Dolled Up Romantics...with or without nuts

            There is something of a duel nature in our perception of dolls.  On one hand those sometimes carefully crafted pieces of porcelain and fabric with their painstakingly detailed faces are works of art, a testament of the craft of their maker.  Even those factory-born by a factory toy maker share a strange ideology of what perfection is to the human eye.  On the other hand, they can be disturbing creatures, in essence playing the part of soulless echoes of the human beings they are meant to mimic. 

            In some ways, the method by which women in Romantic era Britain are represented bears much resemblance to those porcelain dolls.  Quiet submissive daughters and wives, beautiful to look upon, their motions and actions dictated by husbands and fathers.  To those patriarchal eyes they are objects, unable to think or move on their own, at least in a figurative sense, and they love and treasure them ever careful not to damage or break their fragile bodies.  Even if they do, surely it was not their fault.

            Yet even the through the objectification and painted faces, there still stares a pair of eyes, windows through which quite clearly shine a human soul.  There lies the disturbing element to this portrayal, disturbing not for the lack of soul a doll has, but because of the opposite.  With dolls we are able to disconnect because of the lack of a life behind them, but when that spark is there in something we’ve tried to dismiss and objectify like a doll, all we find is the shame of that sin staring right back at us crying with pity.

            Anne Elliot in Jane Austen’s Persuasion certainly could relate, as early in her story she seems content to play the part of a doll.  Rarely leaving the house and being often overlooked by a father for whom “vanity was the beginning of the end” and whom the more physically lovely sisters held more value, she nevertheless allows her actions to be dictated by not only her father, but others involved in the lives of her family, even going so far as to break off a wedding because the family advisor, Lady Russell, thinks it not a good match for her.

            Yet there is something remarkable to this doll named Anne, she grows, and in doing so becomes too much for the puppet strings binding her to the will of others, and becomes a human being.  How she comes to this self-determination and breaks free from the porcelain shell she was trapped in is a remarkable feat in itself.  It requires on her part a realization of the flaws in the people she loves but who through her love try to control her; her father’s vanity, Lady Russell’s well-meant but often blind advice, the true face behind the mask of the man everyone around her adores and feels she should marry, and also most importantly what is it in herself that has been limiting her and where her love truly lies.

Also in the name of perpetuating a running joke, no nuts were ironically picked from their trees during the writing of this entry.