Discuss The Stone Angel as a novel of awakening citing

The Stone Angel is a first-person narrative that at times almost breaks into streamof-consciousness writing as Hagar, the main character, gradually loses lucidity due to old age and illness. The narrative is divided into ten chapters, each of which shifts back and forth between the present time (the 1960s) and an earlier point in Hagar's life. The novel is set in the fictional town of Manawaka (inspired by Neepawa), a rural part of Canada where conservative values reign and where archaic notions of gender and social class are taken seriously even in the modern era. The central character, Hagar, is a protagonist only by convention. Given her antagonistic behavior toward everyone else around her, which is rooted in her overwhelming pride, the reader would not be wrong to consider her an anti-heroine.

The book consists of two narrative arcs. The present-day story shows us the life of Hagar as an elderly woman of at least 90. Hagar lives in an upstairs bedroom in what used to be her house but which now belongs to her son Marvin. When she discovers that Marvin and his wife Doris are planning to put her into a nursing home, Hagar runs away to a rural spot called Shadow Point. She stays overnight in an abandoned house and is eventually found by her son and daughter-in-law, who immediately take her to the hospital where she is literally belted to the bed at night so that she cannot wander. From time to time, she lapses into the memories that define the second narrative arc. These memories are related to the reader in the present tense, as though they were actually happening simultaneously with the present-day narrative.

Hagar spends most of her life being defined by the men to whom she is connected. She is the third child of Jason Currie, a successful self-made businessman who has built a thriving shop up from nothing. Her mother died in Hagar's birth, and thus Hagar is raised by a housekeeper whom she calls "Auntie Doll." From an early age, it is clear Hagar takes after her stern, calculating, emotionless father; this is evidenced in the way Hagar does not even cry when her father gives her a beating. Hagar's two older brothers, on the other hand, show less aptitude for business, although their father takes pains to teach each of them the basics of the trade. Although Hagar superficially takes after her father, she is also aware of how his loveless nature has shaped her own icy demeanor.

Hagar is neither particularly maternal nor nurturing. When one of her brothers is injured by falling into a frozen pond, she refuses to nurse him through his subsequent illness on his deathbed. Later, Hagar is also a distant mother toward her two sons, unable to show emotion when Marvin, for instance, goes off to fight in World War I. The reader can infer that Jason Currie is grooming Hagar to run and possibly inherit his family business. She—not her surviving elder brother—is sent to a finishing school in the East. Upon her return, her father wants her to keep the account books in the store. This job is vital to the success of the company. But instead of interpreting the gesture as an expression of trust and respect, Hagar regards it as her father's effort to control her. Hagar exclaims that she wants to be a schoolteacher instead, displeasing her father. And then, in a fit of rebellion, Hagar chooses to marry the crude and lower-class Brampton "Bram" Shipley. Jason Currie retaliates by cutting Hagar out of his life. Hagar, who was previously positioned to run the store, ends up not receiving any inheritance from him whatsoever.

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