Picnic at Hanging Rock

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1967

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-17

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Civilized Versus Wild Spaces

The novel sets up a juxtaposition between civilization, which carries connotations of societal order and decorum, and the wilderness, which denotes wild lawlessness, gothic mystery, and violence. The novel’s action blurs the delineation between these spaces; civilized characters are drawn into nature’s wild spaces, and the chaos of the wild creeps into civilization.

Initially, the college is characterized as a civilized space—“an architectural anachronism in the Australian bush” (2). Inside, it is full of opulent European furnishings that attest to its colonial status; outside, orderly British-style gardens fend off the encroaching wilderness. Within the college, students and teachers alike are held to a rigid set of rules as enforced by the headmistress, Mrs. Appleyard, a figure who represents civilization at its most repressed.

In contrast, the wildness of the Australian landscape appears mysterious and incomprehensible to the colonizers. This sentiment is established in Mike’s reflection that “in England everything had been done before” (24), whereas in Australia “anything might happen” (24). He is referring here to Australia’s young colonial history; because the land remains relatively unexplored by colonizers, it is a “blank slate,” full of untapped potential.

Nature’s potential takes on a decidedly sinister quality in Hanging Rock, a rock formation that is the antithesis of orderly civilization. The wild space exerts a strange pull on the group of picnickers, drawing them into danger. Irma, Marion, and Miranda wander, seemingly entranced, up the dangerous rockface in the growing dark. Similarly, Miss McCraw unaccountably abandons her possessions and walks toward the Hanging Rock in her underwear. The sinister magic of Hanging Rock is illustrated in the girls’ erratic behavior, their deep sleep, and their subsequent disappearance, which is never fully explained.

When Irma, the sole survivor, returns to the college, she brings the wildness of Hanging Rock with her. “The shadow of the rock” seems to grow behind Irma, which brings out an uncontrolled and vicious side in the girls: “the hysterical schoolgirls with faces distorted by passion, the streaming locks and clawlike hands” (138-39). It is implied that these animalistic qualities, present but repressed in the girls, are unleashed by the gothic wilderness of Hanging Rock, which arrives with Irma. Here as elsewhere, the blurring of wild and civilized spaces brings violence, mystery, and chaos, which ultimately leads to the college’s downfall and Mrs. Appleyard’s suicide at Hanging Rock.

Female Propriety and Decorum

The young women of the college are pressured to present themselves in a fashionable, proper, and British manner. Female propriety and decorum is epitomized by the college’s headmistress, Mrs. Appleyard, an upper-class woman who is “precisely what the parents expected of an English headmistress” (3). Mrs. Appleyard controls the girls through strict rules of decorum, such as in her instruction to the girls that—despite the Australian summer heat—they should “only remove [their] gloves after the drag has passed through Woodend” (7).

The girls and women who are lured in by Hanging Rock abandon female decorum when they enter the wild space, discarding their stockings, shoes, corsets, and in Miss McCraw’s case her skirt. Hanging Rock is established in total opposition to the rules of the civilized or rational world; perhaps the women are in part drawn to it because, even though they are in danger there, they are also totally free.

In the aftermath of the Hanging Rock picnic, Mrs. Appleyard becomes obsessed with protecting the college’s sterling reputation, which concerns her far more than the welfare of the missing persons or the traumatized students. She attempts to suppress gossip about the incident by limiting the movement of people in and out of the school and managing potentially damaging correspondence.

In the same vein, when the police detective suggests that Marion and Miranda might have been abducted and molested or raped, Mrs. Appleyard is disgusted at what she takes to be the insinuation about her students, replying primly that “they were exceptionally intelligent and well-behaved girls who would never have allowed any familiarity from strangers” (102). The detective points out that “most young girls would object to being raped” (102), challenging Mrs. Appleyard’s belief that propriety has anything to do with it. Her response illustrates the extent to which she prioritizes outward appearances over her charges’ safety and well-being.

Similarly, after the girls descend on Irma in the gymnasium, Miss Lumley is only concerned with the girls’ behavior—“the girls were making a disgraceful exhibition of themselves” (143)—when they are clearly suffering from grief, stress, and confusion. It is evident that the girls’ presentation is more important than their distress. The school fails in its duty of care to the girls, as is illustrated in Sara’s suicide.

Society’s rules are also explored through the character of Mike, who increasingly turns away from the rigidity of his British upbringing, and is drawn toward Australia’s relative egalitarianism and freedom. The less formal nature of Australia is reflected in its physical environment; Mike loves the “casual gaiety” of the “lush luxuriant gardens” which—“with palms, delphiniums and raspberry canes” growing side by side—are “unlike anything Michael had ever seen in England” (70-71). In England, Mike is strictly limited to an aristocratic set of acquaintances, whereas in Australia, he enjoys the freedom of roaming with Albert, “drinking in the other’s native wisdom and wit” (62).

