Jane Rawson is the author of novels, essays and non-fiction. She won the Aurealis Awards for Science Fiction for her novel From the Wreck.
A History of Dreams transports the reader to Adelaide in the late 1930’s.
Margaret, Esther, Phyl and Audrey are finishing high school with dreams of what the future might hold. Margaret wants to attend university but her father forbids it as improper for a young woman.
Within their lives and their families, each of the women is constrained in their own way by the society around them. The world seems to be pushing them towards marriage and nuclear families, no matter what they want for themselves. But Audrey has a way to fight back, a secret passed down through generations of spinster women. Audrey is going to teach the others witchcraft!
The group form the Semaphore Supper Club and wield power over dreams to instigate changes in their social lives. Their influence begins as small changes. Shifting the perspective of the men in their lives; nodding them towards equality.
Their mission becomes serious however when the club uncovers a conservative cell amongst a male poet’s group. These men come together to tout national myths that erase all but those they deem worthy. Bent on power they are emboldened by events in Europe.
Can a group of young witches with the power of dreams defeat a rising tide of authoritarianism that would have them all chained to the home?
A History of Dreams hits a pitch perfect period atmosphere of early twentieth century Adelaide. In Margaret, Esther, Phyl and Audrey we are presented with four protagonists who are varied and sympathetic, whilst also pushing out against stereotypes of their position in their society.
More importantly perhaps is that the novel reminds us that the rise of racist nationalism in the early twentieth century was not the exclusive provenance of an Austrian house painter. A History of Dreams shows how the frustrated ambitions of small minded men can be bent towards oppression no matter where they hail from.
We travel alongside the quartet of witches as they grow into their power and their place in the world. Despite being able to manipulate dreams they find themselves stymied in making their own dreams a reality. We are shown that power and strength are held within institutions and despite the four’s efforts they are always working from without.
It’s interesting to think on the ease with which male power wields itself within the novel. The men declaim their presumed superiority openly and with impunity.
This sets up a tension between the magic of the Semaphore Supper Club and the power of institutions, the weight of societal expectation.
The world of a History of Dreams parallels our own up to a point. Of course the witchcraft is an initial departure and this plays on the notion that women at that time had very little in the way of power. Young women seeking to influence their future might well have thought of choice or autonomy as being as fanciful as a dream. Equally they would have had to work subtly, changing minds through persuasion rather than exerting brute force.
The metaphor of the exercise of power is extended as the Semaphore Supper Club’s opponents are able to commend increasingly powerful forces. These are not foes who have to win hearts and minds. They exercise fear and sow division; a prominent arm of the authoritarian government is even called Orders and Borders and well, I’m not going to tell you how to interpret that…
This is an alternate history of Australia and I’m not going to give up the secrets of the story, but suffice to say it has much to say about conservative flirtations with Nationalism and authoritarianism.
