In the Dream House

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2019

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Overture-Part 1, Chapter 18

Part 1, Chapters 19-34

Part 2, Chapters 35-50

Part 2, Chapters 51-74

Part 3, Chapters 75-89

Part 3, Chapters 90-107

Part 4, Chapters 108-127

Part 5, Chapters 128-144

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Queering the Archive

In In the Dream House, Machado discusses the archival silence—the erasure of queer narratives, especially the lack of representation of abuse within those relationships. As Machado is an academic and writer in graduate programs, she is familiar with the notion of the archive, its heteronormative and white selectivity, and its perpetuation of biased, abusive ideologies. She composes her memoir around queer or nontraditional theorists, writers, and artists to question the reach of the archive and the harm it does to queer individuals by mis- or underrepresenting their narratives. In the Dream House then becomes Machado’s contribution to a queered archive in which abuse is openly discussed as present among queer relationships.

Machado notes that she has never been “taught” to be afraid of a woman because the archive, or cultural narratives, do not consider women capable of domestic abuse. When it comes to lesbian couples, Machado was initially naïve to the possibility that she could be abused: “You trust her, and you have no context for anything else” (45). As a bisexual woman with little experience, Machado is alienated from the reality of her relationship as she has never before encountered its representation in either her social or academic worlds.

Thus, she doesn’t know how to begin speaking of her experiences, as “[p]utting language to something for which you have no language is no easy feat” (134). To change this, Machado uses theory to explore the power dynamics at work in the Dream House. However, instead of drawing support from records of similar narratives, Machado encounters archival silence. She realizes that “people’s narratives and their nuances are swallowed by history” (138) when those narrative are queer.

Machado turns to myth as a theoretical framework. It is ironic that she is forced to do this, as queerness is still so misunderstood in popular culture that it has the attributes of a myth before Machado uses it in a simulacrum of academic study. Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature is referenced in footnotes throughout the entire memoir as Machado’s single reliable citation. By using mythic traditions to express her queerness, Machado explores experiences that are dismissed or suppressed by academia; this is queering the archive.

In the Dream House directly combats heteronormative and white ideologies that have traditionally driven the archive. This memoir is Machado breaking the archival silence on queer abuse.

Narratology: The Memoir

As an established writer and literary academic, Machado employs specific narrative techniques, as well as the memoir form, to counter the erasure of queerness from the cultural archive. The memoir as a form allows Machado to be highly subjective in her writing and create the “necessary context” for queer abusive relationships. Furthermore, the memoir form is a gateway to other narrative forms for explaining her emotional state; these forms include short stories, a Choose Your Own Adventure vignette, and the semblance of academic theory with footnotes, among others. The resulting memoir encompasses many different methods of literary representation for queer abuse.

Chapter 4, “Dream House as an Exercise in Point of View,” poses the question of what point of view Machado will take in the memoir. She could exclusively highlight her successes and give queer populations the most positive representation possible. Or, she could tell the truth. Machado chooses to give the honest point of view but, in so doing, often metaphorizes her experiences and employs varied literary genres. The memoir primarily takes a fragmented form, which allows her to shift between narrative modes from chapter to chapter. She employs short stories, mythic retellings, Choose Your Own Adventure, and memoir as complementary modes that create a dynamic point of view.

Machado uses traditional memoir style when recounting specific instances of her partner’s abuse, such as the bowling alley incident (123-25) or the road trip home from Pennsylvania (87-90). These chapters are constructed primarily around a linear sequence of events, offering a core context for the chapters employing a different narrative form. Those chapters, such as the sequence of Choose Your Own Adventure tales, allow Machado to more creatively explore hard-to-express experiences.

In The Dream House studies how different narrative forms can help in telling a highly subjective story. Rather than present her story through a fully traditional memoir, Machado incorporates an array of narrative styles within a fragmented framework to show that queerness—and queer representation—should be included in all narrative traditions.

The Feminine Body and Architecture

The Dream House represents many things, including both the illusion of utopian lesbian relationships and her own body’s experience in an abusive relationship. Machado draws on a literary tradition of using architecture as a metaphor for the feminine body (76-77). The motif of architecture provides the foundation for much of In the Dream House because it gives a setting to the emotional and bodily experience of the abuse.

Machado claims that “setting is not inert. It is activated by point of view […] The Dream House was never just the Dream House” (72). By inhabiting the Dream House, she navigates shifting points of view on her abusive relationship. This flux in perspective relates to Queering the Archive and the lack of reference for what can occur in queer relationships. Machado then frames the Dream House as a lesbian utopia immune from violence; this utopia is a “dream” in the sense of both idealism and immateriality. The Dream House takes on a more protective role the longer Machado resides there, particularly the bathroom, as it is the only door with a lock. The bathroom becomes Machado’s “own little space” (141), a refuge inside the architecture of the illusory lesbian utopia, a refuge that can briefly protect her from physical but not psychological abuse.

It is the psychological abuse that most affects Machado. When describing the importance of a child having their own bedroom, she tells the story of her parents taking the doorknob off her bedroom door and how it violated her privacy. The act “was just a reminder: nothing, not even the four walls around my body, was mine” (82). Her distrust of architecture mirrors her distrust of her own body, as she often expresses insecurity about her weight and appearance. This ties directly into her feelings of worthlessness when living in the Dream House (24).

After her breakup, Machado seeks some evidence of the abuse, but all she has is the “ephemeral evidence” of her body—the trauma housed in her nervous system, as ungraspable as the Dream House itself. After she finally feels more at peace with herself, her friend’s house burns down, and Machado envisions her own body in the wreckage (217). This scene symbolizes the Dream House burning down once peace or mental stability has been reached; Machado’s physical body is connected to the body of the abstract Dream House. Transcending the metaphor of a feminine body as architecture, she enters into a new state of queer expression, embodied by the form, content, and activism of In the Dream House.