How not to play with dolls: Contessa Lara`s

Article
How not to play with
dolls: Contessa Lara’s
‘Una bambola’ and Luigi
Pirandello’s ‘Servitù’
Forum Italicum
2014, Vol. 48(1) 110–125
! The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0014585814522174
foi.sagepub.com
Cristina Mazzoni
University of Vermont, USA
Abstract
Although dolls are more common in children’s literature, they occasionally appear also in
literature written for adults. As in the 16th-century fairy tale by Straparola, ‘La poavola,’
so also in late 19th- and early 20th-century Italian literature the ambiguous figure of the
doll represents both the loving world of childhood and a dangerous catalyst for personal
change. In Contessa Lara’s ‘La bambola’ (1887), the doll of the title belongs to a young
woman – herself treated by her husband as a doll – who collapses into madness when she
believes her doll to be the child she desires and does not have. In Luigi Pirandello’s
‘Servitù’ (1914), the young protagonist is unable to escape her condition of servant
even when she pretend-plays with the gift of a doll. In both short stories, the tragic
conclusion occurs when the men in these protagonists’ lives – husband and father,
respectively – physically destroy the dolls. Their violence may be partly explained by
the complicated relationship adults, and especially male adults, have with dolls.
Keywords
Contessa Lara, dolls, Gozzano, Pirandello, Straparola
As simulacra of the human figure used for religious, educational, and artistic purposes, dolls have played a role in society since prehistoric times. Although today we
tend to think of dolls as the playthings of children, and particularly of little girls, the
complex history of these objects should impel us to take a more nuanced interpretive
look at their representation in literature. Medieval historian Franco Cardini (1987:
29) has noted that: ‘Idolo o balocco, amata o tormentata, la bambola resta anzitutto
un oggetto magico. Per questo ispira tenerezza e, al tempo stesso, fa paura.’ Cultural
Corresponding author:
Cristina Mazzoni, Romance Languages and Linguistics, Waterman Building 517, 85 South Prospect St.,
University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, USA.
Email: [email protected]
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anthropologist Domenico Scafoglio more specifically refers to the ‘mescolanza di
desiderio e di inquietudine che accompagna la storia della bambola
nell’Otto-Novecento’ (1987: 53). Love and hate, tenderness and fear, desire and
unease, all mark dolls with an ambiguous mix of emotions that may be read into
their representation in Italian literature for both children and adults in the 19th and
20th centuries. In this essay, I will start with a brief look at a poem by Guido
Gozzano (1980; originally 1883–1916), ‘Prima delusione,’ about a little girl who
breaks her favorite toy, and continue with a more developed analysis of two short
stories: ‘La bambola’ (1887) by Contessa Lara (the pseudonym of Evelina
Cattermole Mancini, 1849–1896), featuring the relationship between a wealthy
and lonely married woman and the tiny porcelain doll she buys for herself, and
‘Servitù’ (1957) by Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936), the story of an impoverished
little girl and the precious fashion doll she is given as a gift by a wealthy peer. In
these texts, dolls function as catalysts of personal change for the protagonists who
own them. In both the short stories, furthermore, a man’s violence marks the dolls as
disturbing reminders of that which cannot be.
All the dolls in these late 19th- and early 20th-century texts are made of porcelain;
this material is especially suited to reproduce the complexion and facial features of
girls and young women because of its translucency and its ability to hold fine details.
Today’s porcelain dolls are collectors’ items made for adults and radically different
in form and function from the dolls intended for children; but these contemporary
porcelain dolls are made to resemble precisely those late 19th- and early 20th-century
dolls that are featured in texts such as Gozzano’s, Contessa Lara’s, and Pirandello’s
– the antique originals themselves being nowadays too costly for most collectors. The
breakability of porcelain dolls is part and parcel of their attraction: not only for the
aesthetic appeal of this fragile material but also because the larger the number of
porcelain dolls that break, after all, the greater the value of those that stay intact. The
breakability of dolls and their commodification go hand in hand, and the transformation of beautiful and costly objects into ugly, worthless (and often disturbing) trash
is a recurring theme in Italian texts that represent dolls, especially in literature for
children in the 19th and 20th centuries.1 The identification of dolls with refuse mirrors society’s preoccupation with trash and obsolescence during this same period, a
preoccupation evident in the philosophical and sociological publications on this
subject and, in turn, related to that very industrial expansion that has led to the
mass production of dolls starting in the 20th century.
The oldest Italian text connecting dolls and trash belongs to the earliest known
European publication containing examples of fairy tales. ‘La poavola’ (a word that
means ‘doll’ in certain northern Italian dialects), is one of the 75 stories – not all of
them fairy tales – in Le piacevoli notti by Giovan Francesco Straparola (c. 1480–c.
1557), published in Venice between 1550 and 1556 (Straparola, 2000). This is the tale
of two impoverished and orphaned sisters, the younger of whom barters for a magic
doll at the market and treats it lovingly, as if the doll were her own daughter; in
return for this selfless affection, the doll calls the girl ‘mamma’ and defecates gold
coins for her. The sisters’ newfound wealth attracts the envy of a neighbor, who
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steals the doll; but the doll knows that this thief is not her ‘mamma’ and what the
‘poavola’ produces for the greedy woman is regular feces rather than precious metal.
