I realise and also do much appreciate that Rumer Godden's The Dolls' House is considered a classic and seems much loved by many. And on an entirely and emotionlessly intellectual level, especially considering that the book was published in 1947 and thus very soon after the end of WWII, the narrative emphasis presented by the author on mortality, on making do with what one has, even on mending and being of an accepting if not actually forgiving spirit, does strongly and realistically reflect its time and place (and that the latter, especially considering the horrors of WWII, is also very much laudable and heartening).

But all that being said and on a personal and yes emotional level, I do in fact feel somewhat uncomfortable with the fact that while the two little girls who are the owners of the dolls, while Charlotte and Emily Dane, clearly much love them and try to provide their cherished toys with the best kind of domicile they (and by extension their family) can at this time manage and afford (even if this consists of plain shoe cartons), the dolls (Tottie and the others) not only clearly and understandingly long for and desire a real dolls' house, they also (at least to and for me) almost seem actively unhappy with Emily and Charlotte and even at times resentful of them and the fact that they have only managed to provide them with shoe cartons as living quarters (there is a distinct and rather sadly palpable feeling emanating from the printed words, from the text of The Dolls' House that the dolls, and that especially Tottie and Mr. Plantaganet are more than a bit angry at and frustrated with Emily and Charlotte and that their love for the two is somewhat tempered by the lack of a dolls' house and even potentially reliant on the procuration of the same).

Now while I do appreciate that Tottie, Birdie and the other dolls manage to obtain their cherished dollhouse (and also have indeed much enjoyed reading both about how Charlotte and Emily actively proceed trying to earn the necessary funds to refurbish, to renovate the dollhouse they have inherited and about Tottie's sojourn at the exhibition and that Mrs. Innisfree keeps her safe and even tells the Queen of England that Tottie is not for sale), the constant griping of especially Apple and Mr. Plantaganet when it turns out that the inherited dollhouse is dusty, rundown with age and desperately needs to be refurbished, the advent of Marchpane, and especially the ending (and what happens to poor Birdie), all this really does make me rather cringe a bit. And with the ending, it is not so much Birdie's tragic fate that I find hard to accept and stomach (although I was close to tears), but more that there are no real and potentially uncomfortable consequences for Marchpane (for the villain and main antagonist), and that this actually seems to be not only acceptable but even desired as an outcome.

For why should Marchpane's only consequence be that she is donated to a museum (considering that it was she who endangered Apple and caused Birdie to sacrifice herself for him), and especially since being sent to a museum is precisely what would make Marchpane happy, would be something that she would very much desire and enjoy? Now I am perhaps overreacting with too much personal nastiness and anger here, but I do know that I would not likely even be able to consider being in any way as forgiving and perhaps yes, as reasonable, as Emily and Charlotte show themselves to be (and by extension Tottie whose idea it actually seems to have been to donate Marchpane to a museum, and who then transferred that idea to Charlotte and Emily). And thus, I do (perhaps a bit guiltily) have to admit that I definitely would prefer Marchpane to have been tossed into the rubbish by Charlotte and Emily and I do actually find it a trifle disappointing that this did not occur, that she is not taken and thrown out or thrown into the fire (as Emily originally said she wanted to), that she basically ends up getting exactly what she wants, being an admired and often sketched attraction at a local museum (although I guess it is indeed and definitely a positive that Marchpane is no longer a presence in the dollhouse and thus no longer a threat to the remaining dolls, to Mr. Plantaganet, Tottie, Apple and of course, Darner the darning needle dog).

The angry part of myself therefore does indeed and continues to chafe more than a bit at the ending of The Dolls' House and that Marchpane really does not in any way have to face serious or problematic repercussions, that she basically attains and obtains what she desires, admiration and fame (and while if I think about the ending of The Dolls' House without emotion and with intellectual logic, perhaps this is actually both a suitable and even the right type of an outcome, with the remaining dolls now safe from Marchpane's machinations and jealousy and Marchpane, while indeed well out of the way, also safe, sound and I guess happy), emotionally, I will always consider the fact that the main villain, that the main instigator of the fire tragedy, really does majorly get off with absolutely no serious consequences whatsoever (and receives basically even somewhat of a reward, in my opinion) very much grating, saddening and frustratingly aggravating (two and a half stars, rounded up to a very low three star ranking, as I do appreciate the fact that Rumer Godden's The Dolls' House is a classic and that many of the underlying messages are laudable, positive, even if on an personal level, I really do oh so very adamantly despise the ending).

