Carmen Maria Machado's memoir ‘In The Dream House’: Exploring same-sex female intimate partner abuse through literary tropes

Abstract

This research will examine the theme of female intimate partner abuse in the memoir, ‘In The Dream House’ by Carmen Maria Machado. The present research aims to generate further understandings of what queer abuse for women can possibly look like, while arguing the importance of personal narratives and accounts for feminist and queer research. Paying particular attention to the literary tropes that Machado includes to help access understandings of her own abusive experience, this research attempts to construct knowledge through this unique space of storytelling that Machado has created. Thus, the research explores how the subversive nature of Machado’s unique style of memoir may parallel the subversive nature of feminist and queer theory. Employing a queer reading to texts featuring characters that identify within LGBTQIA+, in this case L (lesbian), makes clearer the lived experiences of certain people and brings overshadowed lives and experiences into the forefront of literary importance.