We talked in class about the prevalent
theme of inanimate objects and their relationship to the characters, and that
got me thinking about dolls. How do the characters operate in a way that is
similar to dolls? The characters are doll-like until they are independent, or
can ‘stand on their own’. We all know that there is not just one type of doll;
I mean Barbie comes in so many variations, I lose count. Jenny, Bella, and
Bradley all represent a different type of doll. The type of doll that they represent
reflects their character growth throughout the story. Now that I think about
it, growth is an interesting word (considering dolls do not usually tend to
grow).
Jenny is the first character that comes
to mind who takes the form of a doll. A doll is incapable of acting by itself
(unless you include dolls from movies like Chucky).
http://kweb.be/2012/04/02/chucky-veut-sa-revanche/
Jenny is the fragile doll,
the one who needs help getting from one place to another. She remarks to Lizzie,
“when I am courted, I shall make Him do some of the things that you do for me.
He couldn’t brush my hair like you do, or help me up and downstairs like you do”
(233). Jenny’s admittance that she needs Lizzie is similar to the way the dolls
need their dressmaker. For Jenny, she is the Forever Doll. She seems as if she
will always remain in the doll state. Jenny does not need to go through a
life-changing event, because she already envelops child and adult experience.
Jenny acts as a doll that is dependent physically on others, but not mentally.
For other characters to be released from their doll state, they need to make a
mental breakthrough.
Bella is the Gold Digger Doll. All she
wants is money and more money. However, once she sees what money does to a
person, she relinquishes the doll image. After Mr. Boffin gets rid of Mr.
Rokesmith, Bella goes upstairs and opens “all the places where she kept her
dresses” she then tells herself that she “won't take one of the others,” she
will “leave all the presents behind, and begin again” (588). Here is where the
doll starts to shatter and the human starts to emerge. Finally, Bella says, “I
am complete” (588). She has completed a transformation from doll to human. This
is important because Bella needs this growth in order for her to end of with
Mr. Rokesmith. If all she cared about was money, well then, he probably wouldn’t
have proposed to her, and she probably wouldn’t have left the Boffins. For
Bella, she becomes her own dressmaker.
Not everyone is able to break through the
porcelain and emerge as a victor. This leads us to the sad case of the mechanical
man, the Simon Says Doll, Bradley Headstone. Instead of realizing that he has a
perfectly good woman, Miss Peecher (even though she was sticking pins in her
dress, hmmm…), he totally ignores her and becomes obsessed with Lizzie. For
Bradley, he lives in the realm of the doll. He is the walking talking doll
whose actions are controlled by Lizzie and Eugene. He is “mechanical” (218) and
maintains a “fixed face” (693). He
physically looks like a doll, with few changes in expression. Also, he is doing
exactly what Eugene wants him to do, he is putting “his patience to another
kind of wear…with no other object on earth than to disappoint and punish him”
(534). Eugene is pulling the strings on
Bradley’s emotions. This shows that Bradley is not entirely in control of what
he does. He may physically break out of the doll shape, but mentally, for him,
he is stuck there. It will be interesting to see what happens when he breaks
out of the puppet state. That is, of course, if he ever does break out.
-Porschae C
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