The Embrace of Ambiguity in Joan Lindsay's Picnic at Hanging Rock and Henry James's The Turn of the Screw

Since Joan Lindsay's Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967) was published over fifty years ago, it has captivated critics and readers alike. Peter Weir's influential 1975 cinematic adaptation brought the tale to an even wider audience, both national and international. The success of the film, however, has been double edged, for while it brought fame to the story, it has overshadowed the book, such that the novel and film tend to be erroneously spoken of in tandem or synonymously.¹ Fifty years on, it is time to reconsider Picnic at Hanging Rock unmoored from its cinematic adaptation, especially in light of Janelle McCulloch's recent book Beyond the Rock (2017). Among McCulloch's many revelations is that Lindsay's literary imagination was significantly influenced by the works of the American novelist Henry James (1843– 1916). McCulloch discloses that "Joan particularly admired his novel The Turn of the Screw which she called 'a mysterious tale that was half-truth and half fiction'" (137). McCulloch does not, however, offer any detail or analysis of how and to what extent Lindsay's regard for James's work, written almost a century earlier, might have influenced her own. Certainly, there are some obvious parallels between Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Turn of the Screw, including the lack of a satisfying ending.

A closer reading of both texts, however, suggests that the parallels run much deeper. Both narratives challenge us to ponder if there are dark supernatural forces at work or if the nightmare comes from within. Both are set in remote locations and involve a female disciplinarian caring for children. Both assign male characters secondary roles as servants, policemen, would-be ghosts, or lovers. Both Lindsay's Mrs. Appleyard and James's unnamed governess are single, lonely women who lack a sexual life. Indeed, the question of sexual repression permeates each narrative and is the trigger for much of the anxiety and apprehension. Considering these remarkable similarities, it is surprising that no one has undertaken a comparative study of these novels. Perhaps this is because commentary around Lindsay's novel has been driven by the desire to locate and foster an Australian literary tradition independent of its British and American counterparts and also by a pervasive need among Australian critics to address and redress specific cultural concerns, such as the omission of Indigenous peoples in our storytelling. While these critical approaches are undeniably valid and valuable, they overlook Lindsay's indebtedness to nineteenth-century realism and romance, particularly Henry James's idiosyncratic mixture of these conventions. This comparative analysis of Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Turn of the Screw considers the ways in which Lindsay's work has embraced James's enigmatic imagination. What is ultimately argued is that Picnic at Hanging Rock pushes James's obscurity further by moving its drama beyond the social realm that so characterized this American writer's literary worlds.

Rural Isolation and Abandonment

Lindsay's interest in nineteenth-century American literature is signposted early on in Picnic at Hanging Rock when boarder Sara Waybourne is banned from attending the Saint Valentine's Day picnic because of her failure to memorize Henry Longfellow's The Wreck of the Hesperus (1842). Reference to the famous ballad not only reveals the Headmistress's penchant for classical literature; it also provides insight into the College's disciplinary culture and foreshadows Sara's death, as well as Mrs. Appleyard's death and the College's eventual destruction. Compounding the allusion is the Headmistress's symbolic association with Longfellow's unlucky vessel: "Now an immense purposeful figure was swimming and billowing in grey silk taffeta on to a tiled and colonnaded verandah, like a galleon in full sail. On the gently heaving bosom, a cameo portrait of a gentleman in side whiskers, framed in garnets and gold, rose and fell in tune with the pumping of the powerful lungs encased in a fortress of steel busks and stiff grey calico" (Lindsay 12–13). What is also striking about this passage is...