The Double Vision: A study of Symbol and Imagery in Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel and A Jest of God

Abstract

<p>This thesis is an analysis of the use of symbols and imagery in A Jest of God and The Stone Angel. It finds, simply stated, that there is a basic stress upon duality employed by Mrs. Laurence in those novels which gives her writing a good portion of the dramatic tension of real life.</p> <p>The introduction attempts briefly to show cause for Mrs. Laurence's doubleness of vision with reference to her African experience and the basic, but colourful, conflicts between the Europeans and the Africans, and between Tribal Africa and Nationalistic Africa which she witnessed as a budding writer. In the first chapter, which deals with The Stone Angel, this dualism is shown to be generated by the two Hagars (i.e. the od lady and the flashbacks of her self) and St. Paul's concept of two covenants: one old, one new. The importance of this second concept, which incorporates the contradicting tenets of Old Testament pride and fear, and New Testament freedom and hope, is reflected in the major role given to biblical imagery. For that reason the focus of my study of The Stone Angel concentrates upon those biblical symbols and images. This biblical examination is followed up in the chapter on A Jest of God, but, as the primary conflict represented in that novel's symbolism and imagery deals with Rachel, the child, and Rachel, the emerging mother, and, as that primary dramatic spring is rendered in a manner which fits Carl G. Jung's description of neurotic dissociation, I have correspondingly shifted in that chapter to a more psychological emphasis in my analysis.</p>