A gentle children's story from prolific author, Rumer Godden. First published in 1947 it has been adapted for children's television. It concerns the plight of a family of a dolls who live in a state of anxiety about their fate, at the mercy of the whims of their human owners. The doll family lives in shoe boxes until they are discovered and played with by two young sisters. They dream of a home of their own, a dolls' house, where they can live together in comfort. Their dreams appear to come true when a grand house that once belonged to the girls; great-grandmother is discovered and with the help of a family friend is restored. The new idyll is threatened however, when a much more valuable china doll, Marchpane, comes along and appears to take over the house, treating the doll family like her servants. The dolls in this book have been compared to children, with little agency. As such it is a powerful read for younger children who will identify with the challenges the dolls face.

I have decided to do a series of posts on books I enjoyed as a child, timeless classics I enjoyed time and time again. I want to share these with others so that hopefully they can find the magic that I did in these stories.

When I was young, a book I kept coming back to was The Dolls' House, by Rumer Godden. I think my dad originally read it to me, but I remember reading it to myself time and time again. It is a wonderful book, because there are many books where children's toys come alive, but not many where you come to feel so much for the characters, to feel like they are real people, and to remember them like you remember old friends, always glad to come back to them. This is the way I feel about this book. I only wish I still had it so I could read it again, but I think it's been passed on to some other children. I hope all it's future owners enjoy it as much as I did.

The Doll's House is the story of a family of dolls who lack a house. Tottie, Mr Plantaganet, Birdie, Apple, and the dog, Darner, live in a shoebox, and are the beloved toys of two little girls called Emily and Charlotte. Tottie is a hundred years old or so (I can't remember exactly) and belonged to the girl's great-great aunt, and she remembers the doll house she once lived in. One day, the doll house is discovered in an attic and is sent to the girls. They and the dolls love it and clean it and make it habitable, they move in, and everything seems perfect. Then comes Marchpane. She used to live in the house along with Tottie and she is beautiful, very expensive and very evil. She begins to turn their joy into misery.

The story really draws you in, and you feel the doll's joy and pain. I liked how it was written so that the younger girl, Charlotte, still senses what the dolls want and like with that kind of intuition to the thoughts of toys and animals that children often have in books, while Emily, who is growing older, is losing touch with what the dolls feel, and is won over by the beautiful and scheming Marchpane, who uses Emily to help her take over the dollhouse.

The ending is a little sad, but I think that this is a wonderfully imaginative book and a true classic for kids to read!

Review from my blog, http://rosesandvellum.blogspot.com/

I have a thing for living dolls. I guess it's the combination of allegory and childlike whimsy that appeals to me.

This story perfectly captures the joy of dollhouses as well as the essence of childhood. I remember how my dolls had personalities that I hadn't consciously created. I just sort of sensed them. Godden taps into that sense in the most delightful way! --But it's not all whimsy and roses. There's a touch of melancholy to the narrative as well. There's so much to this little book! It works on many levels. It resonates at any age.

And I adore Tottie. She's like the doll version of Dorothea Brooke.

Now, if I can just find The Great Gatsby with dolls...

She liked to think sometimes of the tree of whose wood she was made, of its strength and the sap that ran through it and made it bud and put out leaves every spring and summer, that kept it standing through the winter storms and winds. "A little, a very little, of that tree is in me," said Tottie. "I am a little of that tree."

I used to love this book when I was younger, and yet every time it came into my head (as it tends to do - it sticks with you) I was seized by an inexplicable dread. I remembered it being a far darker and more powerful book than its outward appearance would suggest.

