Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock – The Meaning in a Nutshell

Dr Mark’s The Meaning in a Nutshell

Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967)

Joan Lindsay’s novel Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967) is a missing-persons mystery, a work of fiction written in the style of a true crime novel to give the story added believability. Set in Victoria in 1900, just before Australian Federation, it tells the story of an excursion of girls from an exclusive and expensive boarding school in rural Victoria to the unusual rock formation, Hanging Rock. Three girls and a supervising teacher disappear mysteriously. One girl is found later, but her amnesia means she is unable to provide investigators and others any clues or leads to help save those who remain missing or resolve the mystery to provide a satisfying sense of closure. The loss of the girls and their teacher profoundly disrupts many lives, and most of the novel deals with these disruptions. These include concerned parents withdrawing their daughters from the school, the resignation of staff and the tragic death of a recently resigned staff member and her brother in a fire in a hotel. The consequences also include the suicide of a lonely young girl at the school who had a teenage crush on the most beautiful of the missing girls, and the suicide of the founder and headmistress of the school whose business appears to be unable to recover from the bad name it acquired due to the disappearances. The novel tells a story of compounding misfortune, of one bad thing leading to another, ultimately ending in misery and despair.

As the novel uses its characters and setting to present a portrait of life in rural Victoria at the turn of the century, it provides clues and leads that invite readers to attempt to solve the mystery of the disappearances, but these clues and leads do not lead anywhere definitive. The novel is written for an audience aware that people did sometimes get lost in the bush and are never found. The novel plays on these real fears and concerns.

In the arts in Australia during the 1960s and 1970s, there was a profound sense of cultural nationalism, particularly among mostly left-wing intellectuals, a backlash against the Americanisation of Australian culture. This led to a desire to counter this perceived cultural imperialism by representing Australian society, history, people, accents, and culture in distinctly Australian stories and settings. The novel, Picnic at Hanging Rock, published in 1967, and the film adaptation, released in 1975, are part of that trend. The story, set in 1900, features the novelist’s attempt to portray authentic culture and settings that realistically evoke that time.

Meanwhile, the novel conveys the view, popular among many intellectuals at the time the book was written, that there was something peculiar and wrong about transplanting British culture into a remote, foreign environment and trying to make it fit, albeit imperfectly. The British planted their lush flowers and green trees in a hot, dry climate to which they were unsuited. Their precise geometric gardens and refined European buildings looked out of place in the sun-bleached asymmetrical wilds of the Australian bush. These settlers wore British-style clothes unsuited to the Australian climate, especially in hot summers. This was particularly the case in the Victorian era that saw people dress to be almost fully covered, especially ladies who were covered from their neck to their ankles. Clothing such as ties, cummerbunds, corsets and bloomers are presented as ridiculously impractical to readers in the 1960s who were used to shorts, open-necked shirts, miniskirts, and bikinis. These girls and women in the Victorian era were expected to wear gloves and leggings despite the summer heat. Only when out of view of the local townsfolk were they permitted to take off their gloves. The clothes the teenage girls had to wear were impractical for exploring the bush, and when girls were out of the sight of their adult supervisors on the bush picnic they discarded several items.

While the novel presents the upper-class English as out of place and a little absurd in their dress sense and manners, it depicts working-class Australians as the true Australians and sets them up for admiration and imitation. This is particularly the case with the way that the novel contrasts two young men: the aristocratic Michael and the working-class Albert. Michael, who exhibits the refined manners of his English upbringing, is represented as admiring his family’s stable hand, the rugged, working-class, egalitarian Albert and, by doing so, shows that he wants to become more Australian and settle in this country. Michael had a privileged life. With a father who was a member of the House of Lords in England, he had experienced the best of everything, yet he was drawn to Australia despite his English upbringing. By contrast, Alfred had experienced an underprivileged life, abandoned by his parents who left him and his sister to live as orphans, he had had to work hard and toughen up to make himself economically viable. He is rugged and suited to the ruggedness of rural Australia. He is a rough diamond who epitomises Australian egalitarianism.

