The Youngest Doll by Rosario Ferre narrates a story of a woman who lost all prospects of marriage due to a corrupted doctor and located her solace in the artistic creation of dolls to replace the missing wealth of married life. The story is an interesting take on the objectification of women which characterized the lives of many Puerto Rican women with a nerve-racking end invested in supernaturalism.
Rosario Ferre was a Puerto Rican author who published the short story “The Youngest Doll” in 1976 in her first collection of short stories Papeles de Pandora. Hailing from a politically wealthy family, she was an advocate of independence and feminist ideals. Her creative edge lies in juxtaposing traditions with modern ideas to establish the true identity of a Puerto Rican woman who was confined to a domestic and passive representation.
The Youngest Doll | Summary and Analysis
The story begins with a maiden aunt who is fond of creating dolls. One day, as a regular practice, she ventures to take a bath in the river and to her shock, a prawn bites her, leaving her in writhing pain. The doctor discloses the non-seriousness of the medical issue but day by day her leg swells and the doctor concludes the prawn to have entered her leg only to permanently live. Her personality loses the charm and beauty she once adored and as a consequence refuses to see any of her suitors. She resorts to looking after her sister’s children. The narrator reveals about the maiden’s family who once belonged to the aristocratic strata of society. Due to the prawn bite, she walks with a limp all around the house. As time passes by, she excels at her art and creates lifelike dolls for her nieces varying all ages. The art of doll creation carries a ritualistic stance for the entire family which prohibits the maiden to consider an economic gain from her produce despite the dire needs of the family.
Soon, the nieces marry off and their aunt bids them goodbye with lifelike dolls appearing similar to the respective nieces, as a parting gift. Only the youngest niece now resides with the aging aunt. Over the years, the woman modifies her craft which the narrator describes in great detail. A noteworthy element in her dolls are the fittings of glass eyeballs which she imports directly from Europe and she attaches them to the dolls only after submerging them in the river for a few days to allow them a working knowledge of recognizing the prawn’s antennae.
One day, the doctor visits the aunt with his son and the son learns about his father’s ploy of benefitting from a medical case for years that could have been cured easily. The father reveals to his son about the aunt being the unsaid financial resource that he arranges for his medical education. Soon the young doctor begins to pay visits to the aunt on the pretext of wooing her youngest niece. The two soon marry and the aunt gifts her niece with her best doll creation:
“The doll’s face and hands…[are] made of the most delicate Mikado porcelain and in her half-open and slightly sad smile…[the niece recognizes] her full set of baby teeth. There…[is] also another notable detail: the aunt…embeds her diamond eardrops in the doll’s pupils.”
But after a few days, unlike their courting days, the doctor loses the personal warmth and touch with his wife and only treats her as a prized possession, placing her on the porch for the onlookers to attract a greater clientele. People are keen to have a closer glance at the woman who belongs to the now ruined aristocracy. The doctor even sells off the doll’s eyes in order to buy a gold pocket watch, replacing their emotional significance with material pleasures.
The slow and gradual tearing apart of the doll doesn’t go well with his wife and when after a few months the doctor notices the doll to be missing from its usual place i.e. the piano, he goes haywire. He claims a “sisterhood of pious ladies…[to have] offered him a healthy sum for the porcelain hands and face, which they…[think] would be perfect for the image of the Veronica in the next Lenten procession.” The wife conveys the ants as the culprit for the doll’s loss as they discover the honey-filled interiors of the lifeless being. The doctor erratically searches for the doll by digging up around his house but all his efforts go in vain.
Years go down and the doctor becomes a millionaire because he grabs the whole town as his clientele, people who don’t mind “paying exorbitant fees in order to see a genuine member of the extinct sugarcane aristocracy up close.” However, despite his seemingly perfect life, one thing that troubles him is his wife’s ability to keep herself with the same firm, porcelain skin from years ago, when he saw her the first time. To look into the matter, he decides to check on his wife one night. He notices that her chest isn’t moving and so gently places his stethoscope over her heart and hears “a distant swish of water.” The story concludes on a supernatural note as the doll lifts up her eyelids, and out of the empty sockets of her eyes comes the frenzied antennae of all those prawns.
The Youngest Doll | Characters
Maiden Aunt – The protagonist of the story in the initial sections of the story, the maiden aunt is a creative woman who excels at creating dolls. Her art does not take an economic turn but she relishes her creations which are primary for her nieces. The art of doll making begins to occupy her wholly due to her limping leg as a consequence of a prawn bite in the river. She loves her nieces dearly and gifts each of them a life-size doll imitating their features as a wedding gift before they part away. Streaks of mental disillusionment surface in the narrative as she opens the door of the room where all her dolls are stored and sing them lullaby like an actual child. But nothing concrete is specified about her unhealthy mindset. Also, she becomes an exploitative object at the hands of her doctor who does not cure her leg only to bag money for the years-long treatment.
Doctor – He is a corrupt medical practitioner who pays for his son’s education out of the fees paid for unnecessary treatment by the maiden aunt.