The neighbor’s husband, as a result of the doll’s useless and downright offensive
excretions, throws it out the window onto a trash heap. From here, the king’s servant
picks it up and gives it to the king who needs something to wipe himself with after his
own al fresco defecation (from this particular use, one may deduce that the ‘poavola’
in Straparola’s story is a rag and not a porcelain doll). The doll, understandably
unhappy with this task, bites the king’s backside and does not let go until its beloved
‘mamma,’ the younger of the two sisters, coaxes it to do so. The king marries the girl
and the ‘poavola’ disappears. (This bond between dolls and feces, a subset of the
connection of dolls with trash, is an especially popular one in children’s literature.)
‘La poavola,’ like other traditional fairy tales, was addressed to both children and
adults. Since the 19th century and the development of children’s literature as a genre,
dolls have appeared primarily in literature for children. In the decades at the end of
the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, however, Italian literature for adults
also turns to dolls as girls’ and women’s fragile other. In these texts, such as Contessa
Lara’s ‘La bambola’ and Pirandello’s ‘Servitù,’ dolls are not only playthings but also
representations of a pseudo life and thus a morbid signifier of death. In Yuri
Lotman’s words, which echo the duality earlier quoted from the writings of
Cardini and Scafoglio:
nella nostra coscienza culturale è come se fossero rimaste impresse due personalità della
bambola: una legata al mondo accogliente dell’infanzia, l’altra associata ad una pseudovita, ad un movimento morto, alla morte, ad una vita falsa. La prima personalità è
rivolta verso il mondo del folklore, della fiaba, del primitivo, la seconda ci ricorda la
civiltà meccanica, l’alienazione. (Lotman, 1984: 148)
When dolls appear in literature addressed to adults, these two models of the doll are
not clearly separated from one another. Dolls, in these stories, function at once as
reminders of the affectionate world of childhood (distant and unattainable) and as
markers of the falseness of an inauthentic, hypocritical, and alienated life (involving
gender and social divisions). In the literary texts under consideration, the clash
between these two conflicting meanings leads to the physical destruction of the
doll and to a concurrent and profound psychological loss for the protagonist herself.
Before Barbie, made of resilient vinyl, children – or at least wealthy children –
often played with porcelain dolls, and porcelain, famously, breaks. Guido
Gozzano’s posthumously published poem, ‘Prima delusione,’ speaks of a little
girl’s sense of psychological loss at the realization that her doll is not and never
was alive.2 This early 20th-century toy is a speaking doll, and this bewildering
skill leads the little girl to ask her younger brother: ‘Fulvio, perché la bamboletta
parla? / Dici che sia una bambina vera?’ When the boy goes to get the doll and brings
it back to his sister so that they may together check, she states: ‘Guardala, Fulvio, a
me par proprio viva, / se tiri quello spago parla, e, aspetta, / se la bacio e la lodo si
ravviva.’ The illusion of the doll being alive increases the more the girl looks at her
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toy, which, in the child’s perception, seamlessly morphs from a mechanical automaton that speaks when a string is pulled, into a feeling being that cheers up when kissed
and praised, is saddened by a reproach, is capable of kissing back, and can be caught
laughing: ‘Sı̀, sı̀! Se io le parlo mi comprende, / se la rimbrotto subito s’attrista; /
quando la bacio, il bacio lei mi rende / e poi, del resto, ridere l’ho vista.’
This little girl, however, is so involved in admiring her doll and caressing its soft,
blond hair that she accidentally drops it, and the porcelain doll shatters ‘in cocci assai
minuti.’ The precious plaything, as is so often the case with dolls in literature,
instantly becomes trash. The next scene presents a graphic description of what is
left of a fragile object previously believed by its owner to be alive: as the little girl
looks through the broken pieces that used to make up her beloved toy, she finds
‘occhi di vetro, due piccoli denti / e le manine simili a due bocci’ – fragments that, like
the pieces of a dismembered corpse, have inexplicably lost the life that once animated
them. The little girl weeps, and her brother tries to console her with two of his own,
boyish toys. But the little boy, for all his good intentions, does not understand that it
is not the loss of the toy that pains his sister, as the poet tells us. Rather, it is the
realization that her beloved doll was always an inanimate object and never, not even
before its transformation from treasure into trash, the live and, especially, the loving
friend she thought she had: ‘Ma no: non è la bambola perduta / che fa piangere tanto
la bambina: / vera, parlante, sempre l’ha creduta; / invece è sol di porcellana fina.’
The doll was a fine object – but an object nevertheless. It is the loss of her belief that
the little girl mourns: ‘Piange la bimba perché fu delusa. / L’aveva tanto amata come
viva / e che la ricambiasse s’era illusa, / povera bimba! E l’illusion finiva.’ Growing up
implies giving up the joys of make-believe, beginning with the belief that we are
loved, and this loss, the poem concludes, is our first sorrow: ‘ed in quel giorno
destinato al gioco / pianse la bimba il primo suo dolore.’ Gozzano’s precious porcelain doll shatters and becomes useless, trash; in this transformation, its true identity as an inanimate object is violently revealed. With the shattering of the doll, as we
will see, other identities are violently revealed, as well.
Shattered or otherwise destroyed dolls appear in Contessa Lara’s literary production for both adults and children. In her novel for children titled Il romanzo della
bambola (1896), the elaborate and expensive fashion doll of the title is a father’s gift
for his rich and spoiled young daughter, who gives it away as soon as it gets ruined.
