Picnic at Hanging Rock (novel)

''Picnic at Hanging Rock'' is an Australian historical fiction novel by Joan Lindsay. The novel, set in 1900, is about a group of female students at an Australian girls' boarding school who vanish at Hanging Rock while on a Valentine's Day picnic, and the effects the disappearances have on the school and local community. The novel was first published in 1967 in Australia by Cheshire Publishing and was reprinted by Penguin in 1975. It is widely considered by critics to be one of the greatest Australian novels. In 2022, it was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II.

Overview

Although the events depicted in the novel are entirely fictional, it is framed as though it were a true story, corroborated by ambiguous pseudohistorical references. Its unresolved conclusion has sparked significant public, critical, and scholarly analysis, and the narrative has become a part of Australia's national folklore as a result. Lindsay claimed to have written the novel over two weeks at her home Mulberry Hill in Baxter, on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, after having successive dreams of the narrated events.

An excised final chapter of the novel was published posthumously as part of a book entitled '' The Secret of Hanging Rock'', which also included critical commentary and theories about the novel. Another book, titled ''The Murders at Hanging Rock'', was published in 1980, proposing varying other interpretations. The novel has been adapted into other media, most famously in the 1975 critically well-received film of the same name by director Peter Weir.

Plot

The novel begins with a brief foreword stating that whether the novel "is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves" and implying that the events occurred.

At Appleyard College, a private boarding school for upper-class girls near Mount Macedon, Victoria, a picnic is being planned for the students under the supervision of Mrs. Appleyard, the school's headmistress. The picnic entails a day trip to Hanging Rock, on St. Valentine's Day in 1900. One of the students, Sara, who is in trouble with Mrs. Appleyard, is not allowed to go. Sara's close friend Miranda goes without her. When they arrive, the students relax, and eat lunch. Afterward, Miranda goes to climb the monolith with classmates Edith, Irma, and Marion despite being forbidden to do so. The girls' mathematics teacher, Greta McCraw, follows behind them separately. Miranda, Marion, and Irma climb still higher in a trance-like state while Edith flees in terror; she returns to the picnic in hysterics, disoriented and with no memory of what occurred. Miss McCraw is also nowhere to be accounted for except for being seen by Edith who passed her ascending the rock in her underwear. The school scours the rock in search of the three girls and their teacher, but they are not found.

The disappearances provoke much local concern and international sensation with rape, abduction, and murder being assumed as probable explanations. Several organized searches of the picnic grounds and the area surrounding the rock itself turn up nothing. Meanwhile, the students, teachers and staff of the college, as well as members of the community, grapple with the riddle-like events. Mike Fitzhubert, an Englishman who was picnicking at the grounds the same day, embarks on a private search of the rock and discovers Irma, unconscious and on the verge of death. When he fails to return from his search, he is found in an unexplained daze, sitting at the rock with Irma, by his friend and uncle's coachman, Albert Crundall.

Concerned parents begin withdrawing their daughters from the prestigious college, prompting various staff to leave; the college's handyman and maid quit their jobs, and the French instructor, Mlle. Dianne de Poitiers, announces that she will be getting married and leaving the college as well. A junior governess at the college, Dora Lumley, also leaves with her brother Reg, only for both to be killed in a hotel fire. Amidst the unrest both in and around the college, Sara vanishes, only to be found days later, having apparently committed suicide (her body was found directly beneath the school's tower, with her head "crushed beyond recognition"). Mrs. Appleyard, distraught over the events that have occurred, kills herself by jumping from a peak on Hanging Rock.

In a pseudo-historical afterword purportedly extracted from a 1913 Melbourne newspaper article, it is written that both the college and the Woodend Police Station, where records of the investigation were kept, were destroyed by a bush fire in the summer of 1901. In 1903, rabbit hunters came across a lone piece of frilled calico at the rock, believed to have been part of the dress of the governess, Miss Greta McCraw, but neither she nor the girls were ever found.

Excised final chapter

According to her editor Sandra Forbes, Lindsay's original draft of the novel included a final chapter in which the mystery was resolved. At her editor's suggestion, Lindsay removed it prior to publication. Chapter Eighteen, as it is known, was published posthumously as a standalone book in 1987 as ''The Secret of Hanging Rock'' by Angus & Robertson Publishing.

The chapter opens with Edith fleeing back to the picnic area while Miranda, Irma, and Marion push on. Each girl begins to experience dizziness and feel as if she is "being pulled from the inside out." A woman suddenly appears climbing the rock in her underwear, shouting "Through!", and then faints. This woman is not referenced by name and is apparently a stranger to the girls, yet the narration suggests she is Miss McCraw. Miranda loosens the woman's corset to help revive her. Afterwards, the girls remove their own corsets and throw them off the cliff. The recovered woman points out that the corsets appear to hover in mid-air as if stuck in time, and that they cast no shadows. She and the girls continue together. The girls then encounter what is described as "a hole in space", by which they physically enter a crack in the rock following a lizard; the unnamed woman transforms into a crab and disappears into the rock. Marion follows her, then Miranda, but when Irma's turn comes, a balanced boulder (the hanging rock) slowly tilts and blocks the way. The chapter ends with Irma "tearing and beating at the gritty face on the boulder with her bare hands."

