DOLL<\/h2>\n
What fascinated Ermengarde the most was [Sara’s] fancy about the dolls
who walked and talked, and who could do anything they chose when the human
beings were out of the room, but who must keep their powers a secret and so
flew back to their places ‘like lightening’ when people returned
to the room.<\/p>\n
– Francis Hodgson Burnett, ‘A Little
Princess’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Were he not Romeo called…<\/h3>\n
‘Doll’ as a name makes an early debut in renaissance drama:
first as Doll Tearsheet in Shakespeare’s
Henry IV<\/strong> and then as Doll Common in Jonson’s
The Alchemist<\/strong>. These two draw in ‘Doll’s’
second meaning, which assumes a ‘Dorothy’ is so common a
species as to be generic. Thus, ‘Doll’ as a pet name is
quickly expanded to indicate any female ‘pet’, or indeed
any female ‘mistress’ (drawing confused attention to the
potentially infantalising properties of nicknames in general).
Additionally, as of 1560, it could also be used to mean ‘the
smallest or pet pig in the litter’ (like
Wilbur<\/a>). But clearly there is a double edge to Dorothy’s
common-ness, since ‘common’ means ‘for the use of
everyone’ (tee hee) as well as ‘numerous’ \u2013
something Doll Common’s character demonstrates nominally. ENTER
THE PROSTITUTE.<\/p>\n
Work and Play<\/h3>\n
It is only in 1700 that ‘Doll’ loses its capital
letter and acquires something of its modern sense. The dictionary
defines this as ‘an image of a human being (commonly of a
child or lady) used as a plaything; a girl’s
toy-baby’. It is no longer a name, but it still stands in
for something else, with a more spiritual implication in\u00a0dear
Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet<\/strong> (that name-obsessed play). Here, Old
Capulet refers to his daughter as a ‘whining
Mammet’, a deviant form of ‘Maumet’ which,
deriving ultimately from ‘Mohammed’, was a term used
in medieval England to mean ‘a puppet, an idol, a
doll’. Here lurks the second commandment, in all its
thorny glory, giving an added layer to Barbie’s iconicism,
not to mention the groom’s pledge to his bride in the
traditional Marriage Service, ‘With my body I thee
worship’. (I hear the clatter of toppling
pedestals.)<\/p>\n![\"Image:](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/Barbie_1959_First_Editions.jpg?resize=288%2C373\")
<\/a>clatterty clank<\/p><\/div>\n
It is, I must NB, definitionally
girls <\/em>who play with dolls, and there is a pleasing
juxtaposition of frivolous and stern in the
dictionary’s reference to ‘playthings’
… but I cannot help but suspect that, in their initial
incarnation, these ‘doll-babies’ were
occasionally also educational tools, teaching the virtues of
maternal care for something smaller and weaker, sartorial
elegance and grooming and presumably also some degree of
etiquette \u2013 these dolls could, after all, represent all
ages, and I suspect that the comparative decline of the over
18s represented in modern doll-land may also signal a
movement from dolls as work to dolls as play. (Incidentally,
Londoners: for more on toys’ super-seriousness, go
have a look at the Maritime Museum’s Toy
Boats exhibition<\/a> for examples of boys’ toys
serving to illustrate German naval supremacy). But
onwards.<\/p>\n
From play to work, there’s a beautiful reference in
the dictionary to ‘doll’ used in the more
modern sense when, in 1860, the journal
All Year Round<\/em> talks about the ‘laborious
class Who earn painful bread by fashioning dolls’
eyes’, which tellingly hints at the expanded
manufacturing operations doll-craft represented by the
mid-Victorian industrialised era \u2013 a far cry from
what would presumably have been an ad-hoc domestic craft
when ‘doll-babies’ first became popular.
