47 pages • 1 hour read
Joan LindsayA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Mrs. Appleyard, the austere headmistress of Appleyard College, initially functions as a symbol of aristocratic female proprietary and decorum. She is “precisely what the parents expected of an English headmistress” (3). She believes in austerity, manners, modesty, and repression of unsightly behaviors and emotions. She is completely preoccupied with the status of her school, even at the expense of her students’ well-being.
Mrs. Appleyard is a dynamic character who changes through the course of the novel. Just her “rigidly controlled” bosom symbolizes her power and control at the beginning of the novel, her degraded appearance toward the end of the novel charts her increasing anxiety, panic, and impotence. As she sneaks into Sara and Miranda’s room looking for clues of Sara’s whereabouts, she is depicted as “an old woman with head bowed under a forest of curling pins, with pendulous breasts and sagging stomach beneath a flannel dressing-gown” (179). Her unrestrained body illustrates her loss of control over her life more broadly.
It is symbolically important that Mrs. Appleyard goes to Hanging Rock to die, as this is the original source of her problems, as well as the epitome of wildness and freedom.
Books Made into Movies
View Collection
Books that Feature the Theme of...
View Collection
Class
View Collection
Class
View Collection
Colonialism & Postcolonialism
View Collection
Historical Fiction
View Collection
Horror, Thrillers, & Suspense
View Collection
Mystery & Crime
View Collection
Order & Chaos
View Collection