Did It Really Happen: Picnic at Hanging Rock

You can find the original article here.

The main points of the article are below:'

The article refers to the story as a 'gothic tale.'
There is a relevant book entitled Beyond the Rock-The Life of Joan Lindsay and the Mystery of Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Another book referred to is The Murders at Hanging Rock.
Part of the story may be based on the Clyde School Magazine (a school Joan Lindsay attended) which talked about a school trip to Hanging Rock in 1919. It was led by a Miss Mc Craw, there was a problem crossing a stream and when the girls returned to their school they didn't have their hats on and were 'frowzy' (scruffy and neglected in appearance.)
Mrs. Appleyard hates Hanging Rock.
The rock represents nature in its 'otherness and unfathomable creative power.'
The love radiating from Miranda represents 'the union of beauty and goodness, of erotic and agapic love.'
Miranda moves through the college without being a part of it.
The article talks about patterns in the story.
The pattern is complete when Appleyard dies.
Nature vs. science with nature winning.
Activists are angry about Miranda and the other white girls being fairy tales and that people need to live up to their past which is one of British domination over the indigenous people and their area. (In other words any films made that refer to that era or place must be politically correct.)
The clothes the girls wear at the school 'represent the repressive confinement the girls endure at Appleyard, the suffocating restrictions of a culture out of joint and walled off from its environment.'
(I don't think that argument stands up as the clothes the girls wear were no more confining than the type of clothing that girls of that period wore in England at that time, before and sometime after.)
Lindsay's approach is to come to terms with the environment.
Miranda and Marion are 'unconscious incarnations of an Australian ancestor spirit.' (So where does Miss Mc Craw fit into all this?)
Something seemed to call to Miranda and the other girls. (But Irma ends up rejected by whatever the call is, apparently, and Edith ran away from it.)

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