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134. Dream House as Proof
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 reflects on the violence committed by men over the course of human history and suggests that it’s only ever mentioned as a “footnote” in their stories. She’s spent a long time searching for evidence in queer women’s histories that echoes her own experience; she wonders whether Elizabeth Bishop was ever cruel to her female lover. Queer people, she suggests, experience “minority anxiety”—the feeling that they have to be better than non-queer people in order to deserve the same amount of respect.
Machado yearns to find more stories of queer abuse that reflect and add to her own. This chapter suggests that shrugging off abuse in queer relationships, similar to the way abuse committed by men in heterosexual relationships is barely mentioned in history— even in the service of providing good “public relations” for the queer community—is unhelpful and unrealistic.
Themes
