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29. Dream House as Accident
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 takes Machado to the Harvard campus. Machado imagines what her life would’ve been like if she’d gone there; she regrets not being ambitious in her college applications. She feels worthless.
Machado compares herself both to the potential she saw in herself years earlier and to the woman from the Dream House. Her pattern of self-criticism highlights her inability to celebrate her self-worth in the moment, and it seems her feelings of inadequacy are only reinforced by her closeness to the woman.
Themes