Mike is courted by Angela Sprack, but he condemns her as “too English”—“the kind he was implored by his mother to make a point of waltzing with at a country ball” (115). Angela reminds Mike of his English family’s rules about propriety and social class, whereas he has grown to love the freedom of Australia, epitomized in his friendship with the lower-class Albert and his plans to travel the country.

Traumatic Stress and Existential Anxiety

The characters who survive the mysterious tragedy at Hanging Rock experience immense stress and anxiety in its aftermath. The trauma from the disappearances is metaphorically represented as a dark stain: “The pattern of the picnic continued to darken and spread” (123). This metaphor illustrates that Hanging Rock’s traumatic impact deepens and spreads over time because no answers are ever found. Miranda, Marion, and Miss McCraw are presumed dead, but never seen again, depriving those they leave behind of closure.

Furthermore, the survivors of the event, the girls at Appleyard College, are not supported through their grief and confusion, which only adds to their suffering. In particular, Sara, who loved Miranda fiercely and who has no other friends or family to lean on, struggles to focus in class, spending her nights either “wide awake, staring into the dreadful dark” and thinking of Miranda’s death (110), or dreaming about Miranda. It is clear that Sara, who is only 13 years old, needs support from the adults in her life, but instead, she is threatened and harshly disciplined. Her inattention in class results in “countless order marks for inattention in class” and humiliating hours “strapped to a blackboard in the gymnasium for ‘slouching’” (130). Mrs. Appleyard, frustrated with Sara’s guardians late fee payments, takes her stress and anxiety about the tragedy out on Sara; she cancels Sara’s art lessons and taunts Sara with the idea that she may need to return to “an institution” if her family doesn’t pay her fees. Sara’s distress at this possibility is evident in her answer: “Oh, no. No. Not that. Not again” (106). The cruelty with which Sara is treated in the light of her immense grief and suffering culminates in her tragic suicide, further illustrating the metaphor of the picnic’s horror darkening and spreading.

Irma’s visit illustrates how the tragedy impacts the other girls at the college. Irma returns expecting a fond greeting and farewell, but instead she is met with fury. The girls are given no outlet for their grief and expected to carry on as if nothing has happened, following rigid, punitive rules and schedules and forbidden to talk about the events at Hanging Rock. Their discontent is expressed in the New Zealand sister’s cry: “Nobody in this rathole ever tells us anything!” (140). Irma’s arrival releases their long-suppressed anger, trauma, grief, and fear. They crowd Irma, and the imagery focuses on their terrifying, animal wildness: “a cavernous mouth agape,” “the moist tip of a drooling tongue,” and “warm sour breath” (139). It’s as if they, too, are possessed by Hanging Rock, which they seem to see looming up behind Irma. Afterward, they seem to have no memory of the episode, a fact that underscores their alienation from their feelings. Here the novel explores the consequences of repressing trauma.

Mike, too, is traumatized by the events at Hanging Rock. When he approaches Hanging Rock for the second time to try to find the girls, Mike reflects that the formation is “even more sinister” than in “[his] recurring nightmares” (72). Hanging Rock looms large in Mike’s memory, and is associated with unspeakable horrors and terror. Even after he faces his fears and returns to the site, Mike is riddled with existential anxiety. His feelings of frustration and impotence at failing to rescue Miranda are expressed in his confusion about the swan at Lake View: “He knew her at once by the poise of the fair tilted head, and began running towards her with the sickening fear that she would be gone before he could reach her, as invariably happened in his troubled dreams” (116). But it is just a mirage, and Mike is left at the lake’s edge, unable to reach the swan, just as he was unable to rescue Miranda. Haunting by Miranda’s death, Mike abruptly ceases his budding romance with Irma and travels to remote Northern Queensland, seeking adventure but also peace of mind, which continues to elude him.

For Irma, the only missing person to be found, “that awful thing is always on [her] mind” (117). The horror and mystery associated with Hanging Rock will never be fully resolved for her, but will continue to “lay with an almost physical weight upon [her] heart” (113). Flashbacks illustrate the way it continues to haunt her much later in life: “It was like this that Irma would later remember Michael Fitzhubert most clearly. Quite suddenly he would come to her in the Bois de Boulogne, under the trees in Hyde Park” (122). Irma’s decadent life of travel will not rid her of the memories of Mike, or the specter of Hanging Rock.