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12. Dream House as Famous Last Words
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in In the Dream House, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Queer Visibility
Christianity and Shame
Abuse, Trauma, and Healing
Storytelling, Responsibility, and Freedom
Summary
Analysis
The woman from the Dream House is small, androgynous, and blonde. Machado is attracted to her for reasons she later considers shallow: she went to Harvard and seems upper-class and sophisticated. Machado feels like the woman is older than her, even though they’re the same age. The woman has lived overseas and speaks French. She’s attracted to “curvy-to-fat brunettes in glasses,” and it seems like their match is perfect.
Though Machado sees, looking back, that her reasons for finding the woman attractive were trivial, in the moment, she’s unable to look beyond these superficial qualities. She quickly jumps to the conclusion that she and the woman make a good match without, it seems, having any substantial proof for it.
Themes
