Some of us like dolls, some of us do not.  My mother loved dolls.  We had Suzy Smart (she came with her own desk and blackboard), and Tammy and Pepper, my favorites, who seemed to be just about my own age, so I could  imagine stories about them, and act them out with the dolls. Tammy had her own soda fountain in her cardboard Tammy house!  Pepper had a plastic treehouse!

Of course we had Barbie, but Barbie never had adventures, because we didn’t have the faintest idea who this adult doll was. She didn’t have a soda fountain in her cardboard Dream House; she had a vanity table (that says it all). We preferred Barbie’s freckled best friend, Midge, Barbie’s sister, Skipper, and Skipper’s best friend, Scooter. Again, it was not much fun to play with any of them. It defied our imagination.

Barbie’s Little Theater drove a friend of mine mad.  My crazy-funny best friend laughingly lynched Skipper from the proscenium arch,  which was shocking at the time and, in retrospect, disturbing. But it never happened again. That was the end of Barbies for all of us. 

Lawrence Durrell seems to have been as disturbed by dolls as my friend was.  When I was writing about Lawrence Durrell’s Monsieur, the first novel in The Avignon Quintet,  I forgot to mention the doll scene. It is violent and disturbing.

One of the main characters in Monsieur, Rob Sutcliffe, a sardonic novelist, is obsessed with a box his wife Pia takes with her everywhere, even when they travel.  Rob has promised Pia not to look in the box, but one day he sneaks back early, hoping to open the lid and find the secret. In the hotel room he  finds Pia happily having a tea party with dozens of dolls in international costumes.

For some reason, the dolls drive him insane.  He screams, he pulls off their limbs, he throws them in the fire.  Poor Pia!  Why didn’t she protect her dolls?  And so how can we be surprised that this sad soul  runs away with a “negress” named Trash.  Pia had issues, and so did violent Rob. 

P.S.   When I was middle-aged, a well-traveled relative gave me an “international”  doll who wore a Japanese kimono and carried an umbrella. Not knowing what else to do with it, I stuck the doll on a shelf in the closet.  Every time I reach up to that high shelf, the doll falls on my head.