A Doll's House

“ Did turn to a Doll’s House, fair and true;
I saw with my eyes where the same did sit,
And there was a rainbow over it.
The people inside were setting the platters,
The chairs and tables, and suchlike matters,
And making the beds and getting the tea:
But through a bow-window I saw the sea.
Up came a damsel: “Sir,” she said,
“Will you walk with me by my garden bed?
Will you sit in my parlour by-and-by?”
“I will sit in your parlour, my dear,” said I.
“Will you hear my starling gossip?” ”

“ Why, the whole aim of a house is to be a doll's house. Don't you remember, when you were a child, how those little windows were windows, while the big windows weren't. A child has a doll's house, and shrieks when a front door opens inwards. ”

“ All the aspirations of the many, all the heartless prejudice of the few, are concentrated in a toy lamp in one of the little rooms of a doll’s house. It might easily be sentimental, and very likely ridiculous, if it were not for the implacable aloofness of her art. ”

“ Reproduction of home surroundings can be done in many ways, one of which is to help the children to furnish and to play with a doll's house. But the play must be play. It is not enough to use the drama as merely offering suggestions for handwork, and one small doll's house does not allow of real play for more than one or two children. ”

“ The old, with its tinsel, its hypocrisy, its hollowness, its lying propriety, and its pitiful cowardice, shall lie behind us like a museum, open for instruction."
With A Doll's House Ibsen has paved the way for woman's emancipation. Nora awakens from her doll's role to the realization of the injustice done her by her father and her husband, Helmer Torvald. ”

“ For representations of real life the children require dolls and the simplest of furniture—a bed, which need only be a box, some means of carrying out the doll's washing, her personal requirements as well as her clothes; some little tea-things and pots and pans. A doll's house is not necessary, and can only be used by two or three children, but will be welcomed if provided, and its appointments give practice in dainty handling. ”

“ The most vociferous of the "unquiet sex" have been regarding respectfully the sudden transformation of the plain, unromantic man who went patiently to business every morning in a cable car, and sat on a stool at a desk, or weighed tea, or measured ribbon, into a hero ready to face violent annihilations before which even her imagination recoils. The grim realisms of life and death have made the realism of such erstwhile burning dramas as The Doll House shrink into the triviality of a drama fit only for wooden puppets. ”

“ The father and mother dolls, who sprawled very stiff as though they had fainted in the drawing-room, and their two little children asleep upstairs, were really too big for the doll's house. They didn't look as though they belonged. But the lamp was perfect. It seemed to smile to Kezia, to say, "I live here." The lamp was real.
The Burnell children could hardly walk to school fast enough the next morning. They burned to tell everybody, to describe, to-well-to boast about their doll's house before the school-bell rang.
"I'm to tell," said Isabel, "because I'm the eldest. ”

“ Fig. 423.—First pasteboard box for doll house.
COUNTRY houses are very attractive, even the toy ones possess a certain charm. Here is a great, big, beautiful, country doll house for the doll people to live in. It has window shutters to open and close, doors that will open and shut, and the doors have little door knobs like real ones. Each room has a different, colored frieze around the walls, and the floor of the living-room is covered with a handsome rug. ”

“ She rushed to the window and saw, drawing up in front, two omnibuses, one filled with the various mothers, the other with the little girls and their dollies. But what was this procession which followed?
“Oh, mamma! it’s all the dolls from the doll-house, and each has on a tiny [85] gossamer. How funny they look!” And so they did, each carrying an umbrella and paddling through the water. Mamma, Janie and Dollie followed them, and all jumped in the omnibuses, closed the doors with a bang, and away they went. ”

“ The man who, like Helmar in Ibsen's Doll's House, wants in a wife only a lark to sing for him, a doll in soft and silken gown to dress up his home with, will still frown on the higher education for women. ”

“ I thought I would write to you and ask you if you would come and live in my doll house. I have a nice doll house and it would make a very nice place for you to live in. I will cook good things for you to eat. You can play with my toys and I have a little toy horse that the Dunce can ride on.
“You can have a pan of water to swim in. I will make beautiful clothes for the Lady of Fashion. I will make cookies for you, and I will make candy too. ”

