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125. Dream House as Denouement
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
Machado is confused by all the possible answers to the question of why she stayed in her abusive relationship. It could’ve been that she felt it was what she deserved, or that she wanted to be loved, or that her religion had a stigma about sex but never taught her about relationships—or so many other reasons.
Machado’s process of analyzing, recording, and moving past her trauma isn’t a simple one. She’ll never truly understand the way her brain functioned while in the relationship, though she knows that many different factors, including her time in the church and her long-held self-loathing, played their part.
Themes
