Abstract
South African novelist Dalene Matthee’s last forest novel, Dreamforest, was published in 2003. This novel concludes her tetralogy of historical fiction novels focusing on the poor white timber community living in the Eastern Cape’s tropical Knysna forest. Initially the representation of a human-nonhuman relationship in Dreamforest suggests a connection between the sexist and classist treatment of the protagonist, Karoliena, and the deforestation of the Knysna forest. When Karoliena rejects the town’s prescript of Afrikaner nationalist volksmoeder identity, which South African theorist, Elsabé Brink (1990: 280), describes as an emulation of characteristics including a ‘sense of religion, bravery, a love of freedom, the spirit of sacrifice, self-reliance, [and] housewifeliness’, it is suggested that she opposes homogenous, monolithic racial and gender classifications. However, the reunion of Karoliena and Johannes at the end of the novel initiates Karoliena’s acceptance of the volksmoeder identity, and by implication, her rejection of the forest. Her return to Johannes therefore suggests that the nonhuman is only ever an instrument in the poor white Afrikaans woman’s search for identity and her feminist upliftment project(s). The following article analyses the depiction of this human-nonhuman relationship, primarily utilising Tiffany Willoughby-Herard’s work in whiteness studies.
Highlights
South African popular fiction novelist Dalene Matthee’s last forest novel, Dreamforest, was published in 2003. This novel concludes her tetralogy of historical fiction novels focusing on the poor white timber community living in the Eastern Cape’s Knysna forest
After the forest community is forcibly removed to a desolate town called Karatara, and the process of deforestation is deemed irreversible, Karoliena returns to Johannes, who has since been called to serve in the Second World War
Whilst the majority of Dreamforest is initially read as a challenge against the essentialist binary classification of ‘human’, ‘nature’ and the ‘nonhuman’, as well as a challenge against traditional gender roles and Afrikaner nationalism, the return of Karoliena to the town and the emphasis on her devotion to Johannes is underpinned by her rejection of the forest
Summary
South African popular fiction novelist Dalene Matthee’s last forest novel, Dreamforest, was published in 2003. Thys Human (2003: 24) points out that the relationship between Karoliena and Johannes in Dreamforest is portrayed against this background of the Carnegie Commission’s investigation into the so-called poor white problem in South Africa, as well as against the background of urbanisation, the celebration of the Great Trek’s centenary and the Second World War. While the mystification of the Knysna forest as a nonhuman entity is at the forefront of Matthee’s tetralogy (Jooste and Senekal, 2016: 774), all four novels have a dualistic approach to the portrayal of the communities in the Knysna forest and town. Maria is portrayed as a key role player in the Carnegie Commission’s research project into the poverty of the Knysna forest’s timber community Her visit to the forest is long anticipated by both Karoliena, Matthee (2003: 188) quotes Rothmann verbatim in Dreamforest in what could be interpreted as an attempt to expose Afrikaner nationalist ideologies. The focus on a white Afrikaner female’s relationship with the nonhuman in
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