The Secret of Hanging Rock
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The Secret of Hanging Rock is a previously unpublished chapter of Joan Lindsay's 1967 book Picnic at Hanging Rock and contains the "solution" to the mystery in that book. It was originally written as the final chapter, though it was removed before publication and not released until 1987, two years after Lindsay's death.
The missing material amounts to about six pages; the rest of The Secret at Hanging Rock is discussion by other authors. It has been argued by many critics that much of the power of the original book stems from the suggestion that it was a true story, and the fact that the mystery in the book was never resolved, and therefore it was a good decision by the author to remove this material.
While walking past the hanging rock, the girls experience several incomprehensible phenomena. Driven giddy by some supernatural suggestion of the monolith, they throw their corsets over the cliff, though they never fall to the bottom and instead hang in space in an impossible fashion. The girls and Miss McCraw notice a mystical "hole in space". Marion, Miranda, and Miss McCraw transform into small snakes and crawl into a hole in the rock, which another boulder then covers, leaving Irma alone and clawing at the fallen rock.
[edit] Symbolism and meaning
Many readers interpret this to mean that the girls have fallen into a time warp. This is compatible with Lindsay's fascination with clocks and time throughout "Picnic at Hanging Rock." It also ties in with the tension between aboriginal and English Australia that is clear throughout the book. The girls somehow succumbed to a magical, natural Australia, and were forever lost to their civilized schoolmates.
Explanations which do not rely on supernatural occurrences have been proposed by fans. However, given that the story was specifically written with a supernatural resolution, a coherent natural explanation of the fictional events would probably be elusive.
[edit] Sources
- Joan Lindsay (1987). The Secret of Hanging Rock. HarperCollins Publishers (Australia).
