p 20 It was late autumn. How do dolls know when it is autumn? The same way that you do. They smell the London autumn smells of bonfires, of newly lit chimneys, of fog and leaves soaking in the wet. When they go out they see that Michaelmas daisies are out in the Park and chrysanthemums are in the flower shops and violets have come back on the the street flower-sellers' trays. The grownups talk of the first winter colds, and winter coats, and the difficulties of central heating, and the children begin to think of parties and dancing class and even Christmas.

While the tone is sometimes somewhat condescending, Godden still manages to instill enough magic into her stories that even as an adult I was emotionally moved by the story.

The Doll's House might seem at first glance to be sugary and twee: the main characters are dolls and the children who play with them. The plot is straightforward, involving the dolls' quest to live in a house house instead of a draughty shoebox. A potential reader might be forgiven for thinking the story will be as slight as something made up by, well... two five-year-olds playing with dolls.

But Rumer Godden's story is never sentimental. The Doll's House is heart-wrenching and often surprisingly bitter-sweet. There is real pathos and drama in the story, whose plot encompasses snobbery, a rivalry lasting centuries, abuse (of dolls by children), cruelty and heroic sacrifice.

Godden's dolls are individuals, each with their own personality, and each, interestingly enough, made of different materials. There's Mr. Plantaganet, whose moustache was drawn in pencil by a child and who has never entirely recovered from being thrown to the bottom of a dark cupboard and almost forgotten about. Then there's his wife Birdie, made of celluloid, who has beads rattling around inside her head and tends to lose her train of thought , but who turns out to be more than she seems. Then there's the nasty Marchpane, made of kid leather (that is to say, the skins of baby animals.)

Most memorable of all is Tottie Plantaganet, a simple wooden doll bought for a farthing, who has nevertheless existed for over a hundred years as the plaything of generations of girls. Tottie, despite literally being made of wood, is a rounded and engaging heroine, level-headed, kind and courageous. Often teased for being a mere carved piece of wood bought for a farthing, Tottie shrugs off classism and finds inner strength and pride in her ancestry:

"She thought of all the bravest things that were made of wood: the bowsprits and figureheads of ships, for instance, that have to drive into the sea and meet the waves..."

A true working woman, Tottie champions kindness and practicality over the empty beauty she finds in her nemesis Marchpane, a doll who hates to be played with. The Doll's House cries out for an adaptation by Pixar: it is the most powerful piece of toy-centred fiction I've encountered since Hans Christian Andersen's The Steadfast Tin Soldier.

I knew this mainly from the television version, only watched on broadcast when I was about ten but it was so vivid - especially THAT scene - you can’t forget it. It’s good to see the book is equally as dark - Marchpane must be one of the all time great fictional villains, malevolent and cruel and self important and utterly remorseless. Godden gives her a punishment, but is also such a good writer that Marchpane never notices this and somehow thinks she’s being given special treatment. Birdie’s fate is just one of the most devastating things in all children’s literature, all the more so because she never really understands her fate and is her usual innocent childlike self to the very end. It’s a very dark book, but necessarily so, and I think Godden is trying to teach children that caring for toys and how you play with them will, in time, reflect how you act as adults. There’s more of Godden’s love of literal world building here, but there’s a really sad side to the dolls’ internal world: ageless, powerless, seeing their owners come and go, neglected… these are strong messages for kids, and kind of unflinching. Tough to read but true testament to the sort of writer Godden was

The imagery in this book is lovely.
It's just a bit melancholy, and I don't think I would have liked it if I had read it when I was small.

Rumer Godden's Candy Floss was one of my favourite stories as a young child and I have a much cherished copy. I didn't get to read many of her other books but am catching up in late middle age. The Doll's house has a lot of charm although there is not very much action in the plot. Little Tottie, a tiny, wooden farthing doll is at the centre of the story, with her doll family - Mr Plantagenet, Birdie, Apple and Darner, a dog made from a darning needle. This happy little doll family inherit a beautiful old doll's house that Tottie lived in long ago (through their owners, Charlotte and Emily). Unfortunately a beautiful but self centred and nasty doll Marchpane, takes over the house and ruins what was once a happy and peaceful life for the Plantagenets. There is an very unexpected and rather unpleasant ending to the book that would certainly be upsetting for many children, and even I, at my age found it a little shocking. It is a sad reminder that bad things happen to good people (and dolls!). All in all, this is an old-fashioned but sweet, imaginative, easy read, with a moral to the story. However, the moral doesn't quite play out the way one might expect and this is what makes the book a bit out of the ordinary.

Girls have the mothers' instinct in their blood to nurse a doll, the instinct to create the comfortable home ambiance, be it a special doll house or a house built from all the chairs you can get and that you have to return at a dinnertime.

I liked the story, but it was a little long and emotionally unrelatable to be a perfect bedtime story. Maybe if I read it while I was at school, this would be my favorite book. Well, we'll never know.

P.S. I wonder if this book gave the plot idea for the Toy Story.

When I was young, I had an inexpensive dollhouse, metal, with furniture and features painted on its walls. It was furnished with plastic furniture. I loved to play with it. I loved dolls and I loved anything in miniature. When my children were young, my father built a beautiful, wooden dollhouse for them (and me!). We furnished it with as many accessories as we could afford.
I read The Dolls' House as a child. I read it to my children. And I have just reread it. It is an enduring story, enriched by my own experiences with dolls and dollhouses.

