Editing Picnic at Hanging Rock (novel) (section)

==Critical analysis==
Much of the critical and scholarly interest in the novel has centred on its mysterious conclusion, as well as its depiction of Australia's natural environment in contrast with the [[Victoria (Australia)#Colonial Victoria|Victorian]] population of the British colony established in 1851.{{efn|Both Donald Bartlett and Kathleen Steele are significantly interested in the role of the Australian Bush as it is depicted in ''Picnic at Hanging Rock'', specifically the interaction between the "untamed" natural environment and the colony of Victoria. Steele specifically addresses the notion of Australia as a "haunted site&nbsp;... full of unseen presences."{{Sfn|Steele|2010|p=37}}}} In 1987, literary scholar Donald Bartlett drew comparisons between Lindsay's treatment of the rock and that of the fictitious [[Marabar Caves]] in [[E. M. Forster]]'s ''[[A Passage to India]]'', which has been interpreted as a metaphor for [[Pan (god)|Pan]], the Greek god of the wild: "There is more, of course, to ''A Passage to India'' than Pan motifs, for example symbols such as the snake, the wasp and the undying worm, not to mention the vast panorama of India's religions. But I believe it probable that Joan Lindsay consciously borrowed the elements [from ''A Passage to India'']."{{Sfn|Barrett|1987|pages=83-84}}

Literary scholar Kathleen Steele argues in her essay "Fear and Loathing in the Australian Bush: Gothic Landscapes in ''Bush Studies'' and ''Picnic at Hanging Rock''" that the novel's treatment of landscape and its missing characters is reflective of Australia's national history and the relationship between the rock and the Aboriginal population: "The silence surrounding Aborigines, and the manner in which Europeans foregrounded 'geographical, historical and cultural difference and discontinuity,' yet denied Aborigines either presence or history, created a [[Gothic literature|gothic]] consciousness of 'something deeply unknowable and terrifying in the Australian landscape.'" ... "Lindsay provokes a reflection on the understanding of Australia as an un-peopled land where nothing of consequence occurred until the British gave it a history."{{Sfn|Steele|2010|p=37+44}}