The doll passes through the hands of three other little girls and gets trashed in the process: the maternal instincts of these girls, not to mention their respect for people and
things varies in intensity and so does the quality of the treatment the doll receives.
(The bond between maternal instinct and the love of dolls has long been taken
for granted: as Edmondo De Amicis puts it in his essay on the dollmaker Gerardo
Bonini, those little girls who are ‘indifferenti o quasi’ to dolls, ‘Difficilmente . . .
riescono buone madri,’ 1980: 13). In Il romanzo della bambola, as in other doll stories
for children, the doll is given as a gift and marks its young owner’s initiation into
adulthood. Doll stories tell their readers some of the ways in which we become who
we are: in recognizing the doll’s otherness, for the little girl, both the self and the
other acquire their true value and meaning.
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But this value and this meaning are lost, rather than gained, in ‘La bambola,’ a
short story by Contessa Lara that had appeared 9 years before Il romanzo della
bambola, in 1887. Written for adults, ‘La bambola,’ unlike Il romanzo della bambola,
has no happy ending. The story’s protagonist is a wealthy young woman whose twoyear marriage has not yet brought her any children; her name, unlike her husband’s
(Berto), is never given. The story begins with her strolling through Milan as
her elderly doctor (an old family friend) had requested: he had ordered his patient
to take daily, two-hour-minimum passeggiate in order to dissipate her potentially
morbid melancholy: ‘quella giovane sposa, non anche confortata dalla maternità e
più spesso sola che in compagnia del marito, s’abbandonava da un po’ di tempo a
certe strane malinconie che minacciavan di pigliare una piega troppo morbosa’
(p. 224). As an upper-class married woman with no interest in gossip or a social
life, and whose husband, on the other hand, is usually away (presumably for work
and/or social engagements), or else reading the paper, the protagonist is mostly
home alone.3
In the course of the doctor-ordered stroll with which the text opens, the protagonist becomes mesmerized, at the window of a milliner’s shop, by a collection of
miniature porcelain fashion dolls. These expensive products are historically specific
to the 19th century and were ‘much desired by (rich) little girls, to whom they were
entrusted as icons of femininity, models of etiquette, and exercises in needlework,
not as playthings in the ‘‘rag doll’’ mode’ (Robertson, 2004: 22). Contessa Lara
describes these colorful, miniature porcelain dolls as: ‘una folla di piccole bambole
alte un dito: tutte di porcellana rosata, dagli occhietti di vetro nero o celeste, dai
biondi capelli di seta, vestite alla foggia delle bambine: di scarlatto, d’azzurro, di
bianco, di verde, di lilla’ (p. 226).4 The fashion dolls’ effect on this lonely and bored
young woman is immediate, and it is with a mixture of happiness and regression to
childhood that she enters the shop: ‘Un sorriso felice illuminò d’improvviso il viso
tediato della signora, e un desiderio quasi infantile la spinse a entrare e chieder di
quelle pupattole’ (p. 226). She asks for ‘la più carina’ among the dolls and, out of
childish embarrassment, pretends that it is a gift for a little girl, rather than a purchase for herself. Interestingly, she chooses the one doll that, unlike the other, smiling ones, seems to be throwing a temper tantrum (the doll displays ‘l’atteggiamento
dei bimbi nella crisi delle bizze’ [p. 228]), because this doll seemed to her ‘la più
simpatica.’ Immediately after buying it, she spirits the doll away inside her muff.
Here, the doll begins to acquire some human characteristics through free indirect
discourse: ‘la bambola . . . dentro il manicotto . . . si cullò fino a casa, forse riconfortata, povero amore! La bella dama pure si sentı̀ meno sola per quel tratto di strada’
(p. 228). The protagonist fingers her doll all the way home, realizing and yet enjoying
the childish silliness of her behavior. The reader, however, suspects that there is more
at stake here than the carefree joy of a frivolous purchase, as the illusory comfort of a
doll’s company further underlines the protagonist’s essential loneliness: the doll’s
lifeless presence marks the absence, in the protagonist’s life, of living companionship, particularly the absence of a child, of a daughter. In the words of two anthropologists: ‘La bambola, quindi, denota un’assenza reale e, nello stesso tempo, è una
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presenza illusoria: essa fornisce ciò che manca: l’assenza reale è quella della madre
quando è la bambina che gioca, quella della bambina, quando è la madre che la usa’
(Petrucci and Simeoni, 1987: 4).
Over the next few days, the doll receives an increasing share of the protagonist’s attention, which had been formerly divided between a portrait of her husband and her readings.5 This attention brings back memories of her childhood
dolls and, in particular, of a life-size Parisian doll named Bice (Parisian dolls were
the most desirable ones in the 19th century [Peers, 2004] and it is in Paris that the
‘king of dolls’ of De Amicis goes, ‘per visitare i grandi magazzini di bambole, e
rubare—à la sua espressione—con gli occhi ’ [De Amicis, 1980: 11]). Bice, like
Gozzano’s doll, was a speaking doll able to say ‘Ma-ma,’ and the memories of
the protagonist’s childhood roleplay make her exclaim: ‘Che felicità possedere da
vero una creaturina che chiami mamma!’ (p. 231). So, after the description of
what is clearly an unhappy marriage and a life experienced as devoid of meaning,
the protagonist cries: ‘Oh, se avessi una bimba anch’io!’ (p. 234). She then proceeds to manufacture every day new clothes and accessories for her doll, handling
it and speaking to it as if it were alive, as if it were her child: ‘Brava, cosı̀ sei
bellina! Su, questo braccio, perché ci passi sotto il nastro. . . Sei contenta?’ (p.
