This paper examines the physical and mental predicaments of Hagar

the 90-year-old protagonist in Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel

through the intersecting lenses of literary gerontology . It argues that Western ageism

intensified by patriarchal and consumerist discourses

constructs the aging female body as abject

rendering elderly women socially invisible and personally ashamed. Hagar's bodily decline—arthritis

incontinence

and altered appearance—symbolizes her loss of autonomy and triggers fierce denial. Simultaneously

her domestic space becomes a site of surveillance and emotional abandonment; her family's insistence on institutional care deepens her fear of dependency and erasure. Drawing on theorists such as Simone de Beauvoir and recent Chinese scholarship

the study shows how Hagar's self-othering language and animalized self-descriptions manifest internalized ageism. Ultimately

Laurence's empathetic first-person narrative challenges readers to replace stereotype with understanding and to recognize the elderly as subjects of enduring dignity and complexity.