This is not a tale of complex philosophical musings, like Lindgren’s, but it is a more thoughtful story than one would expect from the cover and the summary. Plantaganet, Apple, and Darner? I think they did.” “Did the caretaker’s child think of the wax doll? And the wax doll, in her lonely box, think of the caretaker’s child and of the finger that had touched her satin dress? Did the dolls think of Tottie’s welcome home by Emily, Charlotte, Birdie, Mr. The link between humans and dolls is a central tenet of the story, in fact.

The girls are mainly well intentioned (one even knits a bootie for a doll’s injured foot, after he’s been mistreated and neglected by another human), but the world is not always kind to dolls.ĭespite the fact that it does hold them in a certain esteem, as evidenced by the Exhibition of Dolls, which not only includes Tottie, but also Marchpane (the Cruella deVille of dolls), and Queen Victoria’s dolls, and many others besides. “It is very important for dolls that children guess their right ages some thoughtless children make their dolls vary between six and six months.Ĭertainly the dolls in Godden’s tale are at the mercy of the sisters who keep them. Put another way, however, it also seems something of a disadvantage. It does sound like quite a hassle, put that way. ‘First you have to be a baby, then a little child, then a bigger child, then a schoolboy or girl, then a big boy or girl, and then grown up.’ “‘I wouldn’t be a child for anything,’ Tottie often said. And, unsurprising, for to hear Tottie talk about it, dolls are definitely superior to humans. Though, really, it’s the dolls that rule the narrative. The dolls aren’t living in a doll’s house when she first describes it to the other dolls, but you can tell by the title that the house does figure prominently in the story. That was a hundred years ago,’ said Tottie.” She was Emily’s and Charlotte’s Great-Great-Aunt. Tottie, a farthing doll, certainly comes across as an authority figure I would have believed anything she told me.

That’s something I could easily have lifted verbatim from Rumer Godden’s story.

Not only did I have a dollhouse, but I was one of those girls who was certain that dolls and other toys had their own inner lives. I re-read this slim volume countless times when I was a girl. The day I consider myself too grown-up to read a children’s story, is the day I stop reading.

The Dolls' House by Rumer Godden