I've always loved doll houses. I enjoyed playing with them as a very little girl, but even as I got a bit older I still loved them. So much so that my dad made one for me around the time I was ten.

I still remember the wonder of that house. Among other things, it had working electric lights that illuminated the tiny "crystal" (clear plastic) chandelier. My grandmother encouraged my love of all things miniature and bought some beautiful furniture for my new little house, including a bed with a lovely red checked coverlet.

My fascination with tiny dolls and their tiny homes and furniture extended to stories, and it still does. Almost any time I see a book involving doll houses, I'm usually intrigued enough to pick it up and give it a read.

I'm not sure how I missed The Dolls' House, a novel for children by Rumer Godden, first published in 1947. A newly illustrated edition with pictures by Tasha Tudor was published in 1962, the year my older sister was born. Somehow or other, this book just never made it to our shelves at home and I must not have seen it at the library. If I had, I'm sure I would have picked it up.

"Tottie Was Made of Wood and it Was Good Wood"

I would have loved this book when I was ten. And I enjoyed it now, almost thirty years later, when I did finally run across it on a library shelf. Since it's recently come back into print, reissued in honor of the author's centennial birthday, you're more likely to have an opportunity to enjoy it as well.

The Dolls' House is about a family of dolls owned by two little girls, Charlotte and Emily, in war-time England. Although I call them a "family" of dolls, in reality they were never intended to be a "set." But it is the way of a doll's life, as Godden tells us, to deal with the hand one is dealt. A doll has very little control over her own destiny. If the child who owns you puts you together with other dolls and makes you into a sort of family, then you need to deal with that as best you can. Fortunately, the four dolls we follow in this story really love each other.

By far the oldest doll in Charlotte and Emily's collection is Tottie. She is a small "farthing doll" once owned by the girls' great and great-great grandmothers. Although small, Tottie is very sturdy. She has lasted as long as she has because she is made of wood. ..."and it was good wood..." the author says, in what will turn out to be an important point and a recurring theme. For dolls are made of all kinds of different materials. What one is made of can sometimes affect how a doll thinks of herself and her abilities.

Tottie's wooden strength is contrasted with the fragility of Birdie, made of "cheap celluloid." Although Birdie's beginnings were very modest (she came attached to a Christmas cracker) the little girls and the other dolls can't help but like her. Her lightweight celluloid body, fluffy cotton yellow hair, and bead filled head give her a flighty and rattling appearance. As the reader discovers, that matches her sweet but rather scatterbrained personality. But there is more to Birdie than immediately meets the eye.

Poor Mr. Plantaganet, the "father doll" of the house, is very delicate. He has a china face and glass eyes, and in some ways he is even more fragile than Birdie. It's hard for him to overcome his past, in which he was abused and neglected by some children who let their dog chew on him, and drew a mustache on his dignified little face, and left him in a dark toy cupboard for months. He finds himself much happier in his new life once Charlotte and Emily adopt him, but his past makes him very insecure.

The other doll in the family, baby Apple, is simply charming and soft. He's made of plush and everyone loves him, even though he can be very mischievous.

Longing for a House

Godden's writing skill enabled her to invest each of the four main dolls in the story with tremendous personality. As readers, we are privileged to peek inside their lives and feelings in ways that the girls who own them can't. (After all, in true story fashion, the dolls really only "come to life" in the off moments when the girls aren't looking.) While the characters of Emily and Charlotte are fleshed out well enough (with the older Emily more bossy, and the younger Charlotte more sympathetic and imaginative) they remain appropriately shadowy and in the background, except where their actions impend upon the lives of the dolls. This is really the dolls' story through and through.

The plot is simple but well-shaped. What drives the beginning action is the dolls' yearning for a house of their own. When the story opens, they are all crammed into a shoebox. As I mentioned, the story takes place during or perhaps just after World War II, and not many families in England could afford nice doll houses. Tottie regales her family with tales of the beautiful old doll house once owned, a hundred years ago, by Charlotte and Emily's great-great-aunt. She remembers it with great fondness and in vivid detail, and her description of the house (complete with the other doll's longing and breathless questions) is one of the best sections of the book.

In wonderful storybook fashion, the old house is found and brought back to the nursery. It's as beautiful as Tottie remembers, though worn and not very clean, and some of the furniture is missing or broken. Aided by the dolls' ardent wishing (the only way dolls have of influencing their human owners) Charlotte and Emily set about to repair and clean it, and to find a way to earn money to fix the furniture. How those things are accomplished drives the middle part of the story.

The end is shaped by a surprising and sad turn of events. Once in their beautiful house, you think that dolls (and the readers of this book) are set up for a happy ending. But it's not to be. Among other things, the dolls must deal with the coming of Marchpane, another very old doll who once used to live in the house. She and Tottie were not exactly enemies, but they spare each other little fondness. And Marchpane, always haughty (she's china with real hair, dressed in real lace) has become even haughtier in the intervening years, caring little for children. All she wants to do is be exhibited, a fate most dolls consider worse than death.

Marchpane's coming and the tragic events that unfold afterwards make this an emotional story. Yes, I did say tragic. Parents and teachers should know there is a death in this story. There is a noble and sacrificial aspect to the death, but nevertheless, because of Godden's excellent characterization, the death of a doll feels as real as the death of any other character I've ever read. I was frankly surprised by the emotional impact the story had on me as an adult, and there is no way I would even attempt to read this poignant story aloud to my five year old daughter right now, whose tenacious love for her own dolls and her occasional insistence that they're "real" would likely mean that she would be deeply affected.

I do think this would make a good read-aloud for children (especially girls) ten and up. Likely an older child will be more emotionally prepared to handle the grief of the story, which ends on a lovely note, but never tidies up into a conventional happy ending. Older children will also "get" (even if not a fully conscious level) the parallels between the personalities and actions of the dolls and real people. Godden writes with a somewhat mystical and melancholy bent, but her basic character sketches are sound: we all know people who are "solid" through and through, others who are fragile or lightweight, and still others that care more themselves than they do for the usefulness and joy they might bring to others. All of those sketches and more can be found here, providing food for thought about recognizing "what we're made of" in the deepest core of our hearts, and how the choices we make (regardless of our backgrounds or seeming strengths and weaknesses) can matter a great deal in the end.

A thought-provoking and unusual book.

~befus, 2007


The ISBN for the newly reissued edition by Macmillan Children's Books in 2006 is 0330442554. I'm not clear whether or not the reissue contains Tudor's wonderful illustrations. If I find out, I will update this review accordingly.

Recommended: Yes