When I read this poem, I thought about the book "Stone Angel" which I read in my last year of high school. Ironically, both pieces were written by Margaret Laurence. . I noticed a few similarities in each story, like Grandmother MacLeod and Hagar for example. Both were elderly women who were very stubborn, proud, and refined. Hagar was haunted by the regrets of her past, and was trying to obtain closure. Marvin, her son that she lived with, and his wife was trying to get her to go in an old folks home. She was convinced that she can take care of herself and do all the things that she always wanted to do. Grandmother MacLeod was also proud and stubborn like Hagar because she always had things "just so" in her house. "God loves Order" is one of the quotes that she lived by. She always thought she knew best and was always right. Both of these women were independent, but also dependent because they depended on the people around them to do as they say. Grandmother MacLeod was always telling her daughter and granddaughter to clean up, and leave everything the way they left it, hence "House in Order". Hagar depended on Marvin and often guilted him into things she wanted him to do for her, either with the death of his brother, which she loved more than Marvin, and the death of his father. I wonder was it Laurence's intentions to link the two characters together?
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I did some research on Margaret Laurence. These are a few things I found interesting*:
1. "To Set Our House in Order" was actually chapter two of the novel "A Bird in the House".
2. Margaret Laurence was Canadian, born in 1926 and died in 1987.
3. "Her published works after The Stone Angel express the changing role of women's lives in the 1970s"
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*Reference Link:
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