Summary of Barkskins: by Annie Proulx | Includes Analysis

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Summary of Barkskins: by Annie Proulx | Includes Analysis

 

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Barkskins by Annie Proulx is a novel about settler colonialism in North America and the eradication of the boreal forest and its native inhabitants. The novel spans 300 years tracing the family lineages of two Fr

• Language: English
• Publisher: Instaread, Inc
• Release date: Feb 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781683784128

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Summary

Barkskins by Annie Proulx is a novel about settler colonialism in North America and the eradication of the boreal forest and its native inhabitants. The novel spans 300 years tracing the family lineages of two Frenchmen, Charles Duquet and René Sel.

In the late seventeenth century, Duquet and Sel, two poor indentured servants, arrive in the wild, seemingly infinite coniferous forest of New France. Their master, Claude Trépagny, tasks them with cutting trees to clear the land for a new maize plot. He tells them that after three years of servitude they will receive their own land to work. Soon after, the enterprising Duquet runs away to join the fur trade. Sel, a skilled woodsman, remains. But then Trépagny forces Sel to marry Mari, an older Mi’kmaw woman with whom Trépagny had been living, so that Trépagny can marry a wealthy Frenchwoman. In exchange for Sel’s cooperation, Trépagny gives the young man a plot of land double the size of what he is owed.

After his escape, Duquet starts trading furs, but he soon sees that the real money is in the timber trade. Duquet decides to go to China by way of France to make new trading connections. In China, Duquet sells his furs for silver and becomes wealthy enabling him to start his forest enterprise.

Duquet befriends a Dutch captain named Piet Roos and marries Roos’s daughter Cornelia in order to secure his business relationship with