The Doll's House

“How much more exciting than peering through the slit of a door into a mean little hall with a hatstand and two umbrellas! That is—isn’t it?—what you long to know about a house when you put your hand on the knocker. Perhaps it is the way God opens houses at the dead of night when He is taking a quiet turn with an angel…”

This instance of free indirect discourse allows Mansfield to escort the reader from the mind of a child and into an adult consciousness. This jolting aside disrupts the text and highlights the power of children, showing that their imagination allows them to access previously impermeable hierarchies of space.

“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 at Kezia, to say, ‘I live here.’ The lamp was real.”

Mansfield toys with anthropomorphism, occasionally breathing life into inanimate objects. The lamp gains symbolic power as it “seemed to smile,” illustrating why Kezia becomes so infatuated with this part of the house that looks more “at home” than the actual dolls.

“For it had been arranged that while the doll's house stood in the courtyard they might ask the girls at school, two at a time, to come and look. Not to stay to tea, of course, or to come traipsing through the house. But just to stand quietly in the courtyard while Isabel pointed out the beauties, and Lottie and Kezia looked pleased…”

Mansfield’s diction alternates between words that a child would choose and words that an adult would choose. Mrs. Burnell and Aunt Beryl would tell the girls not to allow friends to “come traipsing through the house.” Isabel points out “the beauties” of the doll’s house, lending ambiguity to the text; does this describe the beautiful features of the house, or is Isabel more interested in how the doll’s house illuminates the appearances of herself and her sisters?

“Even the teacher had a special voice for them, and a special smile for the other children when Lil Kelvey came up to her desk with a bunch of dreadfully common-looking flowers.”

Through the use of repetition, Mansfield highlights the teacher’s condescending attitude towards the Kelveys. The word “special” holds two different meanings in the same sentence, demonstrating that within this classroom, “separate but equal” social statuses are not achievable.

“Lil, for instance, who was a stout, plain child, with big freckles, came to school in a dress made from a green art-serge table-cloth of the Burnells’, with red plush sleeves from the Logans’ curtains. Her hat, perched on top of her high forehead, was a grown-up woman's hat, once the property of Miss Lecky, the postmistress. It was turned up at the back and trimmed with a large scarlet quill. What a little guy she looked! It was impossible not to laugh. And her little sister, our Else, wore a long white dress, rather like a nightgown, and a pair of little boy’s boots. But whatever our Else wore she would have looked strange. She was a tiny wishbone of a child, with cropped hair and enormous solemn eyes—a little white owl. Nobody had ever seen her smile; she scarcely ever spoke. She went through life holding on to Lil, with a piece of Lil's skirt screwed up in her hand. Where Lil went, our Else followed.”

This vivid imagery repeats several of the color description words from the doll’s house, throwing them into relief against Lil’s and Else’s impoverished appearances. Red plush is luxurious in a doll’s house but elicits pity when it is the material of a child’s hand-me-down outfit. This description of the Kelvey sisters evokes pathos and demonstrates how small, pathetic, and animalistic they appear to their peers.

“The little girls sat under the pines eating their thick mutton sandwiches and big slabs of johnny cake spread with butter. While always, as near as they could get, sat the Kelveys, our Else holding on to Lil, listening too, while they chewed their jam sandwiches out of a newspaper soaked with large red blobs.”

The juxtaposition of the imagery of the girls’ lunches reinforces the differences between the Kelveys and their classmates. The middle-and-upper-class girls eat higher-quality food than Lil and Else, and the undesirability of the Kelveys’ lunches is further underscored by the unappetizing description of “newspaper soaked with […] blobs.”

“Emmie swallowed in a very meaning way and nodded to Isabel as she'd seen her mother do on those occasions.”

Within the text, The Politics of Children are varied and complicated. The girls look to their social hierarchy-enforcing mothers as examples and replicate behaviors that they believe are acceptable and necessary.

“This was such a marvellous thing to have said that the little girls rushed away in a body, deeply, deeply excited, wild with joy. Someone found a long rope, and they began skipping. And never did they skip so high, run in and out so fast, or do such daring things as on that morning.”

Mansfield uses asyndeton—omitting conjunctions between actions like “skip so high” and “run in and out so fast”—to demonstrate the rush of emotions and actions felt and performed by the teasing classmates. Because the clauses are not separated by a conjunction, the actions run together, creating a sense of energy and excitement through syntax.

“Dead silence. But instead of answering, Lil only gave her silly, shamefaced smile. She didn’t seem to mind the question at all. What a sell for Lena! The girls began to titter.”

The interjection “What a sell for Lena!” emphasizes that even an omniscient narrator appears to sympathize more with the mean girls than with the pitiable Kelveys. Rather than examining this painful incident through Lil’s interiority, the narrator considers how this appears as a triumphant moment.

“Isabel and Lottie, who liked visitors, went upstairs to change their pinafores. But Kezia thieved out at the back. Nobody was about; she began to swing on the big white gates of the courtyard. Presently, looking along the road, she saw two little dots. They grew bigger, they were coming towards her. Now she could see that one was in front and one close behind. Now she could see that they were the Kelveys. Kezia stopped swinging. She slipped off the gate as if she was going to run away. Then she hesitated. The Kelveys came nearer, and beside them walked their shadows, very long, stretching right across the road with their heads in the buttercups. Kezia clambered back on the gate; she had made up her mind; she swung out.”

Syntax and sentence length reinforce the tension of the moment. Kezia moves in short bursts of action. Unlike her sisters, she prefers outside to inside; swinging on the gate indicates her uncertainty about the moral guidelines indicated by her mother and Aunt Beryl.

“Suddenly there was a twitch, a tug at Lil's skirt. She turned round. Our Else was looking at her with big, imploring eyes; she was frowning; she wanted to go. For a moment Lil looked at our Else very doubtfully. But then our Else twitched her skirt again. She started forward. Kezia led the way. Like two little stray cats they followed across the courtyard to where the doll's house stood.”

The Kelvey sisters are frequently compared to animals. Here, the simile “like two little stray cats” reinforces their sense of placelessness and helplessness. The sisters’ inseparability demonstrates that they are ostracized by everyone else; Kezia’s kindness is unusual but welcome.

“They did not need telling twice. Burning with shame, shrinking together, Lil huddling along like her mother, our Else dazed, somehow they crossed the big courtyard and squeezed through the white gate.”

Mansfield uses asyndeton to demonstrate the stress of Aunt Beryl’s condemnation. The incident feels fast-paced and nerve-racking. The girls’ desire to flee as quickly as possible is made evident through grammar and syntax.

“The afternoon had been awful. A letter had come from Willie Brent, a terrifying, threatening letter, saying if she did not meet him that evening in Pulman's Bush, he'd come to the front door and ask the reason why! But now that she had frightened those little rats of Kelveys and given Kezia a good scolding, her heart felt lighter. That ghastly pressure was gone. She went back to the house humming.”

This instance of free indirect discourse causes discomfort within the text, as the narration abruptly shifts from a third-person perspective to third-person limited omniscient, focusing on Beryl’s consciousness. Beryl’s cruelty toward the girls is underscored by the shocking realization that she torments children in order to escape her adult problems.