235). This game, however, results in an increase of those neurotic symptoms that
the strolls were supposed to avert, since the protagonist is ‘Più che mai triste e
nervosa dopo qualche ora di questo gioco singolare’ (p. 236). Indeed, her daily
creation of new outfits for the doll develops into ‘una fissità paziente che rasentava la monomania.’6 This playing with the doll is followed by lengthy looks ‘con
certi occhi sbarrati, dentro a cui era un punto lustro, quasi immobile’ (p. 237).
The reader no longer doubts that what started as a whim, as an impulse purchase, has turned into a pathological obsession.7
Through ‘un inganno crudele della sua vista intorbidata,’ the protagonist comes
to believe that the doll grows into a child, soft flesh replacing the hard porcelain and
gentle movements animating the doll’s former immobility. To the protagonist’s
clouded sight, the doll undergoes regular transformations, and becomes a child
first, then grows into a girl and finally matures into a young woman. These hallucinations last until a noise or someone’s arrival, ‘riscotendo l’allucinata, non fugasse
la dolce visione, che si faceva ogni giorno vie più il suo unico bene e il suo peggiore
tormento’ (p. 238). The protagonist is ashamed to admit to her friends that
‘la maternità era oramai la sua fissazione’ (p. 239). These friends, after all, tease
her because of her childlessness. (What kind of friends are these, I ask, and is it any
wonder that the protagonist does not wish for a more intense social life, given
the company she would have to keep?) Having a child would at once fill her
personal loneliness and fulfill the social duties of a married woman, thus allowing
her to fit in.
The bond between child and doll is a deep one, and the dolls of traditional
societies often play a magical–symbolic role related to fertility. In an essay analyzing
the significance of dolls in the life of adult women in Southern Italy,
anthropologist Elisabetta Simeoni (1990: 122) writes that each of these dolls
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is ‘espressione di una forte identità femminile, che . . . stabilisce una centralità
familiare in contrasto con il mondo esterno, proponendo una immagine di forte
competizione individuale, familiare e sociale. Simbolo di fecondità e di ricchezza
è presagio di fortuna e di liberazione.’ Porcelain dolls indicate the owner’s economic
wealth, but also, like other types of doll, they point to the reproductive wealth
that is fertility – or, conversely, the poverty indicated by its absence. In another
article on the dolls of adult women in early 20th-century Tuscany, Simeoni
draws similar conclusions, noting that throughout Italy’s regions one can
find dolls used by adults as magical objects with which the owners are emotionally
involved (Simeoni’s dolls, much like those that Contessa Lara’s protagonist encounters on her walk, are small: 10 to 20 centimeters tall). The doll’s resemblance to the
human being it represents, Simeoni claims, ‘permette di vedere ciò che si vuol vedere.
È una concretizzazione dell’immaginario, che rende operante l’intercessione
tra due mondi: rende reale l’illusione e illusoria la realtà’ (Simeoni, 1987: 106).
As long as the individual knows the difference between illusion and reality – a knowledge mediated by the collective nature of belief in the traditional societies Simeoni
studies – the doll works as a magic object. But this deep knowledge may be
lost, particularly in the absence of a community that reinforces it: the women
in Simeoni’s essays share the same magical use of the doll, but the protagonist
of Contessa Lara’s short story is utterly alone with her doll; her use of the doll
indicates, therefore, not the shared power of magic but the isolated impotence of
madness. She must hide her manipulation of the doll because it is unseemly
and embarrassing – a secret. Robertson notices something similar about contemporary attitudes toward doll collecting by adults: ‘it’s considered shameful
for fully grown adults to be so interested in dolls. It hovers on the brink of
madness—it is well known that clinically senile women often nurse dolls’
(Robertson, 2004: 2).
But when the protagonist’s husband abuses her brutally, ‘con la scusa di cacciarle
via il mal de’ nervi’ (that neurosis may be cured with violence is another illusion
exposed in this story), the doll she is holding falls on the floor and shatters. The
protagonist also collapses to the floor, and although she does not physically break
like her doll, her mind shatters along with the doll’s body. From that day on, ‘la dolce
e crudele fissazione della giovane sposa si tramutò in una vera e propria follia’ (p.
239). The young woman, whose madness can no longer be concealed by her own
modesty, is moved to a ‘casa di salute’ where for a while she neither sleeps nor eats
and desperately demands ‘her little girl’ back. She goes on like this until an experienced orderly at the hospital understands the young woman’s plight and brings a
new doll to the ‘povera pazza,’ who finally finds some tranquility in rocking the doll
in her arms and calling her ‘Bice.’ She is perhaps dreaming, the narrator surmises, of
‘una vocina perduta nella sua lontana infanzia che le risponda: — Mâ-mâ!’ (p. 240).
The orderly’s gift is the third doll of the story, and it harks back to the very first, the
doll from childhood; with this last doll, the protagonist herself returns to that childish inability – normal for children, pathological for adults – to distinguish reality
from make-believe.