So, naturally, when I finally found it boxed away in my old bedroom, I was keen to re-read it. I expected to like it, because of the strong nostalgia attached to it, but I also expected it not to be as good as I remembered, because that tends to happen when you revisit things you loved as a child. I was wrong. If anything, it's better than I remembered.

Tottie is a beautiful, melancholy little book. It is nowhere near as sweet and harmless as the blurb and the simple writing style suggests: the language is simplistic, but there's some starkly lovely prose, and it does not hold back when it comes to just how much it would really suck to be a doll:

Dolls are hurt and abused and lost; and when this happens dolls cannot speak, nor do anything except be hurt and abused and lost.

The darker elements build throughout the story, up to the final sequence, which is altogether as tense as any thriller, heartbreakingly sad, and still a punch in the gut, no matter how many times I read it. It's a brilliant children's book: perhaps this is the nostalgia talking, but it's a brilliant book, full stop.

I was never the sort of child who played with dolls, other than dressing up my Barbies for covert intelligence missions. But I was obsessed with dollhouses. We used to get the J.C. Penney catalog every year, and every year I would look at the different houses and all the tiny furniture and accessories and imagine owning them. I never did get one, but then I think the fantasy was better than the reality.

Which is why The Doll's House has always been a comforting favorite of mine. My favorite part is not reading about the dolls, but how the girls and their mother cleaned up the 100-year-old dollhouse, refurnishing it and washing the carpets and so forth. I love the woman who stitches petit-point for the cushions of the sofa and chair. That such things can be loved and kept safe for so long just fascinates me.

Of course, this is Rumer Godden, so the story and characters are beautiful as well--simple, maybe too simple, and I think modern readers may feel talked down to, but it's that simplicity that makes the story work. I love the mismatched nature of the dolls that fits so perfectly with how actual children's toys look (something the movie Toy Story captured as well). Tottie's assertion that she's not lesser because she isn't made of porcelain or kid, that great and strong things are made of wood, is a strong theme that makes the ending stronger: It's Birdie, made of celluloid and the most fragile of the dolls, who has the strength to make the final sacrifice, proving that impermanent materials have a strength of their own. I bought this on a recent book-buying binge and was so glad to have the chance to revisit an old friend.

Waiting to rate and review until I chat with my buddy reader!

Reread in a collection. I don't remember much about the first read; I think because it's such an unsatisfactory story. The dolls are materialistic and not appreciative of the children; the villain gets no punishment, and the sweetest doll dies. I suppose it's all very metaphoric and all; Godden is a [L]iterary writer, after all, but it just sits wrong in my heart. And doll house stories should be about joy, not weighty worldly affairs.

This is my first experience of reading Rumer Godden and it's a book very much set in its time with one, slightly surprising element which is a scene of death and loss in a book that I would argue is for quite young children. Although the death is that of a doll, this would not detract from the impact as the story itself revolves around the life of a small family of dolls who are owned and loved by two young sisters. This whole moment came as a shock to me and it was better for it.
Although you could argue that a story written shortly after the second world war about a family of dolls who are looked after by two girls is a little dated and twee, there is something powerful going on here with characterisation. Each doll is very much its own character: Mr Plantagenet ( nervous and with poor self esteem having been cared poorly by previous owners), Birdie(a little ditsy yet whose care for the family shows itself to be unparalleled), Apple (a little, adventurous boy who can be fickle at times), Tottie (the main character - small yet strong and caring and Marchpane (incredibly self-centred and vain). And because of this, I would argue that it's a fine story about humanity and what it is that makes us who we are.


Oliver Postgate adaptation

What a beautiful story! This novel was written for children and is full of sophisticated thinking and observation. Godden places sharp detail without over-talking the plot. A keeper.

I liked it but felt it was too violent to love.

Got a minute?

Once upon a time I fell in love with a book at a babysitter’s house. I was a precocious reader pre-k, and found my treasure in a stranger’s back room. The book had no covers and not even the first and last chapters. All that remained of it were the middle bits, torn up and smudged, but that was enough: I loved it. Every time I went to sitter's house, I was shushed off to that corner, where the kids who'd grown and gone piled cast offs for kidlets like me. . . I loved that book.