“ In a dolls’ house it is sometimes awkward to have a doll or a piece of furniture that takes up nearly the whole of a room, and even in good ones it does not often happen that the rooms are big enough to accommodate many dolls, or more than a few pieces of furniture. But there was quite a lot of furniture in the rooms of Wooden’s house, and although they were all square, and of the same size, which gave them a certain [Pg 170] lack of variety, they would comfortably hold quite a large number of dolls. ”

“ Of the ready-made toys, toy furniture for the house, the sand pile for outdoors and the doll for both are most useful. “The doll,” as Sully tells us, “takes a supreme place in this fancy realm of play. The doll is an all-important comrade in that solitude à deux, of which the child, like the adult, is so fond.” The complete adaptability of the doll makes it an ideal means for the puppet play of idealism. “A good, efficient, able-bodied doll, like the American girl’s,” says Joseph Lee, “is at home in any situation in life, from princess to kitchen maid, to which she may be called. ”

“ By the light of the pink candle, Jimsi tore open the wee envelope and read:
“Dearest Little Girl:
When I came to perch on my shelf last night, I saw the lovely dolls you made and the wonderfully beautiful dresses and hats and cloaks and muffs and evening wraps and things. When you have finished the family, I’ll tell you something nice: make a doll house for them. I can tell you how to make furniture to fit your dolls. You’ll find ever so many things for the furnishing of a doll house right in your Magic Book. ”

“ I am personally acquainted with several dolls in her family. I go to parties in her dolls' house sometimes when she is fast asleep at night, and they all speak very highly of her. She is most attentive to them when they are ill. In fact, her pet doll is a cripple, with a stiff leg. ”

“ The best results with the doll's house are obtained if the children are allowed to furnish it themselves, with the teacher's advice and help, rather than to find it completely equipped and therefore merely a "plaything" of the sort that children have less use for because they can do little with it. An empty house presents exciting possibilities, and perhaps for the first time these little girls look with seeing eyes at the home furnishings, for they have wall paper to select, curtains and rugs to make, and indeed no end of things to do. ”

“ Hang the pictures to the picture molding with thread.
A Cosey-corner may be fitted up in the ball-room by fastening a strip of a cigar-box in one corner an inch and one-half above the floor for the seat, and hanging draperies on each side of it. Pillows may be made for it out of scraps of silk stuffed with cotton.
A doll-house properly proportioned in every detail, including the selection of its furniture, is pleasing to look at, and is to be desired much more than some of the specimens to be found in the stores. ”

“ The dolls are small bleached bones or bits of peeled pawpaw sticks, dressed in blouses made from a worn out sleeve of grandpa’s red undershirt and skirts from scraps of worn and faded calico. She has never seen a doll house, never a real doll, only pictures. ”

“ I have a little bed, with white curtains and nice blankets and sheets, in which my mamma lays me every night, after undressing me and putting on my night-gown and night-cap; and in the morning she makes believe to wash me all over, and brushes my hair, and dresses me. When I go out I have a bonnet and cloak put on, and I am always dressed for dinner, and have my hair done. I have also had the happiness to become acquainted with another doll, who lives in a country-house near ours. ”

“ THE little girl that the doll's house belonged to said: "I will get a doll dressed like a policeman!"
BUT the nurse said: "I will set a mouse-trap!"
SO that is the story of the two Bad Mice. But they were not so very, very naughty after all, because Tom Thumb paid for everything he broke. ”

“ When the house is done, it is big enough for two or three children to go into to play with the doll. One readily sees that it has taken a great deal of hard thinking and experimenting to make a house that would really stand up and serve such uses. ”

“ Any little girl who is looking for a home for a family of paper dolls will find a book the very best kind of a house for them. And then such fun as it will be to furnish it! First comes the house hunting. A large new blank book with unruled pages would be best of all, and that is what we want if we can get it, but of course all doll families cannot live in such luxury. An old account book with most of its pages unused will make an excellent house. ”

