Inkling Explorations - A Picnic

Once a month, Heidi @Sharing the Journey poses a provocation for our consideration.

September's link up is: a picnic scene in literature or film.

If you'd like to join in, here's how:

1. Post the Inklings button on your sidebar.

2. Do a post on your own blog relating to the month's selection/subject (a literary excerpt as short or as long as you like AND/OR—if specified that month—a screencap from a film with an explanation of how the scene builds/develops the story). Link back to Sharing the Journey somewhere in your post.

3. Paste your link in the comments box and I'll add it to the post. Then enjoy visiting and reading everyone else's contributions!

That's all there is to it!

For me, there is only one possible picnicking scene in all of known literature.

This book, it's picnic and the bizarre consequences of what happened there, was burnt onto my memory during my teen years when I first read the book in question. The fabulously eerie, mysterious and sensual film of the same name only added to the allure when I eventually watched it as well.

I am, of course referring to Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay.

First published in 1967, this fictitious, and deliberately ambiguous, story about a Valentine's picnic in 1900 by a group of school girls and their teachers, blurred the line between fact and fiction. For years, many people in Australia wondered if this story was based on real events. The 1975 Peter Weir movie only increased the speculation.

Lindsay maintained the myth by refusing to discuss the details of her book. She also began her novel with a 'note from the author' that said,

Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves. As the fateful picnic took place in the year nineteen hundred, and all the characters who appear in this book are long since dead, it hardly seems important.

My 2013 review of Picnic at Hanging Rock can be found here (with a trailer from the movie) and some pics from our family holiday to the real Hanging Rock in 2007 are here.

But for now, here's the picnic....

Everyone agreed that the day was just right for the picnic to Hanging Rock - a shimmering summer morning warm and still, with cicadas shrilling all through breakfast from the loquat trees outside the dining-room windows and bees murmuring above the pansies bordering the drive. (pg1)

Still from the 1975 movie in the breakfast room - exchanging Valentine cards.

Manmade improvement on Nature at the Picnic Grounds consisted of several circles of flat stones to serve as fireplaces and a wooden privy in the shape of a Japanese pagoda. The creek at the close of summer ran sluggishly through long, dry grass, now and then disappearing to re-appear as a shallow pool. Lunch had been set out on large white tablecloths close by, shaded from the heat of the sun by two or three spreading gums. In addition to the chicken pie, angel cakes, jellies and the tepid bananas inseperable from an Australian picnic, Cook had provided a handsome iced cake in the shape of a heart, for which Tom had obligingly cut a mould from a piece of tin. Mr Hussey had boiled up two immense billycans of tea on a fire of bark and leaves and was now enjoying a pipe in the shadow of the drag where he could keep a watchful eye on his horses tethered in the shade. (pg19)

Still from the 1975 movie at the base of Hanging Rock. A Toast to St Valentine!

Hunger satisfied and the unwonted delicacies enjoyed to the last morsel, the cups and plates rinsed at the pool, they settled down to amuse themselves for the remainder of the afternoon. Some wandered of in twos and threes, under strict injunctions not to stray out of sight of the drag; others, drugged with rich food and sunshine, dozed and dreamed. (pg21) 

Things obviously go pear-shaped for this group of happy picnickers, from this moment on!

What other books feature an iconic or significant picnic scene?

Inklings - A Lady in Literature

I love finding new memes and new-to-me blogs.

Thanks to Hamlette's Poetry Month, I've been visiting quite a few new-to-me blogs and discovering lots of hidden gems.
One of those little gems is Heidi's Sharing the Journey blog and her meme, Inkling Explorations.

Each month, Heidi posts a literary subject for us to explore on our own blogs.

Some of the previous topics have included a gripping opening scene, a scene at a train station, a scene involving a letter, package or post office and violets.

This month the subject is - a description of a lady in literature.

I immediately thought of the two main ladies in one of my all-time favourite books, The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.

The initial description of the two young ladies, May Welland and her cousin, Countess Olenska tell us a lot about Newland Archer and even more about the social mores of old New York.

Archer does not "wish the future Mrs Newland Archer to be a simpleton." He plans to "read Faust together...by the Italian Lakes..."

At the theatre, Archer spies May Welland across the room,

slightly withdrawn behind those brocaded matrons sat a young girl in white with eyes ecstatically fixed on the stagelovers. As Madame Nilsson's "M'ama!" thrilled out above the silent house (the boxes always stopped talking during the Daisy Song) a warm pink mounted to the girl's cheek, mantled her brow to the roots of her fair braids, and suffused the young slope of her breast to the line where it met a modest tulle tucker fastened with a single gardenia. She dropped her eyes to the immense bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley on her knee, and Newland Archer saw her white-gloved finger-tips touch the flowers softly. 

Soon after "poor Ellen Olenska" enters the box. She is the black sheep of the family, returned from an unhappy marriage in Europe. Her appearance creates a sensation.

Newland Archer, following Leffert's glance, saw with surprise that his exclamation had been occasioned by the entry of a new figure into old Mrs Mingott's box. It was that of a slim young woman, a little less tall than May Welland, with brown hair growing in close curls about her temples and held in place by a narrow band of diamonds. The suggestion of this headdress, which gave her what was then called a "Josephine look", was carried out in the cut of the dark blue velvet gown rather theatrically caught up under her bosom by a girdle with a large old-fashioned clasp. The wearer of the dress, who seemed quite unconscious of the attention it was attracting, stood a moment in the centre of the box.

The classic 'good girl' in bashful white versus the 'fallen women' dressed confidently and wantonly in diamonds and velvet. Or so we believe!

Part of the enjoyment of course, in reading The Age of Innocence, is how Wharton plays with these conventional ideas about the role of women not only in old New York, but in literature, and turns them on their head.