The Stone Angel

As a consequence of her pride, Hagar has cut herself off from the natural flow of human sympathies. In her old age, trapped in her own negative perceptions and long habits of mind, she is unable to relate harmoniously with others. She is suspicious of people's motives and rejects their attempts to be pleasant. Sometimes she would like to be more reasonable, but a bitter or sarcastic remark will escape her mouth instead, in spite of herself.

Hagar's extreme alienation, the product of a closed heart, sometimes produces unexpected effects. Because she rejects others, she expects them in turn to reject her, so a simple act of kindness from someone else may produce a sudden burst of tears, as when a girl gives up her seat for Hagar on a bus.

Hagar's alienation finds expression in her attitude to religion and to God. She never declares herself to be an atheist, but she has no belief that the universe is under the care of a loving God. She admits to Mr. Troy, the minister, that she has never been able to pray, and she pours scorn on the literalistic Christian picture of heaven: "Even if heaven were real, and measured as Revelation says, so many cubits this way and that, how gimcrack a place it would be, crammed with its pavements of gold, its gates of pearl and topaz, like a gigantic chunk of costume jewelry." Nor does Hagar accept the religious belief that everything that happens in life is for the best: "I don't and never shall, not even if I'm damned for it."

Towards the end of the novel, Hagar makes two small but significant steps that lessen her alienation. She tells Marvin that he has always been good to her, because she senses that that is what he needs to hear; she no longer thinks entirely of her own needs. And though it costs her considerable effort, she fetches a bedpan to ease the discomfort of Sandra Wong, her sixteen-year-old fellow patient in the hospital.