The missing material amounts to about 12 pages; the remainder of the publication ''The Secret at Hanging Rock'' contains discussion by other authors, including John Taylor and Yvonne Rousseau. The suspension of the corsets and description of the hole in space suggest that the girls have encountered some sort of time warp, which is compatible with Lindsay's fascination with and emphasis on clocks and time in the novel.

Conception

Lindsay claimed to have written the novel based on an idea she had in a dream. In a 2017 article in ''The Age'', it was noted: "The dream had centred on a summer picnic at a place called Hanging Rock, which Joan knew well from her childhood holidays. Joan told Rae er housekeeperthat the dream had felt so real that when she awoke at 7.30am, she could still feel the hot summer breeze blowing through the gum trees and she could still hear the peals of laughter and conversation of the people she'd imagined, and their gaiety and lightness of spirit as they set out on their joyful picnic expedition."

According to her housekeeper at the time, the events of the novel were dreamt by Lindsay successively. Several years after the publication of the novel, Lindsay would recount the experience of writing it as such: "''Picnic at Hanging Rock'' really was an experience to write, because I was just impossible when I was writing it. I just sort of thought about it all night and in the morning I would go straight up and sit on the floor, papers all around me, and just write like a demon!"

The novel was written over a total of two weeks at Lindsay's home in Mulberry Hill. In thinking of a title, Lindsay recalled the painting ''At the Hanging Rock'' by William Ford, which had hung in her husband Daryl's office at the National Gallery of Victoria, and chose to incorporate it into the title as it was "simple and pretty, and belied the horrors hidden within." In an interview after Lindsay's death, academic Terrence O'Neill, who had befriended Lindsay, remarked the supernatural elements of the novel: "It was clear that oanwas interested in Spiritualism, and longed for some spiritual dimension in her life, but she didn't feel safe bringing that side of her out in front of her husband. So I think she channelled it into her writing. I know she was very interested in Arthur Conan Doyle and his belief in and theories about Spiritualism, nature and the existence of spirits."

The novel was imported for sale in the United States, and would receive its first publication there in 2014 by Penguin Random House. In the United Kingdom, the novel was printed in several editions by Vintage, in 1998 and 2013.

Basis in reality

''Picnic at Hanging Rock'' is written in the form of a true story, and even begins and ends with a pseudohistorical prologue and epilogue, reinforcing the mystery that has generated significant critical and public interest since its publication in 1967. However, while the geological feature, Hanging Rock, and the several towns mentioned are actual places near Mount Macedon, the story itself is entirely fictitious. Lindsay had done little to dispel the myth that the story is based on truth, in many interviews either refusing to confirm it was entirely fiction, or hinting that parts of the book were fictitious and that others were not. The dates named in the novel do not correspond to actual dates in the 1900 calendar. For instance, Valentine's Day, 14 February 1900, occurred on a Wednesday, not a Saturday; similarly, Easter Sunday fell on 15 April in 1900, not on 29 March.

Appleyard College was to some extent based on Clyde Girls' Grammar School at St Kilda East, Victoria, which Joan Lindsay attended as a day-girl while in her teens. Incidentally, in 1919 this school was transferred to the town of Woodend, Victoria, about 8 km southwest of Hanging Rock. The fictional site of the college was described in the book as having an eastward view of Mount Macedon on the Bendigo Road. This would place it roughly 3.6 mi. (5.8 km) south of Woodend. The total trip to Hanging Rock was about 7.5 mi. (12 km.).

When asked in a 1974 interview about whether or not the novel was based in truth, Lindsay responded: "Well, it was written as a mystery and it remains a mystery. If you can draw your own conclusions, that's fine, but I don't think that it matters. I wrote that book as a sort of atmosphere of a place, and it was like dropping a stone into the water. I felt that story, if you call it a story—that the thing that happened on St. Valentine's Day went on spreading, out and out and out, in circles." (Excerpt available o
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The unresolved mystery of the disappearances in the novel aroused so much lasting public interest that in 1980 a book of hypothetical solutions (by Yvonne Rousseau) was published, called ''The Murders at Hanging Rock''.

Publication history

The novel was first published on 1 November 1967 by F. W. Cheshire, Melbourne, under the aegis of Andrew Fabinyi, with an acclaimed "dream-like" cover design by Alison Forbes. It was reprinted in paperback by Penguin Books

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