The artifice of literary dreams

When it comes to interpreting dreams, literary critics have a distinct advantage, it would appear, over practicing analysts. Readers would assume that storytellers have crafted dreams in fictions to illuminate their characters and have provided the elements that analysts must struggle to collect and select: especially the day residue, the larger contextual associations, and an overarching narrative. The dream of a 23-year old woman from Ellen Glasgow's 1925 novel, Barren Ground, should illustrate the critic's advantage. Consideration, however, of the larger context, shrouded associations, and multiple master narratives (formulated by Freud, Jung, and Kohut) that the critic can profitably employ in understanding the young woman's dream raises fundamental questions about the critic's presumed advantage.