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137. Dream House as Prisoner’s Dilemma
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
In the present, Machado occasionally imagines her relationship with the woman in the Dream House having gone right—if the woman hadn’t abused her. Perhaps they and Val would’ve remained in a threesome or just stayed friends. Machado wishes she could’ve found out.
Machado mourns the sense of joy and potential she found in her relationship with the woman—a reminder that, at least at first, it wasn’t only a dynamic of violence and coercion, but one of pleasure, too.
Themes