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In Straparola’s tale, the doll functions as an economic, social, and romantic catalyst: the doll provides the younger sister with the opportunity to meet and wed none
other than the king himself, the most desirable of marriage partners. The doll is crucial to the protagonist’s change of economic and social status: from impoverished to
wealthy, from lowborn to royal. So also in Contessa Lara’s ‘La bambola,’ the doll
functions as a catalyst. In this later tale, however, it is not a change for the better that
the doll brings about. Rather, through the doll, the protagonist’s melancholia,
previously treatable through lengthy strolls, combines with her intense desire for
a child to become a monomaniacal psychosis that leads to her lifelong hospitalization (there is no sense that she may someday recover). In both Straparola’s
and Contessa Lara’s tales, the catalyst doll disappears – magically in the earlier
tale (but this doll had also temporarily disappeared through the violent act
of an angry man, the neighbor’s husband who had thrown it out the window),
through the husband’s violence in the later story. Whereas a royal husband takes
the place of the doll for Straparola’s younger sister, Contessa Lara’s protagonist
receives one more doll; no reader will be surprised at her husband’s disappearance
from the narration after his violent outburst destroys the doll physically and his
wife psychologically.
In doll stories written for children, as well as in Straparola’s tale, the owners of the
doll grow up partly thanks to the presence of the doll in their life: through the doll,
these young and usually female protagonists enact maternal practices that involve
the acceptance of otherness and of responsibility for the care of that other.8 Contessa
Lara’s protagonist in ‘La bambola,’ however, instead of growing from childhood
to adulthood, regresses from grown woman back to little girl. If it is
true that ‘La bambola è un simbolo della potenza femminile, della capacità della
donna di nutrire e far crescere dentro di sé qualcosa d’invisibile’ (Gasparini, 1999:
95), then, for the woman who is unable to conceive, the doll is a symbol of powerlessness, a reminder of her inability to nourish and grow another being within herself.
Through its protagonist’s excessive attachment to a doll and detachment from social
convention, Contessa Lara’s story comments on the imperative of maternity and the
social isolation brought on by childlessness for upper-class women.
Through maternity and through physical appearance, dolls are associated with
children but also with adult women. The word ‘doll,’ in Italian as in English,
may refer to both inanimate playthings and sexually attractive women. In the
novel La bambolona by Alba De Céspedes (1969), for example, the eponymous
character is a doll-like woman who is desirable to the protagonist because she is
plump, uneducated, and seemingly brainless – much like a doll. This is a metaphorical doll, of course, not a child’s plaything; but her nickname directs the reader
to the negative connotations of dolls and to the role they play in the representation
of women. In the words of Peers:
The doll not only frequently looks like a woman, sometimes she is a woman; in fact, she
is a clear, unmistakable sign of women’s limited intellect, passivity, frivolity. In opera,
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operetta, ballet and short stories women may even be confused with dolls, so closely
does one symbolize the other. (Peers, 2004: 9)
In 1892, in a letter to her then lover Alfredo Cesareo, we read of Contessa Lara’s
personal identification with the complicated figure of the doll, an identification
which she describes in a self-deprecating tone:
Alle tue serie pagine risponderò con de’ baci da bambola come sono. Ormai tu ibseneggi, e già ch’è la moda, ci vuol pazienza. Bambola sono e bambola resto. Morrò
bambola, ma almeno fosse presto. Sentirei come una gran liberazione. Io ch’ero giunta
al punto d’avere quasi paura di morire, ora . . . ma perchè la bambola fa la tragica? Che
sciocchezza!9
Contessa Lara embraces the normally demeaning identification with a doll when she
claims, ‘Bambola sono e bambola resto’; this implies, she states, the inability to look
at the world with the depth of tragedy. The allusion to Ibsen and his Doll’s House
clarifies the social criticism implicit in Contessa Lara’s personal identification with a
doll and in the madness of the protagonist of her short story, ‘La bambola.’ After
their marriage, Berto ignores his wife completely, assuming her to be doll-like and
therefore in no need of personal attention; while he works and has an active social
life, his wife spends her time gazing at his portrait and playing with her doll: in
enacting maternal practices on the doll, she enacts her own doll-like, as well as
childish, nature.
Gozzano’s title, ‘Prima delusione,’ focuses on the most important feeling brought
on by the doll – disappointment – and indicates it as the subject of his narrative
poem. Contessa Lara’s title is more ambiguous: who is the eponymous doll in ‘La
bambola’? Certainly the actual doll that is purchased is invoked in this title, but
perhaps the other doll indicated here is not so much Bice, the speaking Parisian doll
of the protagonist’s childhood, nor that last doll given to the protagonist by the
hospital orderly. Rather, ‘La bambola’ is the nameless protagonist herself, left
behind by her husband to live, like Ibsen’s heroine, the meaningless life of a plaything. Likewise, the title of Luigi Pirandello’s short story about dolls, ‘Servitù’
(1957), is also double-edged: it is a collective noun that refers to the professional
nanny and the unpaid young servant present in the story; but it is also an abstract
noun referring to serving more generally, a noun tinged with notions of enslavement
and implying, as we shall see in reading this story, the inescapability of the condition
of servant.
Almost two decades after Contessa Lara’s ‘La bambola,’ Luigi Pirandello’s
‘Servitù’ returns to develop the psychological connection between a doll and its
owner (this short story first appeared in Corriere della Sera on July 30, 1914, and
was later included in the collections E domani, lunedı`, 1917, and Candelora, 1928).
