Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir In the Dream House chronologizes her experiences in an abusive relationship with a woman. In the Dream House was published in 2019 and won the 2021 Folio Prize and the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction. The memoir discusses potential modes for queer representation through the use of multiple narrative techniques. As of 2022, Machado lives in Pennsylvania with her wife and works at the University of Pennsylvania.

This guide is based on the 2019 paperback version published by Graywolf Press.

Content Warning: This guide discusses physical and psychological domestic abuse.

Summary

To address “archival silence”—the absence of queer abuse stories in contemporary culture and academic archival evidence—Carmen Maria Machado writes her experimental memoir In the Dream House. The narrative follows her initial meeting, relationship, and breakup with an abusive woman. As Machado is a recognized writer and graduate of the Iowa Workshop MFA program, In the Dream House features different modes of narration, using the memoir genre to break this “silence.”

The author begins her story: While living in Iowa City and beginning her MFA program, Machado meets her partner (who will remain unnamed) through mutual friends. The two begin seeing each other sporadically; the partner claims she is in an open relationship with her long-distance partner Val, whom Machado also meets and becomes close friends with. Machado’s partner applies to MFA programs and is accepted to Indiana. Machado helps her partner and Val move in together in Bloomington, Indiana. Not long after, Machado receives a phone call from the partner stating that she and Val have broken up and that she wants to begin a monogamous relationship with Machado.

Machado often drives back and forth between Bloomington and Iowa City to spend time with her partner. Her partner’s abusive behavior is initially hidden from her, and it is only through the expressed anxieties of her roommate, coworkers, and other friends that Machado begins to recognize her experience as psychological abuse. The couple takes a road trip along the East Coast to meet their respective families. While in Florida with her partner’s parents, her partner grips Machado’s arm aggressively, the first sign of potential physical abuse.

In several instances, her partner acts violently toward her, and she must lock herself in the bathroom to avoid being assaulted. Machado’s partner claims that she blacks out during her episodes of violent rage, but Machado has no means of corroborating this. She becomes increasingly isolated and, in parallel, increasingly interested in studying representations of queer abuse in literary theory, media, and legal cases. She struggles to find an example that coincides with her own experiences of abuse. Machado begins to daydream about death as it seems the only realistic escape for her. Her partner is accepted to the Iowa MFA program and plans to move to Iowa City and live with Machado.

Machado goes through several emotionally turbulent and brief breakups with her partner. Finally, when her partner admits to kissing and loving another woman, their relationship dissolves permanently. Machado’s friends help her to overcome the breakup. She reconnects with Val, and the two begin a relationship that will eventually lead to marriage.

The memoir’s narration is highly fragmentary, often shifting viewpoints between present and past, between first person and second person. The narrative of Machado’s abusive relationship is frequently interrupted by chapters in which the present-day Machado muses on various aspects of culture, history, or human nature.