The novel also makes a subtle protest against the sexual prudishness of the Victorian era. From the outset, the teenage girls express a nascent sexuality. They are introduced as brimming with romantic and sexual curiosity expressed in their fascination with exchanging cards and messages on St Valentine’s Day. There is an undercurrent of young desire that can include crushes on other girls. Readers in the 1960s, a time that was experiencing the sexual revolution, are invited to look at these young woman in the Victorian era and appreciate how far women had progressed since then in the expression of their sexuality. The novel highlights what the author sees as the oppressive absurdity of the neck-to-ankle clothing and the prudishness of the restrictions placed on the girls by the prevailing morality enforced by authority figures.

The novel also exhibits a fascination with capturing the distinctive features of the Australian bush: its faded colours, inhospitable nature, and unusual wildlife including its deadly snakes and many insects. It is a hot, dry, and challenging place that requires rugged inhabitants. It is also a place of danger. The poor chances of survival overnight if lost without food, water or shelter is a fear that lurks in the background of the story. This is particularly the case regarding the ancient volcanic rock formation of Hanging Rock, which is mythologised as hypnotically alluring while also being inhospitable and dangerous.

The key to the novel’s success as a mystery is the missing last chapter ̶ Chapter 18. Removed on the advice of Joan Lindsay’s editor, it left the story a complete mystery. This had readers and academics speculating for decades as to what really happened. Eventually, the last chapter was published posthumously and separately. It had the girls disappear through a time warp. This unexpected science fiction ending was seen to detract from the novel’s period charm and captivating sense of mystery, and its removal helped transform the novel into a literary classic.

As is usually the case with mystery novels and films, the context and characters are introduced at the outset to appear normal. The characters go about normal life. In this case, it involved schoolgirls enjoying the titillation of St Valentine’s Day and their excitement regarding an impending excursion to Hanging Rock. The potential for mystery and danger is only hinted at. The first three chapters deal with the excursion to Hanging Rock and the disappearance of three girls and a teacher. The subsequent chapters (4 to 17) deal with the disruption this brought to the lives of the others. This initially includes anxiety among the remaining schoolgirls, gossip among the locals, a police investigation (with some of the narrative presented in police reports), search parties, and media coverage. It also includes the obsession of aristocratic Michael with finding the beautiful Miranda, with whom he is smitten after briefly having seen her walk past him at the base of the Rock. His desperate search efforts, assisted by the working-class Albert, found one of the missing girls, the wealthy and attractive heiress Irma. This leads to an interlude when the novel toys with the possibility of a romance between Michael and Irma. Meanwhile, her amnesia means she provides no clues to solving the mystery and rescuing the other two girls and the teacher who also disappeared. In addition, the boarding school crumbles as a result of the scandal from the disappearances. Concerned parents withdraw their daughters from the school. Staff decide to leave. Bad luck sees one former staff member, Miss Lumley, and her brother die in a hotel fire, raising the possibility of the school being cursed. The haughty headmistress, Mrs Appleyard, cannot stop her scandalised business from falling apart and she secretly turns to drink. However, the novel invites no sympathy for her. She is pompously British and has an authoritarian personality. She lacks empathy and was more concerned about her business than the wellbeing of others. She even bullies an orphan, Sara, whose guardian is behind in paying her fees. Meanwhile, Sara had a crush on Miranda and is devastated by her disappearance. These factors led to her suicide. This is soon followed by the suicide of the headmistress, Mrs Appleyard, who comes to see her financial situation as hopeless, and whose demise ends the novel. The novel conveys a momentum of misfortune, with one bad thing leading to another, leaving a trail of wreckage and despair. The novel concludes with a newspaper report recounting the unfortunate sequence of events and adding that the boarding school had burned down in a bushfire the following summer.

Student resources by Dr Mark Lopez

The purpose of the concise notes of Dr Mark’s The Meaning in a Nutshell is to provide much needed help to students seeking to unlock the meaning of the texts with which they have to deal. (More elaborate notes are provided in lessons as part of my private tutoring business.)

Subject: Picnic at Hanging Rock meaning, Picnic at Hanging Rock themes, Picnic at Hanging Rock analysis, Picnic at Hanging Rock notes