Previous
Queer Visibility
Themes and Colors
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.
Machado’s experience with Christianity has lasting consequences on her sense of self-worth. As a churchgoing teenager, Machado obsesses over ideas like the Rapture and sexual purity, fretting that she doesn’t meet the standards of a scrutinizing God. But it becomes clear that those standards are paradoxical. In Machado’s mid-teens, she becomes infatuated with Joel, a new pastor at her church. He encourages her to become close to him, meets her late at night to talk about her experience of sexual assault, and allows her to watch him getting dressed. Joel takes advantage of Machado’s obsession with him, a much older man, and nurtures her feelings of affection towards him, but when she calls him from college to tell him she’s kissed a boy, he tells her she should ask for forgiveness. Machado’s understanding of sexual desire is confused and conflicted by the mixed messages she receives from an authority figure in the church: on the one hand, her romantic and sexual feelings are encouraged, and on the other, they’re something she should be ashamed of.
Machado names Christianity and its stigma about sex among the potential reasons she stayed in her abusive relationship with the woman from the Dream House. This suggests that, for her, Christian ideals of purity were such a source of fear and confusion that they left her feeling powerless. As Machado attempts to describe the confusion and shame of enduring abuse and trying to leave her relationship, she uses biblical analogies, including the image of Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt for daring to look back at Sodom. By comparing her frequent attempts to return to her relationship with her abuser to the story of Lot’s wife, Machado once again uses the language of Christianity to cast judgement on herself for doing something she wasn’t well equipped to resist. Instead of providing Machado with comfort, her Christian faith makes her feel unworthy of respect, and in this way, it potentially leaves her more vulnerable to enduring abuse without believing that she deserves to escape. Through this exploration of her churchgoing years, Machado highlights the deep, damaging impact that religious stigmas about sexuality can have throughout people’s lives.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Compare and contrast themes from other texts to this theme…
Christianity and Shame ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Christianity and Shame appears in each chapter of In the Dream House. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
How often theme appears:
chapter length:
Chapter
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17.
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
Get the entire In the Dream House LitChart as a printable PDF.
Christianity and Shame Quotes in In the Dream House
Below you will find the important quotes in In the Dream House related to the theme of Christianity and Shame.
13. Dream House as Confession
Quotes
Despite the fact that you were the same age, you felt like she was older than you: wiser, more experienced, worldlier. She’d worked in publishing, she’d lived abroad, she spoke fluent French. She’d lived in New York and been to launch parties for literary magazines. And, it turned out, she had a weakness for curvy-to-fat brunettes in glasses. God herself couldn’t have planned it better.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
19. Dream House as Bildungsroman
Quotes
“What should I do?” I asked him, the question slipping out of my mouth before I could stop it. Until that moment I’d been, secretly, excited, bolstered with the newness of a man’s stubble across my face, hands that went where I wanted them to. But in Joel’s silence, which carried a whiff of disapproval, I recalled the sin of it.
104. Dream House as Choose Your Own Adventure
Quotes
As you’re washing the dishes, you think to yourself: Maybe I could tie my arm down somehow? Maybe put a tack on my forehead? Maybe I should be a better person?
117. Dream House as Sodom
Quotes
Like Lot’s wife, you looked back, and like Lot’s wife, you were turned into a pillar of salt, but unlike Lot’s wife, God gave you a second chance and turned you human again, but then you looked back again and became salt and then God took pity and gave you a third, and over and again you lurched through your many reprieves and mistakes […].
