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 New York City, Machado visits a store of scientific ephemera. Later, she tells the woman from the Dream House about her fantasy of living in a home with its own library where they’d throw a cocktail party, after which they’d have sex in the library surrounded by taxidermized animals.
Machado sources a lot of delight from her imagination. It seems like the imagined future of her relationship with the woman—and their potential future circumstances—are more exciting to her than their current reality.
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van Waardenberg, Sophie. "In the Dream House 31. Dream House as Man vs. Nature." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 21 Jun 2023. Web. 30 Mar 2025.
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