As has already been pointed out, Mademoiselle de Portiers seemed more likely to disappear than Miss McCraw. She was certainly more like the disappeared girls in that she was fair, beautiful, and remote. She looks like the Appleyard school ideal, and her role at the school is likewise central in that she teaches deportment. McCraw, on the other hand, is dark and dour. And she teaches mathematics. Skill with sums is certainly not part of the school ideal. But since these girls will one day run their domestic households, they will need to be able to keep the books—one of the few jobs they cannot entrust to servants. So McCraw is present only to fulfill one of those annoying practicalities that results from an imperfect world.
When Edith finally tells what she knows, she says that she saw McCraw climbing up towards the rocks without her skirt. I first took this as a sign of McCraw’s practicality. The clothing imposed on society women limited the usefulness of their bodies. Since she was trying to do the useful task of find the girls, and since she didn’t expect to be observed, she was of a mind to dispense with the hindering clothing.
At that point I expected an overarching theme to be a tension between science and romanticism with McCraw as the sturdy agent of science. But no such theme ever developed. And since all the other girls removed clothing too, it seems that McCraw was subject to the same influences they were with no protection from her scientifically trained mind.
Nor is the theme a simple one of rugged nature devouring a dainty civilization. Given that the school is named “Appleyard”, this would be another reasonable expectation. The return of Irma after several days deepens the mystery since she knows nothing about what has happened. But her days at Appleyard are over: the other girls suddenly attack her in fear in one of the most remarkable scenes.
The force affected men too. Everybody near the rock on that first day falls asleep. And Michael falls unconscious while searching. If Albert hadn’t promptly found him, would he have disappeared too?
So several themes are hinted at but not fulfilled. This perhaps plays into the mystical mood. We are kept searching for meanings that seem like they must be there, but that continue to elude us.
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4 comments:
That's an interesting idea about the practical Miss McCraw that hadn't occurred to me -- why she, too, shed some clothes.
Michael's falling under some spell of the rock further makes it less of a spirit-away-the-Ophelias idea.
I had a sense, as I said in an earlier comment, that you had to be receptive to the rock for it to have any real interest in you. All of the victims had driving curiosity about the rock and its mysteries. Edith didn't and she was spared. When Michael said he wanted to stay on the rock and keep exploring, Bertie was like, "What the hell for?" It didn't capture his imagination. Or Edith's. Maybe it captured Mrs. Appleyard's in the end and that's why she went up there and died.
Though I credit it more to social anxiety, I think it was interesting that Edith was a counter rather than a reader of Valentines. Maybe imagination was a common theme.
Yeah, I think imagination was a common denominator.
Did anyone notice what image Miss McCraw was scrutinizing in her mathbook on the rock? And was that the last scene we saw her in? WOuld that be significant? She was looking at a triangle. At geometry. I had the sense that her math affinity was less scientific and more like how the ancients viewed math — as being related to music and the spheres, etc., like the mystic mathematician Pythagoras. This would bring her more in line with the romantic presentation of the other victims.
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