“ I want to be something so much worthier than the doll in the doll’s house.’
‘My darling, are you not?’
‘Not half, not a quarter, so much worthier as I hope you may some day find me! ”

“ He used to call me his doll-child, and played with me as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house——
Helmer. What an expression to use about our marriage!
144Nora. [Undisturbed.] I mean I passed from father’s hands into yours. You arranged everything according to your taste; and I got the same tastes as you; or I pretended to—I don’t know which—both ways, perhaps; sometimes one and sometimes the other. When I look back on it now, I seem to have been living here like a beggar, from hand to mouth. I lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald. ”

“ Poor little dolls! I wonder do they take themselves seriously, not knowing the springs that stir their sawdust bosoms are but clockwork, not seeing the wires to which they dance? Poor little marionettes! do they talk together, I wonder, when the lights of the booth are out?
You, little sister doll, were the heroine. You lived in the white-washed cottage, all honeysuckle and clematis without—earwiggy and damp within, maybe. How pretty you always looked in your simple, neatly-fitting print dress. How good you were! How nobly you bore your poverty. ”

“ The closet was filled with beautiful little dresses. A shoe box held various [71] colored shoes and slippers, also bed slippers and a dear little pair of rubbers. On the dresser was everything any young lady could desire. It was charmingly arranged with a lace cover over blue, and a dainty pin cushion, silver comb, brush and manicure set.
In one corner stood a book case, filled with books of the tiniest sort. A long window led out into a balcony; here was stretched a doll’s hammock, where one could swing and pick flowers without moving, for the roses twined in and out. ”

“ On the stall are baby dolls with bodies made of grey cardboard, smiling after the manner of idols, monstrous and serene as they. Little six-penny dolls, dressed like servant girls, stretch out their arms, little stumpy arms so flimsy that the least breath of air sets them a-tremble. But the little maid whose hair is made of liquid light, has no eyes for these dolls and puppets. Her whole soul hangs upon the lips of a beautiful baby doll that seems to be calling her his mummy. He is hitched on to one of the poles of the booth all by himself. He dominates, he effaces everything else. ”

“ No; such I have only contemplated from a respectful distance as I lay on my stall in the bazaar, while they towered sublime in the midst of the toys, the wonder and admiration of every passing child. I am not even one of those less magnificent, but still dignified, leathern-skinned individuals, requiring clothes to take off and put on, and a cradle to sleep in, with sheets, blankets, and every thing complete. Neither can I found my claim to notice upon any thing odd or unusual in my appearance: I am not a negro doll, with wide mouth and woolly hair ”

“ The first impression as one entered the great hall was that not only all the dolls in Buffalo, but in all the towns in the vicinity, had accepted the invitation to be present. There were dolls everywhere. They hung from the balcony, and clung to the fronts of the boxes; they clustered in pyramids against the walls, and crowded the boughs of huge Christmas trees; they stood on tables, and filled the evergreen arches; and each one seemed to be doing her "sawdust best" to make this the finest doll show ever given.
A more democratic gathering of dolls could hardly be imagined. ”

“ Half-an-hour afterwards, however, as she stood alone in the drawing-room, ready dressed for her drive, the gravity had returned as she looked down on the quaint monstrosity spread out on the table, where on the evening before the rose-shaded lamp had been. It was ridiculous, certainly, but beneath that there was something else. What was it? What had the old man said: "A doll is always a doll...." He had said that and something more: "As the child is always a child to the man and the woman." ”

“ My principal intention, or rather aim, in writing this little Book, was to amuse Children by a story founded on one of their favorite diversions, and to inculcate a few such minor morals as my little plot might be strong enough to carry; chiefly the domestic happiness produced by kind tempers and consideration for others. And further, I wished to say a word in favor of that good old-fashioned plaything, the Doll, which one now sometimes hears decried by sensible people who have no children of their own. ”