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39. Dream House as Utopia
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’s phone rings, and she feels like she knows what will happen next. The woman from the Dream House tells her she’s broken up with Val, who will move back to the East Coast. Machado emails Val, who says she hopes they can all end up being good friends. Machado feels like a victor: from now on, it’ll just be her and the woman.
Machado reaches out to Val even though the two were only really connected to each other through the woman whom they were both dating, which shows she feels a sense of responsibility for Val’s pain and is in the habit of expressing her care for other people. At the same time, her feeling of having won in the relationship emphasizes her tendency to view the woman as more powerful than herself: rather than being able to orchestrate the relationship she really wanted, she had to wait for the woman to decide.
Themes
