In the Dream House

The motif of archival silence ties to the memoir’s very creation. The abusive relationship is only a secondary subject, as the text primarily concerns the perplexity of its own composition. This perplexity arises partly from how Machado must create her own language for her story; the world has never given her a language, because there exists no cultural consciousness of experiences like hers. This relates to archival silence, a concept involving the idea that some histories never find their way into the cultural record; histories that fall outside the heteronormative narrative have overwhelmingly been ignored, punished, misrepresented, or erased, creating a “silence” in the record. Before enduring her partner’s mistreatment, Machado hadn’t encountered stories of domestic abuse in lesbian relationships, so she had no context for her experience.

Proposed in the Prologue with reference to Saidiya Hartman’s essay “Venus in Two Acts,” the term “archival silence” relates to the memoir’s theme of Queering the Archive. Machado expands upon Hartman’s term, arguing that the absence of queer abuse from the archive coincides with how targets of abuse are silenced by their abusers. Her memoir contributes to queering the archive by breaking the silence and “[p]utting language to something for which you have no language” (134). Archival silence also ties to the motif of the Dream House. The Prologue notes that the word archive derives from the ancient Greek arkheion, or “house of the ruler.” And in one of the memoir’s first epigraphs, Machado cites Louise Bourgeois’s concept of memory as a kind of architecture. Her memoir’s venture is to build an archive, or structure, in which her history can find a home—and in which she can speak.

The band ‘Til Tuesday released a music video for their 1980s single “Voices Carry” depicting abuse in a heterosexual relationship, even though the original version of the song describes an abusive lesbian relationship. Decades later, singer songwriter Aimee Mann rereleased the song’s concept under the title “Labrador,” and the song retains feminine pronouns for the abuser. As a motif, this Mann’s recomposition signifies gradual cultural acceptance of queer relationships and contributes to the theme of Queering the Archive through art.