In the Dream House

Despite being suspicious of most prologues’ intentions, Machado includes a prologue in In the Dream House. She begins by describing theorist Saidiya Hartman’s essay “Venus in Two Acts,” which concerns a theory of “archival silence” for the groups of people excluded from the white cultural narrative. The theory, however, applies to other marginalized groups, such as anyone who is not heterosexual, male, or cisgender; for millennia, these groups’ histories have been dismissed, distorted, or destroyed by various societal factors—including historians and academics—and these stories often go unexpressed altogether. To that extent, these groups lack a history of themselves. Their experiences, and even their identities, continually undergo erasure from cultural memory and awareness:

What is placed in or left out of the archive is a political act, dictated by the archivist and the political context in which she lives. Sometimes the proof [of a person’s experience] is not committed to the archive—it is not considered important enough to record, or if it is, important enough to preserve. Sometimes there is a deliberate act of destruction […] 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 (4).

Hartman’s essay questions how to convey stories with impossible suffering, repression, and silence in an institutionalized academic world that assumes white and heterosexual narratives are the only valid or existent realities. Building upon Hartman’s theory, Machado considers the plight of domestic abuse between partners of the same gender; she questions how (and whether) such abuse is being represented by authors, academics, and the media.

This particular abuse—abuse involving “queer abusers” and “queer abused”—falls under the archival silence that Hartman scrutinizes. And for Machado, restoring gaps in the archive is a matter of justice, as the abused deserve both to have their stories recorded and to have access to others’ similar stories. Machado asks, “How do we right the wronged people of the past without physical evidence of their suffering?” (5). Her answer to this is through memoir, a form that she believes will provide the necessary context for breaking this particular archival silence. As she searches for a way to represent her experience, she compares the endeavor to exploring an unknown topography, but she settles on the metaphor of constructing a “Dream House” in which she can symbolically analyze the time she spent in an abusive lesbian relationship.

Machado describes the fictional Dream House as a setting for her memoir on being in an abusive lesbian relationship. She constructs this setting as it will help the reader remember that the Dream House is real and experiences within this setting are valid; therefore, while the Dream House is a metaphorical setting, it is also not a metaphor, because it is entirely real. Machado claims that “the landlord is not a man but an entire university” (9), referring to the fact that she and her partner were part of MFA programs during their time together and were therefore deeply involved with institutionalized ideologies. In describing the Dream House, Machado argues that the individual and how they use a room matters more than the architect’s intentions for that room.

This chapter traces the idea of a picara, a Spanish term for a female wanderer or adventurer. Like a picara, Machado has lived in several places during her adulthood, pursuing her writing and academic career. When she met her partner—referred to throughout the memoir as “she” or “the woman in the dream house”—Machado was living in Iowa City with her friends John and Laura.

Machado describes several friends she has lived with in recent years as well as others she met when she was younger, emphasizing how her friends have accepted her and supported her through her journey toward acknowledging her bisexual orientation. She emphasizes that her friends are not mere accessories to her personal story but main characters in their own right: “They weren’t watching over me, exactly; they were the protagonists of their own stories” (11). Despite her deep connection to her friends, this story will be Machado’s own. Her friends will not become characters in In the Dream House but rather act to support her in finally telling her own story.

Machado describes her childhood gym teacher, Ms. Lily, whom a classmate used to derogatorily call a “lesbian.” At the time, Machado didn’t know what a lesbian was (nor, she suspects, did her classmate), but she remembers Ms. Lily and her bright outfits fondly. During outdoor gym classes, Machado used to play a game in which she rubbed dandelions under her chin; according to the game, if the yellow of the dandelion were to come off on her skin, it would be a sign that she was in love. In hindsight, Machado acknowledges that every dandelion inevitably left a yellow mark under her chin, and she relates it to “that constant, roving hunger” (13) for love that everyone experiences.

The memoir format gives Machado the power of deciding how to represent her story, and this chapter poses two possible, opposite points of view she could take for her life. In the first point of view, she describes her present life: She is a successful woman living with her wife in Philadelphia and by all accounts happy. In the second, she acknowledges her past self—whom she addresses as “You”—the one stuck in an abusive long-distance relationship that ends in her making “a fool of herself” (14) in front of people she admires. Machado states that to validate her present point of view, she must expose her past point of view because she has not fully left that “You” behind. From this point on, Machado will jump between timelines, but she will narrate the timeline with her partner in present tense and mostly in the second person, calling herself “you.”

Machado begins her story: During a dinner with a mutual friend in Iowa City where she is studying for her MFA, Machado meets her soon-to-be partner for the first time. Machado is immediately attracted to her and her ambitions to apply to an MFA program herself. When this woman stares at Machado, the attention makes her feel like “a child buying something with her own money for the first time” (15). This is one of the few times that one of Machado’s female crushes has seemed to reciprocate interest.

