chaos: Narrative Thomas, C. The Manawaka World of Structure in Margaret Laurence's The Stone Margaret Laurence. Toronto: McClelland and Angel and The Diviners. Amsterdam: Rodopi, Stewart, 1975. 1994. Vauthier, S. "Images in Stones, Images in Laurence, M. The Stone Angel. Toronto: Words: Margaret Laurence's The Stone McClelland and Stewart, 1964. Angel," Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Margaret Laurence, C. Nicholson, ed.

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 35.1, 2010 69 Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1990, pp. 46-70.

Warwick, S. Review of Margaret Laurence by J. King. Journal of Canadian Studies. 33.4 (Winter 1998-1999): 177-90.

70 Atlantis 35.1, 2010 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis