What is a Fortress Without a Well?
Margaret Laurence's novel The Stone Angel is a story which revolves around a
ninety year old protagonist, Hagar Currie Shipley. Hagar lives with her son, Marvin, and
daughter-in-law, Doris, both in their sixties. Because Hagar is now in need of professional
care which Marvin and Doris cannot provide, they have decided to put her in an old age
home. When Hagar learns of this decision, she runs away from them and hides in an
abandoned fish cannery by the sea.
Although Hagar has thought about her life many times before, the time she spends
at Shadow Point gives her the opportunity to do a serious search of her past in order to
discover why her life has been so empty. During this review, she focuses on the events
surrounding her son John's death and discovers, with the help of Murray Lees (someone
she meets at the cannery who shares a similar experiences with Hagar), that she has been
indirectly responsible for her son's death.
Also, while at Shadow Point, Hagar sees many similarities between her and the old
mariner in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. She asks
herself what albatross has she slain for mercy's sake and quotes a line directly from the
poem: "water, water, everywhere nor any drop to drink." Furthermore, she sees a derelict
fish boat which she describes as a ghostly skeleton ship with a dead Viking crew which
she associates with the death bark from the poem. Hagar meets Murray Lees at Shadow
Point who shares some similarities with the good Hermit in Coleridge's poem. Margaret
Laurence has her protagonist see herself as an old mariner, like the Ancient Mariner from
the poem to invite the reader to make a comparison between the two stories. Thus, by
comparing the two stories, the reader understands that Margaret Laurence's The Stone
Angel is like Samu...