Mrs Appleyard at Hanging Rock
And now, at last, after a lifetime of linoleum and asphalt
and Axmininster carpets, the heavy flat-footed woman trod the springing earth.
Born fifty-seven years ago in a suburban wilderness of smoke-grimed bricks,
she knew no more of Nature than a scarecrow rigid on a broomstick above a field of waving corn.
. . . When the ground started to rise towards the Rock, she knew that she must turn to the right
into the waist-high bracken and begin to climb . . . She could feel the perspiration
trickling down her neck under the stiff lace at her throat [and looked] up at the sky
faintly streaked with pink behind a row of jagged peaks.
Joan Lindsay
Picnic at Hanging Rock
In Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Mrs Appleyard's scaling of Hanging Rock is depicted as the actions of a rageful and frustrated woman who with a shaking fist and an insane glint in her eye, attempts to take on Hanging Rock itself. Cliff Green's screenplay follows Lindsay's lead. Accordingly, Mrs Appleyard is simply described as "an exhausted, half-mad old woman . . . an old lady in a long blue coat and gloves . . . wearing a brown hat with a feather in it."
Yet this emphasis on "madness" prevents any meaningful or insightful exploration as to why Mrs Applyard--this bastion of empire--actually travels to Hanging Rock and attempts to climb it. Accordingly, given this paper's theological analysis of the film Picnic at Hanging Rock, I'd like to engage in just such an exploration and in doing so, offer a deeper, more hopeful reason than insanity for Mrs Appleyard's journey to Hanging Rock.
First, however, it needs to be noted that the images on this page will not be found in any currently available version of Peter Weir's film, Picnic at Hanging Rock. Although Rachel Roberts was filmed as Mrs Appleyard at Hanging Rock, this particular scene was never included in the final film. Thankfully, the footage shot was not lost forever--hence these haunting images of Mrs Appleyard at Hanging Rock.
The story of the rediscovery of these images is centered on an Australian named David Critchley who in 1997 set about compiling a "special edition" of Joan Lindsay's novel--the proceeds of which would benefit the Hanging Rock Reserve. Published in 2002, the end-result of Critchley's labour-of-love is, according to Michelle Griffen of the Melbourne newspaper The Age, "a gorgeous coffee-table book of the original Picnic at Hanging Rock novel, interlaced with excerpts from Cliff Green's screenplay and illustrated with hundreds of never-before-seen images."
Griffen also notes that "In search for a missing scene of headmistress Mrs Appleyard . . . on the Rock, Critchley discovered the mother lode--the original rushes from the film production, full of unseen footage, kept in three sea chests under a stairwell in a Sydney house. Normally, a film's rushes are destroyed, but in this case they'd been saved from being dumped by a crew member."
Given this paper's contention that Hanging Rock represents consciousness and that those who disappear on the afternoon of the picnic ascend the Rock seeking and gaining liberation from oppressive societal structures, I propose that Mrs Appleyard, for reasons that perhaps she herself could not fully comprehend or articulate, was drawn to the Rock--drawn to a higher level of awareness. It was the overwhelmingly negative consequences resulting from her previous way of dealing with the mysterious events at the Rock, that faciltated this seeking of greater awareness. Chief among these negative consequences was the suicide of Sara Waybourne--a tragedy brought about by Mrs Appleyard's uncompassionate treatment of the young woman.
Yet no one is beyond salvation; all can be awakened at some deep, sacred level to the call of liberation. Physically, Mrs Appleyard perished on the Rock. Spiritually, she was finally freed from that oppressive system of empire which it seems she had spent a lifetime trying to embody--yet at a terrible price. She couldn't even use her own name. She was Mrs Arthur Appleyard. Thus in a fundamental way, Mrs Appleyard was oppressed and robbed by the very system she had dedicated her life to serving.
Yet now, at last, among the towering crags and pinnacles of Hanging Rock, this nameless woman who had sacrificed her very identity at the altar of empire, begins to let go, begins to go beyond. Like the missing picnickers before her, Mrs Appleyard abandons the outward symbols of empire, of her exalted position which had prevented her from experiencing--from feeling--life. Such trappings as her umbrella, her overcoat, her handbag are abandoned. Even her hair, usually tightly arranged into an armoured pompadour, is loosened and hangs free. Yet doubt and fear remain--as evidenced in her eyes. It is the fear of a newly aware being in an infinite and mysterious universe. Hence the need for a guide--a bodhisattva in Buddhist thought; one who has achieved liberation yet who lingers so as to assist others in their journey.
In Joan Lindsay's book, Sara Waybourne's appearance to Mrs Appleyard on the Rock is depicted as that of an avenging spectre--one clothed "in a nightdress, with one eye fixed and staring from a mask of rotting flesh." It is this sight, the book implies, that drives the crazed Mrs Appleyard to leap from the Rock to her death.
Interestingly, Weir does not attempt to depict Sara in such a gruesome and repellent way. Instead, the expression on Sara's face as she looks upon the frightened and unraveling Mrs Appleyard is one of compassion and forgiveness. Perhaps then, in the film's interpretation of the book's ending, it is Mrs Appleyard's attempt to trustingly climb to the level of the compassionate Sara that results in her physical death--that most ultimate letting go to which we will all one day be called.
Thus rather than taking the easy way out and simply destroying her, Weir's film undertakes the infinitely more difficut task of depicting Mrs Appleyard's ultimate transformation.
Mrs Appleyard at Hanging Rock, (c) Michael J. Bayly
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