18 Nov “Another Ghost That Has Always Been Here”: Disrupting the Lesbian Utopia in “Poetics of Sex” and “In the Dream House,” By Corey Martin
Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House and Jeanette Winterson’s “The Poetics of Sex” both engage with the concept of the lesbian utopia. An important ideal in lesbian feminism, the lesbian utopia positions relationships between women as nonviolent and equal, promising an escape from the oppressive power of patriarchy. These texts construct and then deconstruct a sexual utopia, using violence to disrupt the idea that lesbian attachment is inherently safe and non-oppressive. Both texts also refuse to adhere to a singular portrayal of the lesbian through the instability and multiplicity of how they describe lesbian relationships. Ultimately, In the Dream House and “The Poetics of Sex” subvert the lesbian utopia, using violence and instability to counter sanitized ideals of lesbianism with the complexity and humanity of lesbian relationships.
The lesbian utopia was a key tenet of 1970s lesbian feminism that rests upon the idea that lesbian relationships are a liberating alternative to women’s oppression under the patriarchy. In her article “‘Suffering in a silent vacuum,’” Rebecca Barnes writes that the lesbian utopia “promised the release from subordination and instead relationships characterized by democracy, equality, and non-violence” (Barnes 237). By positioning lesbian relationships in direct opposition to subordination and violence, the lesbian utopia restricts lesbian relationships to one singular model. It frames democracy, equality, and non-violence as inherent to all relationships between women, homogenizing them through idealization. The lesbian utopia’s reliance upon this ideal denies the possibility of violence and subordination perpetuated by women, reducing lesbian relationships to a fictionalized hope that is, in practice, unattainable. Within this framework, the lesbian relationship becomes only a promise, rather than a fully developed relationship with potential for conflict, difference, and human complexity. This oversimplification becomes more dangerous in the context of lesbian domestic abuse. Denying women’s potential to harm one another leaves battered lesbians without support or even a framework within which to understand their experiences, as even admitting the possibility of lesbian domestic violence “shakes the very foundations of the lesbian feminist project” (237). In the Dream House also acknowledges this denial within queer communities: “Women who were women did not abuse their girlfriends; proper lesbians would never do such a thing” (Machado 199). By defining the proper lesbian as inherently non-abusive, the lesbian utopia simultaneously absolves lesbians of the responsibility to address intra-community abuse and isolates lesbians who experience abuse from other women. Lesbian feminism frames abusive behaviour as something external that is incompatible with lesbianism, which becomes a utopian escape from any possibility of oppression.
In “The Poetics of Sex,” idealized sexual encounters emerge as potential sites of roughness and imbalanced power which contradict assumptions of non-violence in lesbian relationships. Sappho describes an erotic utopia of pleasure and sexual capability when she says, “a woman … can do it any way up and her lover always comes” (Winterson 419). Here, lesbian sex is idealized, and the lesbian is positioned as inherently skilled at sexual intercourse. As the woman’s lover “always comes,” stability and consistency become part of this utopian relationship, which is then disrupted by physical force. When Sappho describes intimacy with Picasso, she interweaves pleasure with rough physicality: “I took her by her pony-tail the way a hero grabs a runaway horse. She was taken aback…she said, ‘Would you mind?’, and not waiting for an answer she … [took] me like a dog” (Winterson 414–415). Here, Sappho dehumanizes Picasso, making her the “runaway horse” to Sappho’s “hero.” She grabs Picasso “by her pony-tail,” creating an abrupt tactile image that underscores this roughness. In response, Picasso reverses this dehumanization by “taking” Sappho “like a dog.” Although Picasso asks for permission, she exerts power over Sappho by “not waiting for an answer.” “The Poetics of Sex” features a continuous oscillation of power between Picasso and Sappho, and although neither woman is consistently more powerful, power imbalances interrupt the seemingly utopian setting. Furthermore, the language of “taking” throughout this encounter implies alternating moments of dominance, rather than a mutual language of giving and receiving. Sappho and Picasso’s actions are simultaneously combative and sensual, blurring those lines between violence and eroticism. A relationship like Sappho and Picasso’s—turbulent, physical, and characterized by dynamic moments of inequality—contradicts utopian ideals of stability, painlessness, and equality.