Published when the industrial production of dolls in Europe was in full swing, the
fancy fashion dolls in this text are similar in appearance to the one in Contessa Lara’s
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‘La bambola.’ Reminiscent in some ways of Barbie because they represent young
adult women with a flare for fashion, these dolls confirm that:
Nella produzione industriale di bambole in Europa emerge, come dato onnipresente,
l’immagine della giovane donna sposata; immagine ambigua, non definita, e per questo
ricca di grandi potenzialità di utilizzazione: la bambola destinata al gioco delle bambine
è una immagine di giovane donna, sposata e in età feconda, modello per la bambina del
suo futuro status di giovane madre; ma nello stesso tempo la bambola è cultura e curata
come un bambino. (Silvestrini, 1987: 41)
The ambiguity of a doll representing both an object to maternally care for and a
model to eventually imitate is a vital component of the dynamics of a child’s creative
play with dolls and is prominently featured in Pirandello’s short story.
‘Servitù’ begins with a rich little girl named Dolly – an exotic name underscoring
this character’s identification with her favorite toy – who lies sick in bed surrounded
by her seven fancy dolls, ‘sedute sul lettino come damine in visita’ (Pirandello, 1957:
p. 691). Dolly is in the company of Nené, her nanny’s daughter and the protagonist
of this story.10 Nené’s poverty is reflected in her old, chickpea-colored dress that she
has outgrown and that is uncomfortably small for her; this is in stark contrast with
Dolly’s dolls, clothed in expensive outfits they will never outgrow. Although she
remains silent, Nené is described as the one directing the two little girls’ shared play,
her marvel at the wealth of her surroundings animating the toys and the game: ‘Con
la sua maraviglia intenta e muta dava un’anima nuova a quelle sette bambole.’ These
are the very dolls that, for a long time:
per Dolly quasi non vivevano più: erano pezzi di legno, testine di cera o di porcellana,
occhi di vetro, capelli di stoppa. Ma ora riavevano anima, un’anima nuova, e rivivevano
una nuova vita meravigliosa anche per lei, quale ella non avrebbe mai immaginato di
dar loro, un’anima, una vita che prendevano qualità appunto dalla maraviglia di Nené,
ch’era maraviglia di servetta. (p. 691)
Already, and even as a little girl playing with dolls, Nené’s status is apparent: she is a
‘servetta.’
For Nené’s benefit, and through Nené’s life-giving presence, Dolly imitates her
mother’s wealthy friends as she pretends to be each of the various dolls by impersonating the affectations of the society ladies who frequent her household: the modern,
cigarette-wielding ‘contessina Lulù,’ the bold and brazen American ‘mistress Betsy,’
the ever sickly ‘donna Mariù,’ the impossibly demanding ‘marchesina Mimı̀.’ Nené is
entranced and seems to believe Dolly’s pretend play, with its intimate manipulation
of the toys’ imagined life and physical details, including ‘le mutandine coi merletti e i
fiocchettini di seta’ (p. 692).
Tired at the end of this game, Dolly decides to give Nené one of her fancy porcelain dolls as a gift, settling for the hard-to-please ‘marchesina Mimı̀’; this gift is so
overwhelming for Nené that she can hardly believe what is happening and is on the
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verge of tears. Nené’s mother, Dolly’s live-in nanny, attempts to refuse the gift,
claiming it too beautiful for Nené, too inappropriate for a little girl who must
attend to her father’s needs and has no time to play: ‘È mammina di casa,
Nené: deve attendere a servire il babbo, e non ha tempo di giocare, ché guaj se
il babbo non trova tutto pronto, la sera’ (p. 693). Nené has been established as
someone beyond dolls. She does not have to pretend to be a caregiver because she
is one already: previously, of a younger brother who died in her arms, left to her care
when their mother went to work as Dolly’s wet nurse first and later as her nanny; and
now of her father, a violent drunk who beats Nené every night and tells her that he
wishes she had died instead of his son (his violence is the reason, we are told, why
Nené’s mother refuses to go back to live with him and her daughter, preferring to
reside at her employer’s house). Dolly and her mother insist on the gift, and Nené
leaves their home so stunned as to feel dead; she goes back to her hovel, ‘senza vedere
nulla, senza sentire nulla, quasi alienata d’ogni senso di vita’ (p. 694). This difficult
doll, ‘la marchesina Mimı̀,’ seems alive, even more alive, mysteriously, than Nené
herself: ‘Le viveva invece lı̀ sul petto, stretta sotto il braccio, quella bambola meravigliosa; d’una vita incomprensibile però.’ Nené is even afraid she will not be able to
understand this fancy doll, should it begin to speak to her with the voice and the
language Dolly had given it during their shared playtime. The thought of playing
with this toy does not even enter Nené’s mind; only serving the doll seemed appropriate, though she has no idea how because she does not speak the doll’s language, nor does she know anything about the doll’s lifestyle: ‘Non le s’affacciava
neppur per ombra alla mente che avrebbe potuto giocarci, con quella bambola.
Servirla, sı̀, avrebbe potuto servirla; ma come, se non sapeva nemmeno parlarle?
