Howl's Moving Castle verses Stone Angel

Today, the morning was spent doing soccer stuff in the rain; lunch at home, then, a late afternoon visit to see a friend. It was a busy day for me and the matriarch basically spent the whole day in her room. She wouldn't come down and listen to the children practice piano; she wouldn't sit in a rocking chair while they read; she did run back up to her room once the meals were finished. I do not always have to take her out. I do not always have to take her for lunch. My husband was at work and I should not feel guilty for having other responsibilities...and, yet, I do feel guilty.

In the book, "Howl's Moving Castle," which I am reading aloud to the children, a young girl, Sophie, is suddenly transformed into an old woman. Her body aches and she sees the world much more patiently then she did as a teen. Hagar in Laurence's "Stone Angel" is angry because she is old; she refuses to go patiently into the next world. Maybe she follows Dylan Thomas' "rage against the night" and will not succumb easily to death. It is all so easy to suggest Hagar is the more admirable--who wants to accept their own mortality? Their own age? But, to be honest, who wants to live with Hagar? She is an awful, old woman despite our sympathies and she is selfish and willful and a host of other qualities no one likes. I don't want to say the matriarch is like Hagar; but, she is certainly not like Sophie, somewhat pleasantly accepting her decrepitude; but, of course, Sophie is probably more fictional than Hagar. I guess we are all supposed to rage against the coming of the night...just sometimes I wish we could rage on our own and not against those who surround us.

My husband says to accept his mother as she is. He is always saying I am the one with the wrong view of her; at 99, she is not likely to change. I just think, sometimes, I can feel her inner conflict--should I be nice or do I want this or that thing more? The one thing I always felt Margaret Laurence conveyed extremely well about Hagar was that sympathy to somehow make things easier for her. Even as a reader, I wanted to lift the burden from Hagar, that burden of age. As I consider the matriarch, I feel powerless because she seems so intent on doing things her own way--isn't it a contradiction within my feelings to want to be there and yet, still, not want to be taken for granted? I know the matriarch is angry she is old; I cannot almost feel the anger emanating from her. Yet, I know, too, there is nothing I can do.

My husband has read this post; he thinks his mother is annoyed because I did not take her for lunch. She isn't as cerebral as I like to think she is. The matriarch is mad because I did not take her to the Swiss Chalet. And, that anger I feel is obvious: she is annoyed I had an afternoon out and she didn't.