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- Title
When Silence is Violence: Exploring Literary Representations of Abuse within a Lesbian Relationship in Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House.
- Authors
Murray, Jessica
- Abstract
In the Dream House tells the story of the author’s relationship with a woman who subjects her to years of emotional, psychological and, ultimately, physical violence. In her attempts to grapple with the reality and aftermath of this relationship, Machado explores the varied and complex ways in which discursive and epistemological silencing set the stage for the violence she experienced at the tongue and hands of her female lover. This is a story about how the marginalization of queer bodies and experiences, as well as the shaming of already marginalized narratives, continue to constitute a profound veil of silence that cloaks the reality of violence within lesbian relationships. This article uses feminist and queer theory to analyze how the dynamics of silence shape the representation of the main character’s experience of domestic violence. I will demonstrate how this is a particular iteration of silence that is infused with shame and, in order to untangle the intricate intersections of the main character’s identity, I will argue that the long-term feminist insistence on telling women’s stories, in all their lush diversity, is an unfinished project and one that remains as urgently necessary today as it was during the second wave of feminism. Because of the relative paucity of accounts of lesbian violence, and the problematic misogyny and heteronormativity that often informed the few accounts that did exist, Machado found herself at a loss when she tried to make sense of her experiences. There seemed to be no feminist and queer narrative anchor that she could use to articulate her own story. In the Dream House thus presents the reader with her attempt to ‘speak into the silence’ and this article offers both a scholarly engagement with this effort and a continuation of the larger feminist work of speaking into gendered and queer spaces of silence and shame.
- Subjects
LESBIAN relationships; FEMINISM; VIOLENCE; DOMESTIC violence; HETERONORMATIVITY; QUEER theory; MISOGYNY
- Publication
Alternation, 2023, p242
- ISSN
1023-1757
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.29086/2519-5476/2023/sp41a10