Representation of Polyamory and Anger in Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House

“I just – I think I’ve always been polyamorous, and it makes so much sense. I want to be with both of you. I want to make this work. Is that crazy?” (39)

 

I read Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House as part of a graduate course on queer of color critique. The experimental memoir has found quite a huge following and rightly so, given the ways in which the author places herself within a complex assemblage of queer histories and narratives, their slippages and (mis)readings. This was the first time that I came across a memoir that drew so heavily from familiar queer tropes and theories of knowledge. In short, it blew me away. However, as I kept reading reviews that unanimously appreciated the generic interventions, I realized that nobody was talking about aspects of the book that left me somewhat disappointed – its representation of polyamory and anger.  Early in the memoir, I almost wanted to believe Machado’s partner even though I was aware that she is likely to be portrayed as manipulative and abusive. Polyamory is rarely represented in literature, and that possibility made me very hopeful. Is that hope too burdensome for a writer who is invested in the revisiting of the trauma of being in an abusive lesbian relationship? Can her citations be seen as strategies, employed to not only weave a fascinating genre but also restore faith in monogamy?

Machado begins her Prologue by invoking Saidiya Hartman and interrogating the process of archiving – “what is placed in or left out of the archive is a political act, dictated by the activist and the political context in which she lives” (4). As I read the memoir amidst the increasingly ‘homonational’ turns in India and the US toward same-sex marital rights, anti-trans laws and policies, I wondered if societal expectations around monogamy and marriage are central to the abuse that the author faces. When her partner no longer claims to be polyamorous and switches into a possessive monogamous mode (68), Machado gives the reader an insight into the ways in which she is forced to prove her fidelity – “who are you thinking about?” (81). The partner not only desires other women but also physically/emotionally abuses those whom she claims to love. Later, when the reader discovers that the partner and her ex-girlfriend, Val were not in an open relationship when they had met Macado, the prototype of the cheating lover is reified. While the memoir makes a strict distinction between polyamory and cheating, it presents the former as a convenient mask that can be accessed by people who refuse to conform to notions of fidelity. However, in trying to expose fake polyamory, Machado fails to engage with what a polyamorous relationship may look like. Though, I use the term "fake," I am wary of any claim that represents one form of orientation as more real than the other. I see both cheating and polyamory as practices that unsettle the safety valve and the perks associated with a gay marriage – “the law of the land” (126).

Despite the psychological toll, Machado is rarely angry... unlike her abusers. The author’s refusal to associate the rage of her “scary aunt” with endometriosis is possibly an attempt not to pathologize anger (70). However, by seeing her partner’s actions as an extension of the latter’s abusive father – “’I don’t want to be like him,’ she says, ‘but sometimes I worry that I am,’” (58) – Machado, like the nineteenth news reports on Alice Mitchell, reduces the woman to the “monstrous female driven by masculine erotic and aggressive motives” (136). She struggles with the “specter of the lunatic lesbian,” trying to address the lover’s “unflagging irrationality” or “rage issues” (126). Anger and hatred overlap so that both the abused and the abuser are stratified into moral and ethical binaries. The reader is told that everything about the partner’s parents' home, be it the “ancient cat” or the Florida ocean, appears to be hostile (56). By contrast, Machado’s family is very nice to her partner, despite the latter being tipsy. As opposed to her partner’s violent anger, Machado tears up, every time she is confronted and abused. Like Debra Reid who was presented as “‘the woman’ in the relationship” (137), the author cooks, cleans and even edits her partner’s stories for the MFA application in Iowa. Does Machado deliberately cite Reid as a challenge to the reader, who may be too willing to cast her as the “feminine” figure? 

Though Machado invokes José Esteban Muñoz and downplays the compulsions for evidence, she offers to give the address of the “dream house” to her reader. She plays with us, the potential jury figures, much like she plays with her pronouns – “you”, “I” or “Carmen” – trashing expectations of a singular or stable point of view. The reader is provided with an illusion of agency in the section, “Choose Your Own Adventure” to get a sense of Machado’s predicament. However, this is a mockery of the reading public, trying to serve as the jury to ascertain the veracity of her narrative. The reader doesn’t have that power, precisely because this is Machado’s story, her act of archival.

Machado’s final turn toward Val, her abuser’s ex-girlfriend is not just a move toward healing. It is also a moving away from the anger that she found toxic and full of hate – be it that of her aunt, the single mother or the philandering ex-partner. Unfortunately, Machado cannot find ways to respond affirmatively to anger or polyamory. That is neither her project nor her burden (perhaps). Of course, I wasn’t expecting a “polyamorous success story” (221). But a queer response to lesbian monogamy wouldn’t have been too bad.