WOMEN AND DOLLS
The love of little girls for their dolls is a very serious love; it
absolutely amounts to maternal tenderness. I have watched little girls
nurse their dolls, and detected in their eyes that almost divine glance
that you can see in devoted mothers tending their little children. For
that matter a little girl is only a woman in miniature. A young boy has
none, or very few, of the characteristics of a man; but a young girl
has, at ten years of age, all the characteristics of a woman.
I have known little girls of ten and twelve who were perfect flirts,
little coquettes, careful housekeepers, and, toward their dolls, most
devoted mothers. I remember one who sternly refused to accompany us to a
most tempting party, because her doll had a cold and she felt she must
stay at home to nurse it. She was absolutely serious over it, and found
even great delight in remaining at home all the time by the bedside of
her doll. I remember another who had spent the whole morning cleaning
her doll's house from top to bottom. When it was all over she drew a
great sigh of relief. 'At last,' she said, 'the house is clean; that's
comfort, anyway.' A good, dutiful, bourgeois housewife would not have
expressed herself otherwise. Have you not, some of you, even seen little
girls give medicines to their dolls, rock them to sleep, put them to
bed, tuck them in most carefully, and see that the bedclothes did not
choke them and cause them to have nightmares? I have, many times.
A man very often shows inclinations, tastes, and all sorts of
characteristic traits which his parents never discovered in him when he
was a young boy; but a woman of thirty is what she was when she was ten,
only a little more so. A bad boy may become a very good man, and I have
known very good boys become very bad men; but a caressing, loving little
girl will surely make a loving wife and a tender mother; a cold and
uncaressing little girl will become a heartless woman, an indifferent
wife and mother. A boy is a boy! a little girl is a little woman.
This is so true that women, many women at all events, who treated their
dolls as if they were children, treat their children as if they were
dolls. It is the survival of the little girl in the woman. I have known
women allow the hair of their boys to fall down their backs in long
curls because they looked prettier and more like dolls, although they
must have known that the sap of their young bodies was feeding hair at
the expense of other far more important parts of their anatomy. When you
see a woman most attentive to her baby, insisting on washing it,
dressing it herself, you say: 'She is a most dutiful mother; she would
trust no one but herself to attend her little child.' But it is not only
the satisfaction of a duty performed that makes that woman look so
happy, it is also the pleasure she derives from it. And the odds are ten
to one that this very woman will play at doll with her child a great
deal too long, and that the day on which she will be compelled to allow
the child to have some liberty and become independent of her, she will
resent it.
There is not, I believe, a single elderly woman that does not prefer the
child of her daughter to her daughter herself, who has become now an
unmanageable doll who dresses and undresses without the help of anybody.
And if this daughter does not allow her mother to do with the grandchild
just as she likes, there will be trouble, caused by jealousy. There will
be two women now to play at dolls. Why does a grandmother indulge a
young child, give it sweets and candies? Is it to give that child a good
digestion? No; it is to play at dolls. Do they dress little girls like
the 'principal boys' of pantomimes in the palace scene, in order to make
them acquire modest tastes and sensible notions? No; it is to play at
dolls.
Woman plays at dolls to the end of her life, with her toys, with her
children, with her grandchildren, and with herself.
I have never heard women have a good word to say of daughters-in-law who
had not given children to their sons. Poor, dear old ladies! They
certainly were under the impression that their sons had only one object
in view when they contemplated matrimony, that of presenting 'Grannie'
with dolls to play with. I quite understand that grandmothers should be
admired, that children should bless them, and even advise other children
to 'get some,' when they have not got any, but I do not think that
grandmothers should be held up to the world as models, because more than
nine times out of ten they spoil children, and derive pleasure not from
duties performed to the child, but from the satisfaction of playing at
dolls. I have very often met sensible mothers, but grandmothers seldom;
they generally are incorrigible sinners--and proud of it, too.
Alphonse Karr, in his 'Reminiscences,' relates how he used to meet in
society a young and charming woman who always behaved towards him in a
very cool manner. Unable to understand the reason, he one day took a
chair by her side, made himself particularly pleasant, and point-blank
asked her why she did not seem pleased to meet him, and inquired whether
he might have unconsciously done anything to cause her displeasure. For
a long time she defended herself, assuring him that her coldness towards
him was only in his imagination; but, as he insisted, she at last said
to him: 'Well, I will tell you. It was thirty-five years ago. One
afternoon you called on us, and I was in the drawing-room. Being invited
to take a seat by my mother, you chose an arm-chair on which my doll was
asleep. You removed it, and quite unceremoniously laid it on a table,
head downwards, at the risk of hurting it. In fact, you damaged its
nose. I conceived for you a perfect hatred, and, upon my word, I do not
think that I am now capable of forgiving you altogether.'
MORAL.--If you want to get into the good graces of a woman, praise her
baby; if you want a little girl to love you, admire her dolls and treat
them with respect.