And the moral of this toy story is: If you're beautiful and absolutely, positively, so full of yourself, you can treat others however you want, be as thoughtless, narcissistic, selfish and rude as you want, and you will be rewarded with all you've always wished for, even if you've literally committed murder.

'The Doll's House' has a few cute and charming moments, but it's mostly about how that dollhouse is remade after decades in the loft, and how the two little girls, Emily and Charlotte, go about it all, and I got bored. There isn't really a plot to speak of; as Homer Simpson would say, "It's just a bunch of stuff that happens." I liked some of the characters, even though the dolls do come across as ungrateful and demanding of their young owners, but I especially do not like Tottie, the main doll. She is meant to be old, wise, gentle and calm, but she comes across as self-righteous, pushy, bossy and unfeeling.

The book can be read in a day, it is a very simple and fast read. But the narrative is largely condescending to its target audience; explaining what certain words mean, even words that a toddler would know, repeating established facts over and over again, actually telling the reader what to remember, what page to remember when things had happened, and what the characters are like, over and over again, and why the reader should care, etc. There is a reason why good children's authors don't do this anymore. At least I hope none of them would even think of doing it nowadays. I keep saying: Show, don't tell, and respect your audience's intelligence.

Not a pleasant and satisfying read, I'm afraid. I might have been more forgiving of its major flaws if it weren't for that ending, with its unfortunate implications. Recommended only if you're looking to read every example of classic children's literature ever. Don't expect much here.

Final Score: 0.5/5

Rumer Godden was a big part of my childhood. I was brought up on all her doll books, and loved them. I was about eight or ten when my Mom gave them to me. They fuelled my love for reading and I doubt I'd be reading as much as I do today if it weren't for them.
The Dolls' House is the first book I remember that made me cry. I've recently reread it and still think it is the most poignant and beautiful of all children's books.
And I love the protagonist, Tottie, (I even named a doll after her when I was small though she, unlike Tottie, wasn't wooden much to my child-self disappointment) she's such a strong lead and rolemodel for a children's book.
I say it's a children's book, but it can really be read by anyone at any age and still have the same effect. It's sad, which is what other reviewer's seem to hate about it. Sometimes we just need to feel the emotion sadness, even when we're young.
I found it very hard growing up and leaving my dolls and their house behind, after being brought up reading these doll books.

A lovely little book that reminded me a lot of my childhood.

For Tottie and her doll family, life is wonderful, though the family longs for a dollhouse home of their own. When the doll family does receive a dollhouse, it arrives with trouble in the form of the wicked doll Marchpane, and the difficulties begin.

This is a charming story of dolls with delightfully wide range of human-like behaviors, with their children who also exhibit a markedly wide range of behaviors. A charming story.

The Dolls' House is about a group of dolls who all come together and are owned by two little girls, Emily and Charlotte. The main doll, Tottie, was the girls' Great-Great Aunt's and had been passed down to them. The other dolls that they have were all ones that were given to them. The dolls all want a doll house to live in, so when Emily and Charlotte recieve the house from their Great-Great Aunt, the dolls are happy. The girls' want to fix up the house, but don't have enough money to get what they want. At first they were going to get paid to show off Tottie in a doll exibition, but changed their minds and decided to lend her to the exibition. When Tottie is there, she sees the old doll that she used to live with back when she was owned by the Great-Great Aunt, Marchpane. Somebody figures out that Marchpane belonged to the same old house that Tottie did, so she is sent to live with Emily and Charlotte. When Marchpane gets to the house, she takes over and bosses all of the other dolls around. Emily starts to like her more than the other dolls, and eventually forgets about them. Soon after, Emily and Charlotte get a bad feeling about Marchpane, and send her off to a museum to live.
This story follows the standards such as plot, setting, characterization, and point of view. The plot is easily understood and has a clear beggining, middle, and end. The setting is described multiple times as it changes. The doll house it described, the exibition is described and the shoe boxes that some of the dols had to live in were described. The characters would all described well and were given their own personality. The theme is compelling to the "real world" as well as the fantasy world because children can relate to getting new toys and pushing old ones away and then realizing how much they missed their old toys. The elements that make the story a fantasy are convincing. Many children probably think that their dolls have their own little world and that when they aren't looking they do whatever they want. I think that this conceot is not too far fetched and that children can relate to it. The author does maintain a sense of logic with the created world. Everything that would happen in regular life does in Emily and Charlotte's lives. There is nothing out of the ordinary that happens that wouldn't make sense.
I enjoyed reading this book, although it did take me awhile to actually get into it. The beginning is a little slow but once the plot starts to deepen it is a good book to read. I think that the way the author portrayed the girls at the end was consistent of how children act in real life. When they get a new toy, they push the other ones off to the side and put all of their time and attention into the new toy. In the classroom, I would use this book to teach children that every toy or doll they have is special and that just because you get something new, does not mean that you have to forget about your other toys. I could relate this to friends as well and tell them that even if they make new friends, they shouldn't forget about the ones that they had before and should always remember them.