Flower Imagery in The Stone Angel :: Stone Angel

Flower imaging in The Stone Angel Margaret Laurence uses flower imagery in her refreshful The Stone Angel to represent Hagars commission of life. There are dickens types of flowers, wild and civilized. These two types of flowers are associated with the educated, controlled way of life of life and the material way of life. In summer the cemetery was rich and thick as syrup with the funeral-parlor perfume of the planted peonies, dark crimson and wallpaper pink, the pompous blossoms respite leadenly, too heavy for their light stems, bowed down with the pitch of themselves and the weight of the rain, infested with upstart ants that sauntered through the plush petals as though to the manner innate(p) . . . But sometimes through to hot rush of disrespectful fart whtat shook the scrub oak and the coarse couchgrass encroaching upon the dutifully cared for habitations of the dead, the horn in of the cowslips woud rise monentarily. They were though-rooted, these wild and gaudy flo wers, and altough they were held back at the cemeterys edge, torn go forth by loving relatives determined to keep the plots clear and clealy civilized, for a morsel or two a person walking there could enchant the faint, muskey, dust-tinged smell of things that grew and had grown always, before the portly peonies and the angels with rigid wings, when the prarie bluffs were walked though ex numberly by Cree with enigmatic faces and greasy hair. (p. 4-5) Hagar was the lucky one in her family. She was adequate to go to college where she learned how to be more cultivated and civilized and how to act like a lady. Nothing seems to be natural about her, she criticizes everything that seems to be wild or out of control. When Hagar marries Bram Shipley, she is content and in love. It was spring that day, a differnt spring from this one. The poplar bluffs had budded with sticky leaves, and the forgs had come back to te sloughs and interpret like choruses of angels with sore throats, an th mars marigolds were opening like shavings of cheer on the brown river where the dadpoles danced and the bloodsuckers lay slimy and low, waiting fo the boys feet. And i rode int blacke-topped buggy beside the man who was no my mate. (p. 50) After the wedding, Hagar becomes determined to change the way her husband behaves.