A Little Princess<\/strong>, quoted above, is a story
obsessed with the power of make-believe and dolls as
synecdoches for real-life figures. It features
multiple references to the late-Victorian doll and the
materialism she represents, including the disapproval
of Sara Crewe’s family solicitor, who, on seeing
what Sara dubs ‘The Last Doll’ says
sternly ‘A hundred pounds […] All
expensive material, and made at a Parisian
modiste’s. He spent money lavishly enough, that
young man’. Fans of Victorian women’s
studies may think of Dickens’ Mr Merdle (Little Dorrit<\/em>) and his search, not for a
wife, but for ‘a bosom to hang jewels
upon’.<\/p>\n
Living Dolls<\/h3>\n
It has taken more time than usual, but finally
the leximobile screeches up outside definition
number three, another Victorian usage,
‘doll’ as ‘a pretty, but
unintelligent or empty person’,
especially, the dictionary adds, ‘when
dressed up; also, a pretty but silly or
frivolous woman’. Hence we have ‘a
doll’s face’, which is one
‘conventionally pretty, but without life
or expression’. Pleasingly, in this
instance, it is the lifeless image of womanhood
that inspires the\u00a0pejorative\u00a0reference
to the real thing, rather than the other way
round, although it gives rise to a disturbing
number of aspirations in the sentient race to be
‘living dolls’ (a quick google, and
you’ll see what I mean). The dictionary
even has names for this sort of thing, giving a
delightful number of compound terms: thus the
(tautological) worship of dolls –
dollatry<\/em>,
dollhood<\/em> \u2013 the state or
condition of being like a doll,
dollship<\/em> \u2013 the personality of
a doll, although it also points out that
these relate primarily to
‘doll’s’ fifth meaning,
via a re-emerging ‘Doll
Common’, as ‘a
prostitute’. ‘Living
dolls’ may in fact also be real-life
Ladies Of Easy Virtue.<\/p>\n
‘<\/em>There is much for her
to do, her whole sex to deliver from
the bondage of frivolity, dolldom
and imbecility.’<\/p>\n
-Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881),
‘Letters’,
(undated)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So, from ‘Dorothy’
onwards, a ‘doll’
always represents something
bigger, be it a name whose full
gravity cannot yet be properly
appropriated, a world of humans
made more comprehensible for a
small child, or even a religious
figure incarnated
in\u00a0sacrilegious\u00a0form. It
is the idolatry of such a
representation that I find most
fascinating: it gives a whole new
irony to Sara Crewe’s
repeated assertion that, as her
father has always told her,
‘All women are
princesses.’<\/p>\n
![\"Image:](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/doll-revised-background_2.jpg?resize=401%2C586\")
<\/a>NEXT WEEK: E is for
Emancipate<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
What fascinated Ermengarde the most was [Sara’s] fancy about the dolls who walked and talked, and who could do anything they chose when the human beings were out of the room, but who must keep their powers a secret and so flew back to their places ‘like lightening’ when people returned to the room.<\/p>\n
– Francis Hodgson Burnett, ‘A Little Princess’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Were he not Romeo called…<\/h3>\n
‘Doll’ as a name makes an early debut in renaissance drama:
first as Doll Tearsheet in Shakespeare’s
Henry IV<\/strong> and then as Doll Common in Jonson’s
The Alchemist<\/strong>. These two draw in ‘Doll’s’
second meaning, which assumes a ‘Dorothy’ is so common a
species as to be generic. Thus, ‘Doll’ as a pet name is
quickly expanded to indicate any female ‘pet’, or indeed
any female ‘mistress’ (drawing confused attention to the
potentially infantalising properties of nicknames in general).