Families move, and following work, my family left So Cal and I never saw that babysitter or book again. Didn't even know the name of it. All I knew was that it was peopled by dolls who came to life when people weren't around, and they were a diverse group of dolls, not just all the same. I knew there was a wooden doll and a china doll, a family and moving in and out of a home was part of the story. We were a family whose only affordable entertainment was going to the library once a week . . . .and over the years I looked. I quizzed librarians as a 10-year-old, a 17-year-old, in my 20's with babies bouncing off hips, in my 30's with my own brood at libraries. I volunteered at local libraries and took the opportunity to delve deeply in the research that was available. Nothing. Shaking heads all around. Years march on, the internet showed up and still I had not a clue, but tried googling, and nothing came up with results I recognized.

In February I joined a FB reading group, and the thought occurred to me that here was a real pool of readers. I just threw it out there. Lo and behold, after crickets for a few days, a wonderful woman piped up and pointed me at Rumer Godden's The Doll's House. . . turns out it wasn’t easy to find a physical copy – but I finally did through abebooks.com. The copy I received in the mail happened to be inscribed by Ada Comstock, the first president of Radcliffe, a fierce proponent of women's education, a very nice bonus.

I read it slowly – wanting to ensure this was the Very Book. Remember: All I ever had read was the middle of the book – no beginning and no end. My final test: I knew this was the first written work where I’d ever seen the word “butler” in a text. (A butler is painted on the wall in the doll house – the dolls discuss how it is an unsuccessful attempt at making a doll, but worthy of respect nonetheless.) I didn’t know what that word meant, nor once I learned it was the title of a person, had no context for the job, being a kid in limited circumstances. I took the book to a grown-up, who explained what a butler was (it was a hard sell for me, and so stuck out in my mind). I read with anticipation – would I find the word “butler”???. . . every page turned crested disappointment and up-floated hope. When I came upon it, I will admit, I wept. This was The Book, The Very One. (NOTE: my grandson caught me in this condition and had to have the entire story before we could move on to other activities.)

There are two little girls in the story, Charlotte and Emily, who have a collection of dolls, some of which are inherited from a great-great-grandma. The most important doll is the oldest, a wooden doll originally sold for a farthing, named Tottie. Tottie is hundreds of years old having been passed down, and since she is wood, is sturdy and steadfast. She thinks often of the tree from which she came, and believes that by wishing, wishing very hard, one can fix most ills and bend fate, a little. There is a china doll, Marchpane, who thinks she is all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips; and mid-way through the story an actual dolls’ house is found in a family attic and is from whence the name of the book derives. There are other dolls: Mr. Plantagenet, who is heavy-headed and has a missing foot and is thoughtful and usually worried; Birdie, his wife, is a plastic doll from a cracker box, and is perpetually on the sunny side and just a little drifty; Apple, their “son” is a round little homemade wool creation who rolls everywhere getting in trouble and under furniture; lastly, Darner is their dog, made from scraps and who has a darning needle for his back bone and tail (a surprising choice for a child’s toy). The story is sweet and fulsome, has happy moments and tragedy, all about the rightness of pulling together as a family when the members of that family don’t exactly match, and allowing everyone to be who they are and do what they will. It’s about loving and remembering the happy bright spots of life, and moving on through the darker shadows that come – allowing the bright memories to illuminate and dispel sad times that surely come to all.

***
I love these quotes:

Charlotte says, “I have been thinking of thinking. And there is no knowing where it leads to, or when it will end, or where.”

A conversation between Mr. Plantagenet and Tottie:

“Do you remember them, Tottie?”
“I remember everything,” said Tottie, listening to the music.
“Yes, I suppose you must, and for so long,” said Mr. Plantagenet. “Such a long time, Tottie.”
“Yes,” said Tottie.
“Things come and things pass,” said Mr. Plantagenet.
“Everything, from trees to dolls,” said Tottie.

***
Reunited at last. Thanks for listening. Keep on reading, everyone!