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Abuse, Trauma, and Healing
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 feels a significant weight of responsibility as a writer. She’s acutely aware that her own story of abuse is less dramatic than those of other women, like Debra Reid, who was imprisoned for killing her abusive partner. But though she feels uncomfortable making any kind of comparison between her story and theirs, it’s still vital to her that stories of psychological abuse like her own become part of an archive that would otherwise only focus on the most extreme stories. In this way, In the Dream House addresses the problem of “archival silence,” or, in other words, the gaps in written history where stories of marginalized people have gone untold, or have been erased. Machado suggests that filling these gaps is worthwhile, even if people worry about the accuracy and validity of their complex stories.
Writing her story also allows Machado to reclaim power over her own life—power she felt the woman from the Dream House stripping away from her. The woman warned Machado not to write about specific parts of their relationship, or even to share the details of the woman’s aggression with her closest friends. But whatever freedom the woman took from Machado during their relationship, Machado takes it back by writing this book. She makes the choice not to name her abuser, only referring to her as “she” and “the woman from the Dream House,” which means that her own story—not her abuser’s—is the one that readers focus on. By taking charge of her own story, Machado highlights the freedom that storytelling can offer people in the wake of abuse and disempowerment by allowing them to fill in the gaps in the historical archive that might have erased them, and by reclaiming power over their own stories.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Compare and contrast themes from other texts to this theme…
Storytelling, Responsibility, and Freedom ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Storytelling, Responsibility, and Freedom appears in each chapter of In the Dream House. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Storytelling, Responsibility, and Freedom Quotes in In the Dream House
Below you will find the important quotes in In the Dream House related to the theme of Storytelling, Responsibility, and Freedom.
2. Dream House as Prologue
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What gets left behind? Gaps where people never see themselves or find information about themselves. Holes that make it impossible to give oneself a context. Crevices people fall into. Impenetrable silence.
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3. Dream House as Not a Metaphor
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I bring this up because it is important to remember that the Dream House is real. It is as real as the book you are holding in your hands, though significantly less terrifying. If I cared to, I could give you its address, and you could drive there in your own car and sit in front of that Dream House and try to imagine the things that have happened inside. I wouldn’t recommend it. But you could. No one would stop you.
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25. Dream House as Omen
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She unbuckles her seat belt, and leans very close to your ear. “You’re not allowed to write about this,” she says. “Don’t you ever write about this. Do you fucking understand me?”
You don’t know if she means the woman or her, but you nod.
Fear makes liars of us all.
27. Dream House as Queer Villainy
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As it turns out, queer villains become far more interesting among other gay characters, both within a specific project or universe and the zeitgeist at large. They become one star in a larger constellation; they are put in context. And that’s pretty exciting, even liberating; by expanding representation, we give space to queers to be—as characters, as real people—human beings.
94. Dream House as Half Credit
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Where I had doubt, I’d fill the space with what I remembered, what I knew to be true, what I could say. I waxed poetic on those scenes in a novel I could visualize clearly, instead of striving to evoke the ones I couldn’t.
[…]
Let it never be said I didn’t try.
101. Dream House as Barn in Upstate New York
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One day, a bird slammed into my studio window. I was sitting on a yoga ball and tumbled back in terror. Almost every residency I’ve had since, I’ve found at least one stunned bird sprawled on the ground outside my workspace. I learned: they never see the glass coming. They only see the reflection of the sky.
122. Dream House as Void
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You try to imagine sex with other people and struggle to visualize it; masturbation is near impossible. You wonder if you will ever be able to let someone touch you; if you will ever be able to reconnect your brain and body or if they will forever sit on opposite sides of this new and terrible ravine.
134. Dream House as Proof
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The recorded sound waves of her speech on one axis and a precise measurement of the flood of adrenaline and cortisol in my body on the other. Witness statements from the strangers who anxiously looked at us sideways in public spaces. A photograph of her grip on my arm in Florida, with measurements of the shadows to indicate depth of indentation; an equation to represent the likely pressure. A wire looped through my hair, ready to record her hiss. The rancid smell of anger. The metal tang of fear in the back of my throat.