Se non capiva nulla della vita a cui la bambola era avvezza?’ (p. 694). ‘Servitù’ is
Nené’s inescapable condition, even with respect to an inanimate object designed to
entertain her.
When she brings the doll into the hovel where she lives with her father, Nené
begins to see her own home with different eyes – with the doll’s aristocratic eyes, that
is: ‘Certo, per sé, la marchesina Mimı̀ aveva gli occhi di vetro e non vedeva. Ma
vedeva lei, Nené, ora, la miseria brutta di quel suo bugigattolino con gli occhi della
marchesina Mimı̀ abituati al lusso della cameretta da cui veniva’ (p. 694). In order to
help the doll feel at home and counting on the doll’s memory of its former owner,
Nené sets Mimı̀ down on a blue apron that was a hand-me-down from Dolly: even in
its current torn and faded state, ‘era stato della Dolly, e forse la marchesina Mimı̀ lo
avrebbe riconosciuto’ (p. 694). Nené suffers for the doll she was given, because there
is nothing in her hovel to make the doll come alive as it had among its many
accessories and companions in Dolly’s room. With a loud sigh, Nené enters a
make-believe state where she imagines the doll as a real-life marchioness and herself
as a servant as well dressed as her own mother when she serves Dolly (for Nené, her
mother’s white work uniform makes her unapproachable: it is as if her own mother
belongs to a higher social class than herself, and ‘a lei non pareva più la sua mamma,’
[p. 693]. In her pretend play, Nené speaks both with her own voice, a servant’s voice,
and with the imperious voice of Mimı̀, the demanding, aristocratic doll. By being
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allowed into the little girl’s psyche, the reader sees and hears what Nené herself ‘sees’
and ‘hears’:
Volse il capo, e in un momento, di nuovo abbagliata, vide in un angolo lercio del
bugigattolino la cameretta della marchesina Mimı̀. Cameretta? Un gran camerone,
col tappeto azzurro vellutato, lı̀ per terra, e il lettino di legno bianco, col parato a
padiglione di seta celeste, e di là l’armadietto a specchio, le sedioline dorate, la specchiera; e vide sé vestita bene come la mamma, tutta intenta a servire quella padroncina
esigente e capricciosa. . . ‘Pronto il bagno?’ ‘Ecco, un momentino, signora
Marchesina. . .’ ‘Ma il mio bagno dev’essere pronto subito, appena mi alzo! Che fate?
Datemi adesso il mio cioccolato e i biscottini! La mia vestaglia, subito!’ (pp. 695–696)11
Suddenly, however, Nené experiences ‘un brivido di terrore alla schiena,’ as her
engrossing pretend play is interrupted by a ‘manaccia scabra, enorme’ that grabs
the doll, snaps off its head with two fingers and throws the pieces – ‘quella testa col
cappellino e il busto decapitato, due strazii orribili, informi’ (p. 697) – out the
window at the same time as the hand’s owner, Nené’s father, kicks his daughter
and exclaims: ‘Su, in piedi! Non voglio signore, io, per casa!’ (p. 697). Nené’s
father physically denies Nené that very childhood play that we today understand
as a necessary part and indeed a right of childhood (that he physically abuses her
makes everything much worse, of course). But Nené’s own psyche has trapped her, as
well: she is unable to play anything other than the servant; even the role of welldressed servant such as her mother, for her, is just a fantasy. ‘Servitù’ is her destiny.
Contessa Lara’s and Pirandello’s stories have much in common, although the
former conveys a proto-feminist critique of the subtle limitations imposed on
upper-class women whereas the latter criticizes the more evident limitations of
the very poor. Both stories feature female protagonists, an upper-class young
woman and an impoverished little girl, respectively. Both protagonists acquire,
in the course of the story, a doll they become increasingly attached to and interact with in ways that do not conform to acceptable definitions of doll play. In
both of these stories, reproduction features prominently: Contessa Lara’s protagonist goes mad partly because she cannot be a mother; Nené has for all intents
and purposes lost her mother, and her father’s fall into alcoholism is related to
the death of his infant son in the arms of his daughter-turned-mother – while the
children’s mother was away caring for another woman’s child. This discomfort
with mothering is an important reason why, towards the end of both stories, the
male figure in the protagonist’s life, husband in the earlier tale, father in the later
one, interrupts the doll play in ways far more brutal than circumstances would
explain. As we have seen, in Straparola’s tale, too, it is the neighbor’s husband
who throws the doll out the window. Why such violence against an inanimate
object, one may ask, and why on the part of a man? It is with this question that I
would like to conclude.
In his book on contemporary porcelain doll collecting, Robertson identifies a
generally aggressive attitude toward dolls on the part of males, claiming that, even
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in a liberal context where playing with dolls by both genders is regarded as healthy
and desirable:
boys habitually react with venom against dolls . . . Repeatedly, we found it was mostly
boys and men who most disliked and feared dolls, and who were intimidated by their
glassy gaze or could not bear their frilly prettiness. These are themes that weave their
way through countless folktales, novels, and horror movies. (Robertson, 2004: 7)
Analogous thoughts on this destructive attitude toward dolls may be found in a text
dating from a time closer to Contessa Lara and Pirandello, Rainer Maria Rilke’s
essay from 1913–1914, ‘Dolls: On the wax dolls of Lotte Pritzel’ (Rilke, 1994).
