Abstract

Women are largely regarded as weak and reliant on others by the majority of people in society. This statement is totally illogical and cannot be agreed upon in its entirety. There are women who struggle through their lives on their alone, who must confront the challenges that life throws at them with no one by their side, and who do so by lifting their heads in the face of a society that refuses to bend down to them. Such a person is Hagar, a character developed by Margaret Laurence in her novel The Stone Angel. Hagar is a woman who refuses to submit to the male-dominated culture in which she lives. The Stone Angel is a novel set in a fictional hamlet called Manawaka that takes the reader on a trip through Hagar’s life and psyche. The feministic qualities of the title figure are reflected in the work of The Stone Angel. In The Stone Angel, Margaret Laurence attempts to diagnose and understand the inner struggles of the women’s characters in the context of their social and political environment. Furthermore, she explores the characters’ personal lives from within their own awareness in order to study their relationships with one another and to assess their potentiality. Laurence attempts to assist women in developing a more positive identity since she strongly disapproves of the negative and harmful self-image that Canadians have developed for themselves and wants to see them regain their genuine selves, which she believes they have lost.

Key words: Individualisation, Negative Self-Image, Neurosis, Self-Actualization