Use of Biblical Imagery in Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel

Use of Biblical Imagery in Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel

In the novel The Stone Angel, Margaret Laurence introduces a character who seems to evolve her life around biblical imagery.

Hagar Shipley, a ninety year-old woman, does not accept things easily, like life. Hagar is recognized as a biblical imagery because of her name. "Hagar" is introduced and recognized in the Old Testament as the Egyptian hand-maiden of Sarah, the wife of Abraham. By reason Sarah was unable to provide offsprings for Abraham. Since Sarah could not concieve, she gave her servant, Hagar, to her husband, so she can produce heir under Abraham's name.

And Sarah said unto Abraham, Behold now, the Lord that restained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that i may obtain children by her. And Abraham hearkened unto the voice of Sarah...

And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceieved, her mistress was aespised in her eyes".

(Genesis 16, 2-4)

Symbolically, Hargar Shipley became a house keeper in her younger years. Hagar has always felt that she was to take care, nurture, serve others, it bacame her natural positon. Hagar saw herself as the "chatelaine," or possibly an outcast when she was married to Bram.

The Shipley house was square and frame, two-storied, the furniture shoddy and second-hand, the kitchen reeking and stale, for no one had scoured properly there since Clara died. Yet seeing it, I wasn't troubled in the slightest, still thinking of myself as a chatelaine. I wonder who I imagined would do the work? I thought of Polacks and Galicians from the mountains, half-breeds from the river valley of the Wachawa, or the daughters and spinster aunts of the poor, forgetting that Bram's own daughters had hired out whenever they could be spared, until they married very young and gained a permanent employment."

(p. 50-51)

Hagar is feeling like a prisoner in her own habitat, that she is not "free" in spirit; "I was alone, never anything else, and never free, for I carried my chains wihin me, and they spread out from me and shackled all I touched" (pp. 292). The imagery that Hagar is enslaved like the prisoners in the early era's, B.C.-A.C., she became a slave of her own emotions which is strugggling within her.

Also noted, Hagar also was seen and explained as "a creature of wilderness". Like the pharaoh's daugheter, she left the security of her father and went to explore the wilderness.