Love and Desire in Picnic at Hanging Rock
Written by Corrie Todaro
The following is an excerpt from our Picnic at Hanging Rock Student Study Companion and VCE English Resources Pack for teachers.
In the film’s opening scenes, Appleyard College is established as a site for the deep and unfulfilled longings of its adolescent boarders. The girls are introduced through a montage of them completing their routines to prepare for the day (such as bathing and lacing each other tightly into corsets) while reading love poetry aloud and counting the Valentine’s cards they have presumably written to each other. At the breakfast table they hold the saint’s statue aloft, adorned with a red rose, exclaiming “to St Valentine!” in excitement. Their naive infatuation with the romantic ideals of the day is then reinforced when they arrive to picnic at the rock, with Miranda making yet another toast “to St Valentine!” while slicing down the middle of a cake inscribed with the saint’s name. Sara, the only boarder left behind as a punishment for unfinished schoolwork, even refuses to recite ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ as requested by Mrs Appleyard, in favour of her own poem, which she has titled “an ode to St Valentine” (and has presumably written for Miranda). Yet the romantic desires of the girls established by the film are ultimately to remain unfulfilled.
The disappearance of a group of senior boarders on the rock freezes them forever in the white linen dresses they disappeared in (symbolic of their eternal purity in the memories of those around them). They are depicted as having been ‘taken’ by the rock on the cusp of the time they would pass from being girls into the next stage of their lives as wives and mothers. They therefore remain as girls, rather than passing into the rites of womanhood and romantic love, forever. Their earlier toast to St Valentine, the protector of young lovers, is ironically unable to protect them so they can be ushered safely to this next stage in their lives. This ‘failure’ of their prayers to the patron saint perhaps suggests that the primordial force of nature that had been “waiting a million years, just for [them]” is far more powerful than any Eurocentric traditions or mythologies that arrived much later, despite what might be believed by the white settlers of the Australian continent. Additionally, it is not just the girls at the rock who are shown to lack the saint’s protection, with Sara’s depression at the loss of Miranda creating a chain of events that results in her suicide (or murder). Her tragic death prevents her from eventually being able to replace her desire for the older schoolgirl with a more attainable form of romantic love, or from being reunited with her brother Bertie and fulfilling her desire for the familial love that has been absent from her life.
As the quest for the truth of the disappearance develops, so does the film’s exploration of the repressive nature of Victorian society’s expectations of ideal femininity in young women, revealing the role this may have played in driving the girls to seek freedom in their rebellious exploration of the rock. While remaining completely unexplained, the missing girls’ encounter with the rock is coded as a sensual (and perhaps sexual) encounter, with this event being used to foreground the tensions that arise between social expectations arising from Victorian morality and the strong drive of human desire. As they ascend the rock the girls seem driven forward, to climb higher and higher, while at a critical halfway point only Edith seems to baulk at continuing, exclaiming that it is “an ugly old rock” and that it’s “nasty here”. As they climb higher, and linger towards its peaks, the filmmaker portrays them swaying their bodies dreamily to the ethereal panpipes of the non-diegetic score and removing layers of their clothing as if they are stripping themselves for an encounter with a lover. Edith, a symbol of adherence to the moral codes of their society, feels a growing sense of discomfort at the realisation of the nature of this encounter, exclaiming “Where in the world are they going? Without their shoes!” She later runs screaming in horror from the rock, while the other girls climb higher still, ignoring her pleas “to come back” and instead remaining behind in their trance-like communion with the geological feature.
Succumbing to this form of sensual desire is further reinforced as a threat to the expectations of gender in this society when Edith and Irma are separately recovered from the rock. Discussions occur on both of these occasions around the fact they are “quite intact” (implying they have been examined by the doctor to confirm their status anatomically as virgins). The relief expressed by the authority figures who receive this news indicates the importance of this information. It is not enough that they have returned alive and physically unharmed; they also need to be proclaimed virgins in order for their society to see them as returned in an ‘appropriate’ state. The need for the young girls to comply with the expectation of purity is even shown to outweigh the need for this society to discover the truth of their disappearance (or indeed recover the other missing girls). Even though Irma is declared “intact” after examination by the doctor, the film alludes to the encounter experienced during her time on the rock as having been sexual in nature. After the police have left, the Fitzhuberts’ housekeeper confesses in private that she’s discovered “Miss Irma’s corset” was “missing”. A corset was a restrictive female undergarment, so for Irma to have been found without it means it was removed by herself, someone else or something else (implying a continuation of the intentional undressing that had begun in the earlier scenes of ascending the rock). The notion that this information is taboo is reinforced by the housekeeper keeping it secret and stating she did so deliberately as she “didn’t know whether the Sergeant should be told”. While all evidence at this stage would be critical to provide leads to the whereabouts of the other girls, Mrs Fitzhubert ironically asserts, “you did right dear, it can’t possibly be of any interest”, confirming that this society values the illusion of female purity above all else (including the truth and possibly the lives of the other missing girls).
Desire, therefore, is clearly presented as a moral threat to the young women in the film, and as something to be rejected should they wish to remain accepted by their society. This is reflected in the response of Irma’s classmates upon her return to Appleyard College to say goodbye. In this scene, her symbolic loss of innocence is reinforced by her being costumed in a scarlet red cloak, and her clearly altered state provokes aggressive rejection by her peers rather than joyous welcome. The other girls initially stare at her menacingly as she stands uncomfortably in the middle of the eerily silent gymnasium. They then attack her in an almost supernatural frenzy, screaming “Tell us Irma! Tell us!”, “What happened to Miranda, Irma?” and “You know where they are!”. One of the final lines shouted before the frenzy subsides is, “They’re dead and gone! She’s going to you know where!”, which implies that the encounter the missing girls had with the rock has sent them to Hell as punishment for their unforgivable ‘sin’ of acting upon, rather than repressing, their desires. Irma’s classmates recognise that Irma has been returned to them, but that she has returned as a threatening presence to be rejected rather than embraced. Thus their longing for the return of the idealised version of the classmates they have lost will remain forever unfulfilled, with both the living Irma and the memory of the still missing girls being tainted by the transgression of acting upon desire.
Corrie Todaro - The English Lab
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