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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 goes to Indiana to help Val and the woman from the Dream House find a place to live. She takes with her a black-and-white photo she bought and framed of three women holding a baby. At the viewings, they tell people that Val and the woman from the Dream House are the couple and Machado is the friend with the car, but as they tour the houses, they wonder how many bedrooms they need. Machado is excited by the “perfection and lushness” of their relationship.
Machado romanticizes the three-way relationship from the very beginning. Her procurement of the photograph seems to suggest that their connection is fated, and the fact that there’s a baby in the photo hints that Machado has made the mental leap forward to imagining them all as a family with a child. Her imagination seems to race ahead of her.
Themes
Machado, Val, and the woman from the Dream House tour a few houses. Machado loves the last one—it feels like a fairy tale and while she’s there, she allows herself to imagine the fantasy of their relationship breaking its “V structure” so that all three of them are together. On the drive back to Iowa without Val, Machado daydreams a whole life the three of them could share, living together with their children. The woman from the Dream House proposes that she and Machado go on one more road trip.
Machado’s perception of the polyamorous relationship as a “V structure” shows that the woman from the Dream House acts as the fulcrum: she’s the one to whom the two other women are connected and the one who holds the power. It seems like she’s also the one deciding whether Machado and Val are allowed to become as close to each other as they are to her.
Themes
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