I have a vague recollection of reading some books by Rumer Godden when I was a child, though unfortunately I cannot remember any specific titles. I was reminded of her a couple of years ago when reading fellow blogger Brona’s Books, who had a Rumer Godden reading week around the time of the author’s birthday. By coincidence I had happened to pick up an early edition of The Doll’s House in my local secondhand bookshop around the same time. Unfortunately, I did not get around to reading the book then and it has been sitting on my TBR shelf for too long. I decided to make it my ‘Off the TBR shelf’ book for June and now seems like a good time to review it as I am focusing on my #KeepKidsReading week.
Rumer Godden was prolific and published over sixty books in a writing career that spanned seven decades. She wrote for both adults and children and also wrote poetry and non-fiction. A number of her books were adapted for film and television, most recently Black Narcissus which was released as a BBC mini-series in 2020. She was born in Britain but grew up in India where her father worked for a shipping company.
The Doll’s House was Godden’s first book for children (published in 1947) and was turned into a film for children’s television in 1984. Godden wrote a series of books about dolls drawing parallels between their plight as passive and without agency, and the life of children, for whom adults make decisions, without necessarily consulting them.
The Dolls’ House is a short book, easily consumed by an adult in one sitting, but I tried to read as a child would, or as a child might have it read to them, one short chapter at a time. The story concerns the fate of four dolls who live together as a family – Mr Plantaganet, Birdie, his ‘wife’, Tottie, a girl-child doll, and Apple, a younger boy-child doll. They are the toys of sisters Emily and Charlotte, and live in shoe boxes, but wish for a house of their own. Their wishes come true and the two sisters acquire an old Victorian dolls’ house which once belonged to their grandmother. With the help of a family friend they clean, repair and update the interior and the furnishings. Unfortunately, the dolls’ house comes with an unwelcome addition, a china doll called Marchpane, who is also very old. Marchpane would have been an expensive and precious doll in her day, unlike the Plantaganets, and is both haughty and cruel. When she is brought to live with them all she seems to cast a spell over the elder of the two sisters, Emily, and gradually, the Plantaganets are sidelined and ousted from the better rooms in their new home.
On the surface, this is a simple story, but it explores notions of class, fairness, kindness and justice in ways that will be easily understood by children. It was a real throw-back reading this charming little book. The language is a bit old-fashioned, but I think it could still appeal to younger children, between about five and seven years old, perhaps shared with a grandparent, who will be able to bring their own memories into a telling of the story.
“It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing, to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot ‘do’; they can only be done by; children who do not understand this, often do wrong things and then the dolls are hurt and abused and lost; and when this happens dolls cannot speak, nor do anything except be hurt and abused and lost. If you have any dolls, you should remember that.”
Chapter 1, ‘The Dolls’ House’ by Rumer Godden
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