Doctor’s Son – Like his father, he too is materialistic and money oriented which is not observed in his personality when he’s introduced. He reveals the curability of the maiden aunt’s swelled leg which at first presents him as an honest man. However, his marriage to the youngest niece depicts a different side. He keeps her as a prized possession to attract customers and fails to shower her with love and compassion so much so that his ignorance results in his failure to recognize the doll which replaces his wife magically over the years.
Youngest Niece – The last woman to be married amongst all the nieces, she is too dear to the maiden aunt. She is given the best creation as a parting gift by her aunt- a doll that has fittings of her baby teeth and expensive imported materials. However, her anticipation of a happy married life fails her as she discovers the material obsession of her husband which robs her of love and attention. Years pass by and her existence reduces to that of the doll she brought along with her.
The Youngest Doll | Literary Devices
Symbolism – The prawn in the story adopts the role of a parasite living in its host’s body for years. It symbolizes corrupt people who benefit from others’ lives, like the doctor who sustains his livelihood and his son’s medical education by delaying treatment of a cause that is curable. This parasite-host relationship also signals the gender dynamic in patriarchal Puerto Rico which changes in the story as the doctor (a man) is dependent on his earnings from the maiden (a woman).
Alliteration – The ruination of sugar plantation-owning aristocracy on the advent of modern technology and industrial classes finds an expression in the maiden’s house’s “crystal chandelier crumbled on the frayed embroidered linen cloth of the dining-room table.”
Metaphor – The doll population in a secluded room in the house rendered the room an appearance of a dovecote, or the ballroom in the czarina’s palace, or a warehouse in which someone had spread out a row of tobacco leaves to dry.
Imagery – To comprehend the whiteness of the hands of the new dolls, the narrator borrows “the consistency of skim milk” to facilitate a better understanding.
Simile – The maiden would rock away for entire days on the porch, watching the patterns of rain shift like watercolor over the canefields.
The eyeballs imported by the maiden from Europe were “glossy as gems.”
The dolls were tied the same bow, wide and white and trembling like the breast of a dove.
The Youngest Doll | Questions and Answers :
How is the “maiden aunt” portrayed in the story?
The maiden aunt’s portrayal follows a deep layering of her character. Though she appears to be a simple and loving aunt who adores her nieces, there is an implicit sinister quality that comes to the fore through her doll creations. The new dolls which use expensive raw material, especially the imported eyeballs reveal the effort and pain the maiden aunt undergoes while working on her craft. She trains the eyeballs by submerging them in the water to allow them a working knowledge of sensing the prawn antennae. Though it is impractical, her thought and dedication to not allow anyone else to suffer her fate by the prawn bite is compelling. She considers her dolls as humans which points to both her sensitivity as well as her mentally disturbed personality as a product of years of loneliness. She never marries due to her swollen leg and thus does not have her own family.
What is the symbolism of the dolls?
The dolls symbolize the objectification of women that is an everyday occurrence, especially in Puerto Rico. The dolls highlight the passivity the women are expected to exhibit. Like a possession or a lifeless object to be put on display, most women play a similar role in their men’s lives. They are a mere pastime for those who play with them to their heart’s content and after using them, discard them from their lives. The dolls do not have a voice like the women who were not allowed a public voice until recently. Thus, the author strategically uses the dolls in her story to put forward an idea about the insignificant status of women in society and the bubbling power they harbor to overturn the patriarchal spectrum like the doll which creeps out the youngest niece’s husband at the end.
What happens at the end of the story?
The youngest niece’s husband out of his suspicion decides to check on his wife while she’s asleep. As he approaches her, he observes the lack of breathing movement in her body. A stethoscope comes at his service as a reflex action of a doctor. To his shock, he does not hear any human lungs expanding and contracting but rather a “swish of water.” The doll lifts up her eyelids and out of the empty sockets come thousands of prawn antennas. This supernatural ending can be interpreted as the doctor’s own imagination of the doll he did injustice to by removing its eyeballs for the sake of buying a gold watch and his subsequent frantic search for the doll to sell off its porcelain skin. Another interpretation directs to the years of ignorance the man metes out to his wife who fails to even notice his wife’s absence. The passive existence of the wife magically transforms into the doll who is created in likeliness to her. However, it is unclear if the body lying in the bed is of the wife or the doll.
What are the primary themes and messages of the story?
The story aims to promote feminism by creating a matriarchal world in the early sections of the story which is later disrupted by the corrupt patriarchal world. The interaction between the dying aristocratic classes with the upcoming profession-based class exposes not only the gender-operated world but also the manipulative profession of medicine which robs the already ruined wealthy class. Women resolve to their roles as mother, daughter, wife, or aunt which all pertain to domestic spheres. To add to their passivity is the display of status the last generations of the wealthy class experience, like the young niece. A woman should never be undermined as when the water fills up the barrel, there is no more space for tolerance. A woman can sting back and exact revenge upon her perpetrators in ways unimaginable.
