In In the Dream House, Machado discusses the archival silence—the erasure of queer narratives, especially the lack of representation of abuse within those relationships. As Machado is an academic and writer in graduate programs, she is familiar with the notion of the archive, its heteronormative and white selectivity, and its perpetuation of biased, abusive ideologies. She composes her memoir around queer or nontraditional theorists, writers, and artists to question the reach of the archive and the harm it does to queer individuals by mis- or underrepresenting their narratives. In the Dream House then becomes Machado’s contribution to a queered archive in which abuse is openly discussed as present among queer relationships.

Machado notes that she has never been “taught” to be afraid of a woman because the archive, or cultural narratives, do not consider women capable of domestic abuse. When it comes to lesbian couples, Machado was initially naïve to the possibility that she could be abused: “You trust her, and you have no context for anything else” (45). As a bisexual woman with little experience, Machado is alienated from the reality of her relationship as she has never before encountered its representation in either her social or academic worlds.