Machado pauses the story to describe her past male sexual partners. In high school, she was briefly involved with Adam, whose kindness she rejected for a reason she still doesn’t understand. While living in California, she used several dating apps to find women, but she felt that the lesbians in San Francisco disliked that she was bisexual instead of exclusively interested in women. She continued dating men while living there, enjoying the way they loved her and treated her kindly.

While composing this memoir, Machado has repeatedly asked herself whether she would have behaved any differently if she had known how her partner would treat her: “Would knowing have made you dumber or smarter?” (18). She explains the self-consistency theory proposed by astrophysicist Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov: “[I]f time travel were possible, it would still be impossible to travel back in time and alter events that have already taken place” (18). The “plot” of time is fixed. She imagines that if her past self were to encounter her present self and be warned about her partner’s abuse, that past self would only mistake the warning as an encouragement to follow her desire.

The narrative returns to when Machado is not yet in a relationship with her partner: The not-yet-partner sends Machado a text message asking for a ride to the airport to pick up her girlfriend Val. Machado agrees, and as she drives the two women back, she feels disconnected from both of them. When, a few days later, a mutual friend tells Machado that the couple are in an open relationship, Machado begins to hope for more attention.

Machado goes to the soon-to-be-partner’s apartment to watch The Brave Little Toaster. Soon, the woman initiates their first sexual experience together, and when she explicitly asks Machado’s permission before taking any additional steps toward intimacy, Machado feels intoxicated with having the power to say yes.

This chapter records a single statement made by Machado’s partner, who asserts that the two can have sex but absolutely cannot fall in love. The chapter includes a footnote reference to Stith Thompson’s book Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, connecting the partner’s proviso to a mythical omen between lovers.

Her partner’s physical attractiveness contributes to Machado’s willingness to overlook warning signs early in their relationship. Her partner grew up in Florida, attended Harvard, and lived in New York; she carries a certain New England air that fascinates Machado. Her partner is everything that Machado dreams of: a woman who is well-educated, respected in New York’s literary circles, and beautiful.

As both Machado and her partner are writers, they often write together. Doing so makes Machado fall more in love, as their writing is interspersed with intimate looks, reading to each other, and sharing meals.

The intimacy that Machado receives from her partner is constantly startling to her, as Machado believes herself physically and intellectually beneath her partner. Machado struggles with her weight and the cultural stigma of weight. Because her partner fits the cultural beauty standards of being blonde and thin, Machado feels inferior. She feels “lucky” to be able to “drown” in love that is reciprocated.

Machado plans a road trip to Savannah, Georgia over spring break to visit the house of Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts organization, whom Machado has just finished writing a story about. She invites her partner on the 12-hour drive. Though their tire blows out and they have to repair it, the trip goes well and Machado’s partner says that she herself is the lucky one in the relationship. After touring Low’s house, the couple goes to the beach, where Machado’s partner calls Val to update her on the trip. Machado is growing more accustomed to the thought of being part of an open relationship if it means being near the woman she loves. They drive home in a single day with Machado marveling at how much she loves to drive with her partner.

While having sex, Machado’s partner says “I love you” for the first time. Machado returns the phrase, and the two talk about the partner applying to Iowa’s MFA program so that they can live together in Iowa City.

This chapter’s title will repeat in future chapters, the perspectives of which will change in accordance with how the relationship progresses. In this chapter, Machado again uses a second-person point of view to describe how her partner loves her: “You are the only one for her in all the world” (29). At this time, Machado is fully convinced that she is in a meaningful and loving relationship.

This chapter briefly reflects on Machado’s teenage years, when she was uninterested in dating. She was devoted to her Christian faith and her congregation, led by Pastor Joel Jones. The youth group took a trip to Lichtenburg, South Africa to help set up a summer church camp there. Machado and Joel became close despite their age difference. During the trip, they often spent evenings together talking about Joel’s struggles with setting a pure and moral example for his congregation. Machado in turn told Joel about being sexually assaulted her first year of high school (though Machado does not divulge the details to the reader). Once they were back home, Machado and Joel’s relationship became more serious. They engaged in an emotional affair that Joel kept from his wife and Machado from her parents. She often called him late at night, and the pair would meet at a diner or other neutral location.

Machado now recognizes how the boundaries between herself and Joel “had completely dissolved” (33). She associates Joel with a positive sexual experience, becoming enamored with the idea of being intimate with him. When she moves to Washington DC for college, their relationship became strained. She felt guilty for being intimate with a classmate and called Joel directly afterward to ask what she should do, but Joel was cold toward her. She then heard from her parents that Joel had been asked to leave his position after being exposed for having an affair with another woman in the congregation.

Machado describes three myths in which the protagonist is a woman who is somehow punished for using her voice: the Little Mermaid, Eliza from “The Wild Swans,” and the Goose Girl. These figures all represent how women lose their voices, and their stories present pain as part of their moral victories.