Summary
The book begins in Macedon, a province in Australia. The students at Appleyard College, a boarding school, head out for a picnic at Hanging Rock, a large rock formation near the school. The picnic takes place on Valentine's Day and the narrator notes that several of the girls have been sorting through valentines from various admirers. The trip is led by Mrs. Appleyard, the stern and serious headmistress of the school. She is known for her dislike of Valentine's Day and her strict enforcement of school rules.
The story then focuses on four students: Miranda, Irma, Marion, and Edith. The narrator remarks that Miranda is known for being popular, Irma for being rich and beautiful, Marion for being intelligent, and Edith for being the class dunce. The trip is chaperoned by the French instructor, Mlle. Dianne de Poitiers, and the math teacher, Miss McCraw. One of the students, Sara Waybourne, is kept back as punishment for misbehaving. The class heads out to the rock and Miranda proposes a toast to Saint Valentine. They arrive at the picnic gardens and begin to unpack.
The class begins to eat lunch. Around the girls, the natural world teems with life: sugar ants carry icing off a cake, snakes lie in their dens. Following a large meal, everyone begins to busy themselves with activities. Miranda converses with Miss McCraw. Miranda, Irma, Marion, and Edith decide to go up to the rocks to explore. They approach a creek and become uncertain about how to cross it. They decide to leap across it. Nearby, two picnickers, Michael and Albert, notice the girls. Albert whistles at them.
The girls arrive at Hanging Rock and wander around, unaware of the years of natural forces that have shaped the area. Marion notes that the peaks of the mountain must be millions of years old, much to Edith's dismay at the scale of that number. Marion begins to tease Edith and Miranda tells her to stop. They begin to move higher up on the mountain. Miranda says that they shouldn't go much further, as she promised their teacher they would stay close. They are enchanted by the beautiful scenery of mossy stones and craggy rocks.
The girls find a strange circular platform with a porthole that overlooks the picnic grounds. The girls talk about heading back soon. Edith gets worked up over her stomach hurting and Miranda attempts to comfort her. Annoyed, Marion says she wishes Edith would stop talking. The girls spot a large monolith and are drawn toward it. They shelter in the shadow of the monolith and fall into a deep sleep. Beetles crawl across Marion's legs and a lizard nests in Miranda's arms. Later, Edith wakes up and sees the other girls moving off towards the monolith. She calls them and they seem not to hear her. She begins to scream and runs back to the picnic grounds.
Mrs. Appleyard wakes up from a nap back at the school. She speaks with Sara and says that she hopes she has learned her lesson. Sara says that she tried to memorize the poem Mrs. Appleyard gave her, but didn't care for it. Sara says that she wrote her own poem about Valentine's Day. Mrs. Appleyard becomes irritated and instructs her to keep working on her memorization. Night falls and the members of the picnic return. Mlle. de Poitiers frantically informs Mrs. Appleyard that something terrible has occurred. She says that Miss McCraw and three of the girls, Irma, Miranda, and Marion, have disappeared.
Ben Hussey, the school's stable master, makes a report to the local police. He says that initially they noticed that Miss McCraw and the three girls were absent when they were preparing to leave. Then Edith suddenly appeared, in a state of panic, saying the other girls had vanished up into the rocks. They attempted to comfort her with tea and a warm blanket. They searched the rocks thoroughly but found no signs of the girls or any physical evidence indicating what happened.
Analysis
Social dynamics are an important theme in the early pages of the novel. In the conversations between Miranda, Irma, Marion, and Edith, the reader is given a clear sense of the social hierarchy of the school. Miranda, Irma, and Marion exist at its apex, as they each possess a quality that causes the other students to admire and respect them. As the narrator observes, some of these qualities are intangible, as Miranda's popularity is largely determined by her soothing manner and calming presence. In contrast, Edith exists at the bottom of the social ladder. Marion's dismissal of Edith makes it clear that she is frequently an object of derision and mockery. Lindsay's careful observation of these interactions shows how the school swiftly stratifies into clearly defined classes of popularity.
Nature is another important theme in the novel. The narrator remarks repeatedly on how small the events of the picnic are in comparison to the natural world that serves as its backdrop. The girls mostly fail to notice the extraordinary functioning of the plants and animals in the forest around them. Only Marion seems to have an even passing appreciation for the massive scale of geological time that has shaped the rocks. This thread in the book emphasizes the relative unimportance of human action against the massive sweep of natural forces. This becomes more overtly relevant as the girls and Miss McCraw are later affected by strange forces at Hanging Rock. Lindsay highlights how the natural world is far more powerful than her human characters can appreciate or even comprehend.
The supernatural also plays a significant thematic role in the novel. The scene in which Edith watches the other girls wander towards the monolith in a trance shows the unexplained power that it holds. She calls out to them, but they seem to be completely unable to hear her. She then falls into a state of panic and begins screaming and running back towards the picnic. When the rocks are searched there is no remnant of any of the girls or Miss McCraw. Lindsay purposefully withholds any clear explanation of what happened to suggest that the events of that afternoon were caused by something mystical. These moments reveal the limits of human understanding in grasping the mysteries of nature.
Propriety is another key theme in the book. Mrs. Appleyard strictly enforces rules at the school, to the extent that she is widely disliked by the students, faculty, and staff. She punishes Sara Waybourne for a minor infraction and makes her memorize a poem in an attempt to force her to act more politely. She cares little about the students' actual well-being and is mostly concerned with keeping up the appearance of having a neat, well-run school. In the character of Mrs. Appleyard, Lindsay shows how propriety and politeness can be divorced entirely from sympathy and true kindness. This indicates how poorly she will later handle the fallout of the disappearances.
These initial chapters situate the story's central themes while introducing several key characters. The reader witnesses the complex social dynamics at work within the school while also glimpsing the scope of the mysterious forces that set off the disappearances. These chapters are central in that they show the main event of the story: the girls moving toward the monolith in an altered state. The rest of the plot is informed by the aftermath of this unexplained phenomenon.
