Picnic at Hanging Rock Chapter 1

And such mantelpieces! Two in the long drawing-room of white marble, supported by pairs of caryatids as firm of bust as Madam herself; others of carved and tortured wood embellished with a thousand winking tiddling mirrors. Appleyard College was already, in the year nineteen hundred, an architectural anachronism in the Australian bush – a hopeless misfit in time and place.

What makes this description gothic?

'Failure to recite ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ yesterday had condemned the child Sara Waybourne to solitary confinement upstairs. Later, she would pass the sweet summer afternoon in the empty schoolroom, committing the hated masterpiece to memory.'

The intertextuality of ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ alludes to what?

• Failure to protect those weaker than yourself.

• How arrogance and foolish human pride can lead to tragic and devastating consequences.

• The irony of the outside being safer than the inside.

• To not lose sight of what is important in the bigger scheme of things.

What does the intertextuality of ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ foreshadow?

• That Mrs Appleyard thinks that reciting literature will make the girls intelligent.

• That people have no power over their own fates.

• That Mrs Appleyard's arrogance and pride will be the downfall of Appleyard College.

• That a father and daughter will be separated and die.

Now an immense purposeful figure was swimming and billowing in grey silk taffeta on to the tiled and colonnaded verandah...

What literary techniques have been used in this quotation?

• Implied metaphor

• Simile

• Personification

• Adjectives

Answer explanation

In an implied metaphor, we don’t reveal the comparison between two entities directly, but imply it by a subtle shift in wording.

At Appleyard College SILENCE WAS GOLDEN, written up in the corridors and often imposed. There was a delicious freedom about the swift steady motion of the drag and even in the warm dusty air blowing up in their faces that set the passengers chirping and chattering like budgerigars.

What does this phrase reveal about the juxtaposition between the College and the outside?

Directly ahead, the grey volcanic mass rose up slabbed and pinnacled like a fortress from the empty yellow plain.

• Simile

• Personification

• Alliteration

• Sibilance

• Pathetic Fallacy

The basket was re-packed, the passengers counted in case anyone should be left behind, the steps of the drag pulled up under the floorboards and once again they were on the road, moving through the scattered silvery shade of straight young trees, where the horses pressed forward through ripples of golden light that broke on straining shoulders and dark sweating rumps. The five sets of hooves were almost soundless on the soft unmade surface of the country road. No traveller passed by, no bird song splintered the sunflecked silence, the grey pointed leaves of the saplings hung lifeless in the noonday heat.

What does the sibilance do in this quotation? (Hint: it's not sinister)

Answer explanation

This also has the technique of anaphora in it which is a hint at the answer...

Directly ahead, the grey volcanic mass rose up slabbed and pinnacled like a fortress from the empty yellow plain. The three girls on the box seat could see the vertical lines of the rocky walls, now and then gashed with indigo shade, patches of grey green dogwood, outcrops of boulders even at this distance immense and formidable. At the summit, apparently bare of living vegetation, a jagged line of rock cut across the serene blue of the sky.

What does the description of the rock imply?

• That the rock is violent and a physical force. It foreshadows danger.

• That the girls don't see what is around them. It implies stupidity.

• That the rock is beautiful and awe-inspiring. It shows how wonderful nature is.

• That the rock is large and rough. It juxtaposes the description of the COllege.

...dragging weight of the gate neatly supported on one hip. As soon as it was opened wide enough on its rusty hinges to allow the safe passage of the drag, a flock of parrots flew out screeching from an overhanging tree, winging away across the sunlit grassy flats towards Mount Macedon, rising up all blue and green to the south.

What do the parrots represent?

• That they are going somewhere that not many people go.

• They are in a country with exotic animals. They are unknown.

• That there are animals inside the gate.

• A warning to those who enter. They are trying to escape.

...a jagged line of rock cut across the serene blue of the sky.

• Simile

• Personification

• Metaphor

• Anaphora