Additionally, as of 1560, it could also be used to mean ‘the
smallest or pet pig in the litter’ (like
Wilbur<\/a>). But clearly there is a double edge to Dorothy’s
common-ness, since ‘common’ means ‘for the use of
everyone’ (tee hee) as well as ‘numerous’ \u2013
something Doll Common’s character demonstrates nominally. ENTER
THE PROSTITUTE.<\/p>\n
It is only in 1700 that ‘Doll’ loses its capital
letter and acquires something of its modern sense. The dictionary
defines this as ‘an image of a human being (commonly of a
child or lady) used as a plaything; a girl’s
toy-baby’. It is no longer a name, but it still stands in
for something else, with a more spiritual implication in\u00a0dear
Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet<\/strong> (that name-obsessed play). Here, Old
Capulet refers to his daughter as a ‘whining
Mammet’, a deviant form of ‘Maumet’ which,
deriving ultimately from ‘Mohammed’, was a term used
in medieval England to mean ‘a puppet, an idol, a
doll’. Here lurks the second commandment, in all its
thorny glory, giving an added layer to Barbie’s iconicism,
not to mention the groom’s pledge to his bride in the
traditional Marriage Service, ‘With my body I thee
worship’. (I hear the clatter of toppling
pedestals.)<\/p>\n clatterty clank<\/p><\/div>\n
It is, I must NB, definitionally
girls <\/em>who play with dolls, and there is a pleasing
juxtaposition of frivolous and stern in the
dictionary’s reference to ‘playthings’
… but I cannot help but suspect that, in their initial
incarnation, these ‘doll-babies’ were
occasionally also educational tools, teaching the virtues of
maternal care for something smaller and weaker, sartorial
elegance and grooming and presumably also some degree of
etiquette \u2013 these dolls could, after all, represent all
ages, and I suspect that the comparative decline of the over
18s represented in modern doll-land may also signal a
movement from dolls as work to dolls as play. (Incidentally,
Londoners: for more on toys’ super-seriousness, go
have a look at the Maritime Museum’s Toy
Boats exhibition<\/a> for examples of boys’ toys
serving to illustrate German naval supremacy). But
onwards.<\/p>\n
From play to work, there’s a beautiful reference in
the dictionary to ‘doll’ used in the more
modern sense when, in 1860, the journal
All Year Round<\/em> talks about the ‘laborious
class Who earn painful bread by fashioning dolls’
eyes’, which tellingly hints at the expanded
manufacturing operations doll-craft represented by the
mid-Victorian industrialised era \u2013 a far cry from
what would presumably have been an ad-hoc domestic craft
when ‘doll-babies’ first became popular.
A Little Princess<\/strong>, quoted above, is a story
obsessed with the power of make-believe and dolls as
synecdoches for real-life figures. It features
multiple references to the late-Victorian doll and the
materialism she represents, including the disapproval
of Sara Crewe’s family solicitor, who, on seeing
what Sara dubs ‘The Last Doll’ says
sternly ‘A hundred pounds […] All
expensive material, and made at a Parisian
modiste’s. He spent money lavishly enough, that
young man’. Fans of Victorian women’s
studies may think of Dickens’ Mr Merdle (Little Dorrit<\/em>) and his search, not for a
wife, but for ‘a bosom to hang jewels
upon’.<\/p>\n
It has taken more time than usual, but finally
the leximobile screeches up outside definition
number three, another Victorian usage,
‘doll’ as ‘a pretty, but
unintelligent or empty person’,
especially, the dictionary adds, ‘when
dressed up; also, a pretty but silly or
frivolous woman’. Hence we have ‘a
doll’s face’, which is one
‘conventionally pretty, but without life
or expression’. Pleasingly, in this
instance, it is the lifeless image of womanhood
that inspires the\u00a0pejorative\u00a0reference
to the real thing, rather than the other way
round, although it gives rise to a disturbing
number of aspirations in the sentient race to be
‘living dolls’ (a quick google, and
you’ll see what I mean). The dictionary
even has names for this sort of thing, giving a
delightful number of compound terms: thus the
(tautological) worship of dolls –
dollatry<\/em>,
dollhood<\/em> \u2013 the state or
condition of being like a doll,
dollship<\/em> \u2013 the personality of
a doll, although it also points out that
these relate primarily to
‘doll’s’ fifth meaning,
via a re-emerging ‘Doll
Common’, as ‘a
prostitute’. ‘Living
dolls’ may in fact also be real-life
Ladies Of Easy Virtue.<\/p>\n
‘<\/em>There is much for her
to do, her whole sex to deliver from
the bondage of frivolity, dolldom
and imbecility.’<\/p>\n
-Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881),
‘Letters’,
(undated)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So, from ‘Dorothy’
onwards, a ‘doll’
always represents something
bigger, be it a name whose full
gravity cannot yet be properly
appropriated, a world of humans
made more comprehensible for a
small child, or even a religious
figure incarnated
in\u00a0sacrilegious\u00a0form. It
is the idolatry of such a
representation that I find most
fascinating: it gives a whole new
irony to Sara Crewe’s
repeated assertion that, as her
father has always told her,
‘All women are
princesses.’<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Work and Play<\/h3>\n
<\/a>
Living Dolls<\/h3>\n
<\/a>NEXT WEEK: E is for
Emancipate<\/strong><\/p>\n