For the first time, she experienced what it was like to climb a mountain on a hot afternoon, just as the missing girls had climbed the mountain in dresses and thin shoes a long time ago.
On St. Valentine's Day in 1900, several senior teachers and students of Appleyard Women's College in the Australian jungle went to Heine Rock for a picnic, resulting in three girls and a female teacher missing, seeing their missing girl Edith screaming and running to the flat ground, seemingly stimulated to ask no information, and then found under the balance boulder The young girl Irma was rescued but had amnesia, and the others were still missing.
Australian writer Joan Lindsay's novel "Picnic on the Cliff" revolves around the disappearance of the young girl, the whole novel does not reveal the truth of the disappearance, but constructs a women's college that suppresses human nature and a jungle cliff full of wild unknowns. The end of an era is restored in a fragmented multi-angle narrative.
Everything has a way, like a dream bubble
The novel was created in 1967 and the film of the same name was filmed in 1975, both of which caused great social repercussions, many people thought that the story was true, and even some people went to the shooting location to explore the truth. The author's paradoxical writing is like baudelaire's writing in "The Melancholy of Paris": "Remove a vertebrae, the two ends of this winding Fantasia will be effortlessly connected, chop it into small pieces, and you will see that each piece can exist independently." "The story retraces between the academy and the cliff, the dean Appleyard, the missing girl Miranda, the punished student Sarah, and others, and the huge web of characters may be able to glimpse the hidden things behind the disappearance.
The text sets up a lot of doubts, such as a watch that stops at the same time during a picnic, blurring the boundaries of time; the sudden sleepiness of the four girls climbing the boulders all fall asleep on the rocks, and when miranda wakes up, she turns barefoot and walks toward the high place, followed by two other girls, followed by miss McLaugh, who is not wearing a skirt. In questioning witnesses and bystanders, the reader falls into the author's narrative trap.
If you look at Miranda's words before departure:
What a beautiful day! I really want to go to the countryside, I can't wait for a moment.
Forests, ferns, birds... It's like my hometown.
The picnic of the day was run by Miss McLaugh, which made it seem like a premeditated departure. The girls were tired of the college's rigid life of being watched by the guards, they longed for freedom, the beautiful Irma took off her shoes and socks and danced on the warm smooth stones, and the girls were touched by love and freedom.
The fate of the missing girls, whether they choose to leave this world or flee, the author did not tell. Elma was found barefoot, but her feet were very clean, her underwear, socks and shoes were missing, and the school was concerned about whether her body was defiled. The romantic escape returns to the darkness of reality, and the disappearance of the young girl is only a lead-in, leading to the education of the college's moral and oppressive human nature, and ultimately brings true death, the suicide of the young girl Sarah and the dean Appleyard.
For example, the conversation between the girls on the cliff has doomed Sarah's death to be "fate". The orphan lost Miranda, who had been taking care of her, lost her spiritual backbone, and because of the tuition fee, could not attend painting classes, and even had to be sent to social welfare institutions, which made Sarah lose hope of life, and the poor girl chose to jump down. And Abbot Appleyard also because of the departure of teachers and students, the school is difficult to sustain, and eventually went to the place where the girl disappeared, if the girl's embrace and dance is the beginning of the inner search for light, the fall of Dean Appleyard represents the end of a dark and authoritarian era.
The illusion of Joan Lindsay's words
Perhaps the author was originally a painter, or perhaps the delicate emotions of female writers, the text of the novel is like an oil painting. The cliffside scenery is so quiet and silent, and at the Hein Rock, the violet shadow drags the long body. The turquoise sky, the golden peaks, everything is so spectacular. Ferns flourish, climbing spiders, plant-seeking ants, and the vitality of the wild corresponds to those young, beautiful and energetic maidens, who take off the clothes, shoes and socks that imprison their bodies, and merge with nature, as if they become birds flying in the sky.
The light in the wild is full of colors, and the women's college, the cold stones, the darkness shrouding the gray sky, the blooming flowers can not see the color. The contrast between chiaroscuro is the dream realm created by female artists, the dream that Sarah gave to her brother, and the wild dinner of the girls, as if they were all dreams created by the author. The wild growth of animals and plants in the outdoors has a vigorous vitality, but the academy's Sarah is like losing oxygen, being tortured and skinny, losing all hope, which is the distortion of human nature under the oppression of civilization.
The past will inevitably decay, there may be desolation, there is also a good background to illuminate the whole story, Miranda's swan-like beauty and care for Sara, will not disappear with the disappearance of the cliff, the angel is still there.