In the Dream House, too, uses erotic scenes to construct a lesbian sexual utopia before disrupting that utopia with violence, refuting the presumption that lesbians cannot be abusive. Machado establishes a sense of equality through the Woman in the Dream House’s initial emphasis on consent: “Every time her hand moves somewhere else, she whispers, ‘May I?’” (20). This act of asking for permission establishes a balance of power between Machado and the Woman in this encounter, exemplifying the equality in woman-to-woman relationships in Barnes’ description of the lesbian utopia. Furthermore, the Woman’s whispered requests create a sense of gentleness and safety. Machado’s utopia is also characterized by consistency: the Woman asks not only once but “every time” her hand moves. However, as Machado’s relationship with her partner progresses, violence invades this sexual utopia. The Woman becomes more demanding and controlling, including in a sexual context:
Her hands are running up your breasts before you can do anything about it. You clasp them in your own and push them down gently. She puts them up again. When you move them a second time, you can feel her anger…She snaps around you like a Venus flytrap, pinning your arms against your torso. (Machado 123)
The Woman’s actions are again repetitive, but this time, they are in direct conflict with what Machado wants. As the Woman continues to touch her, imposing her own desires over Machado’s, she overturns any sense of equality. The Woman’s touch is no longer something that Machado happily consents to as a partner, but something she must actively resist. The only gentleness that remains comes from Machado, and this vulnerability is met with tangible anger, which intensifies the threat the Woman poses. The simile comparing the Woman to a Venus flytrap furthers her power over Machado, likening their relationship to one of predator and prey. The image of the Venus flytrap evokes captivity, as the Woman’s arms trap her in this moment and, more broadly, in the relationship. The diction as the Woman’s arms snap around her and pin her in place connotes a physical altercation, emphasizing the feeling of danger Machado experiences. This danger is at odds with the lesbian utopia, since being in a relationship with a woman does not guarantee Machado’s safety. Although their relationship at first appears equal, gentle, and utopian, the abuse Machado experiences contradicts ideas about the inherent nonviolence of lesbian relationships.
Finally, by refusing to clearly define the central characters’ relationships, both texts use instability to reject the oversimplification required by the lesbian utopia. In In the Dream House, the Dream House itself is constantly shifting:
It was, in turn, a convent of promise (herb garden, wine, writing across the table from each other), a den of debauchery (fucking with the windows open, waking up with mouth on mouth, the low, insistent murmur of fantasy), a haunted house (none of this can really be happening), a prison (need to get out need to get out), and, finally, a dungeon of memory. (Machado 72)
Here, Machado uses the Dream House as a symbol for her relationship with the Woman, describing the promise, sexuality, fear, confinement, and trauma associated with the relationship by conferring these onto the setting of the Dream House. Each new label shifts and compounds the meaning of the Dream House as Machado interweaves the utopian and the dystopian. The book juxtaposes pain and pleasure throughout, making it impossible to neatly separate fantasy from horror. As a result, the Dream House—and the relationship—cannot be defined in only one way, revealing the complex and unstable nature of what both the house and the Woman mean to Machado. Furthermore, the parentheses in this description interrupt the labelling with Machado’s own thoughts, which grow more desperate as the fantasy is replaced by a need to escape. Finally, Machado’s thoughts disappear entirely as she becomes increasingly powerless; there is no final parenthetical comment after the Dream House becomes “a dungeon of memory.” Despite the many options she offers, labels alone cannot capture the entirety of what the Dream House represents. Instead, Machado must further clarify the labels as she insists on a setting and a lover who both escape a stable definition. Sappho and Picasso’s relationship, too, has multiple definitions. To describe their relationship, Sappho offers, “Love between lovers, love between mother and child. Love between man and wife. Love between friends” (Winterson 419). Again, the labels applied are cumulative, with each offering a different portrayal of their relationship. No one description is chosen or prioritized, and the use of parallelism through anaphora further equalizes the value of each relationship label. As a result, the relationship is characterized by its shifting and is paradoxically defined by being undefinable. Sappho and Picasso’s multifaceted “love” refuses the specific, clearly defined relationship demanded by a lesbian utopia. Where the lesbian utopia presents only one true, permissible model of lesbianism for all women, In the Dream House and “The Poetics of Sex” deny this consistency within even the specific relationships in each text. Both narratives deny a singular, stable definition of the lesbian and her relationship, refusing the clarity needed to define and regulate a lesbian utopia.
Ultimately, In the Dream House and “The Poetics of Sex” disrupt the lesbian utopia through violence and fragmentation, denying the oversimplification that the lesbian utopia requires and instead insisting on the complex humanity of lesbians and their relationships. Though the lesbian utopia was an important part of lesbian feminism, it presents a reductive and homogenized model of lesbian relationships that excludes the possibility of oppression and inequality between women. In the Dream House and “The Poetics of Sex” both construct a potential lesbian utopia through sexual encounters before negating this possibility through the presence of violence and imbalanced power. The texts offer unstable definitions of their central relationships, denying the clarity demanded by the lesbian utopia. In the Dream House and “The Poetics of Sex” offer frameworks for depicting lesbian relationships outside of unrealistic utopian ideals.
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Works Cited
Barnes, Rebecca. “‘Suffering in a silent vacuum’: Woman-to-woman partner abuse as a challenge to the Lesbian Feminist Vision.” Feminism & Psychology, vol. 21, no. 2, 2010, pp. 233–239, https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353510370183.
Machado, Carmen Maria. In the Dream House. Strange Light, 2019.
Winterson, Jeanette. “The Poetics of Sex.” The Penguin Book of Lesbian Short Stories, edited by Margaret Reynolds, Penguin Books, 1993, pp. 412–422.