Dreams (1890)

Dreams is a work that defies conventional categorization; however, one might best capture its unique formal structure by construing it as a series of prose poems or narrative paintings, a starkly modern text inflected by the far older tradition of the medieval dream vision poem. Arthur Symons praised Dreams by saying, “The words seem to chant themselves to a music which we do not hear.” Though a work of prophecy, it proceeds with a light touch. The sequence of eleven dreams, loosely interlinked, leaves us to wrestle with our doubts; it takes up thorny questions that challenge a culture right where it may tend to be its proudest. The landscape of the work shifts as it moves among the African savannah, congested late-industrial London, and the olive tree-studded hillsides of Italy. The intersectionality of Schreiner’s writing—its concern with gender, sexual orientation, class, nation, and race—makes her a particularly salient voice for today’s students. The appendices to this edition provide an accessible representation of Schreiner’s key contexts, South African and British as well as American. The introduction provides a biographical overview of a writer wrestling with questions of social justice pertinent to her own era, yet relevant to our contemporary moment.