Rilke’s scathing condemnation of dolls emphasizes the difference between dolls
and other objects, and on the soullessness of the former. Most objects, Rilke
claims, absorb the human emotions bestowed upon them; Rilke mentions ‘how
grateful things are normally for tenderness,’ because human tenderness ‘breathes
new life into them’ (1994: 2); a doll, conversely, ‘would almost enrage us by its
horrible dense forgetfulness, and the hatred which must always have been an unconscious part of our connection with it would burst to the surface’ (p. 3).
‘Hatred’ of dolls, for Rilke, lies below the surface of man’s relationship with them
(and I use the word ‘man’ advisedly, here, since Rilke’s theories are hardly gender
neutral). Because of their indifference to the child’s existence and their unresponsiveness to the child’s emotions, dolls are powerful objects that, eventually and
inevitably, make the child feel cheated (as is evident in Gozzano’s ‘Prima delusione’).
Rilke’s essay, written from the perspective of an adult male whose own relationship
with dolls, in childhood, was a problematic one (Simms, 1996: 665), provides some
insight into possible reasons for the aggression against dolls displayed in our two
short stories, ‘La bambola’ and ‘Servitù,’ by the adult male characters; this aggression is intimately related to the role the two dolls play in each protagonist’s life. In
the words of a Rilke critic, ‘a large part of the rage, hatred, and aggression against
the doll is the memory of the lost union with the mother, for which the doll is merely a
poor substitute’ (Simms, 1996: 671). This interpretation fits perfectly with how
prominent and problematic the role of mother is for both Contessa Lara’s and
Pirandello’s protagonists: the former wants desperately to become a mother, and
the latter has, for all intents and purposes, lost her mother and is expected to act like
a mother herself.
Still, even without resorting to psychoanalytic interpretations of the male characters’ reactions to the dolls in these stories, the rage that the two men express against
the two dolls clearly goes beyond a normal reaction to the make-believe scene they
witness. It is a violence that must make the reader wonder about its origin. Indeed,
for these male characters, too, as for the wife of one and the daughter of the other,
the doll works as a catalyst. Husband and father, perhaps, understand all too well
what the doll has come to stand for in their wife’s or daughter’s experience. The hope
for an unattainable maternity in one case and the hope for a better existence – even if
it is still a servant’s existence – in the other are clearly embodied in the doll for these
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two men as they are for the women in their lives. But whereas such hopes, for the
female characters, are temporarily fulfilled through a relationship with their dolls,
the same hopes, for these two men, are impossible with or without dolls. The dolls
remind them of this impossibility and it is perhaps also for this reason that they must
be destroyed.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or
not-for-profit sectors.
Notes
1. See my essay (Mazzoni, 2012), where I examine such texts as Contessa Lara’s Il romanzo
della bambola, Elsa Morante’s Le straordinarie avventure di Caterina, Bianza Pitzorno’s La
bambola dell’alchimista (1988) and La bambola viva (1994), and Donatella Ziliotto’s La
bambola, la pazza (1993). On dolls in Italian literature for children, see also Boero and
Fochesato (1999).
2. The date of publication of this posthumous poem is unknown; see Gozzano (1980: 784–785).
3. It has been said that ‘nei suoi scritti la Contessa Lara non parla di emancipazione femminile
e non mette in discussione la legittimità di valori e istituzioni tradizionali, limitandosi a
denunciare la prevalente responsabilità maschile nella crisi di relazioni amorose. È un
atteggiamento condiviso dalla maggior parte delle scrittrici di fine secolo’ (Scappaticci,
2003: 133).
4. ‘Dolls were a distinct commodity in Europe as early as the seventeenth century, and a
separate niche for collectible fashion dolls for adults was clearly established by the late
nineteenth century’ (Robertson, 2004: 30). In Il re delle bambole, De Amicis notes: ‘Per
alcune, tra l’ultima bambola che comprarono per sé e la prima che vengono a comperare
per la propria bambina, non passano che cinque o sei anni’ (1980: 18).
5. Historian Franco Cardini reminds us that, in 15th-century Florence, ‘bambole riccamente
vestite e adornate . . . venivano offerte in dono a giovani spose o addirittura a ragazze in
procinto di entrare in monastero o in convento,’ and that the medieval period, ‘ha in effetti
avvertito in tutta la sua drammaticità la valenza polisemica dell’oggetto-bambola: giocattolo certo (e magari dotato di valore addestrativo), ma anche imago, ‘‘doppio’’ dell’essere
umano colto nel momento più fragile ma anche più ricco di potenzialità della sua esistenza
(cioè la prima infanzia), quindi—si direbbe—animula nelle mani di chi la manipola’
(Cardini, 1987: 27).
6. As Toffoletti notes, for many Barbie doll collectors, ‘it is through craft practices such as
making doll’s clothes that they begin to formulate their own stories about Barbie. These
stories provide a medium for self-disclosure that allows the subject to explore the difficulties of conforming to socially sanctioned models of womanhood’ (2007: 62).
7. It may be relevant to compare Contessa Lara’s protagonist with the contemporary phenomenon of doll collecting so aptly discussed in Robertson’s book: ‘For all its apparent
childish triviality, the porcelain collector doll obliges us to think again about the distinctions we habitually make between people and things, feelings and meanings, passion and
reason’ (p. IX).
8. See for example Elsa Morante (1959) and Bianca Pitzorno (1988).
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9. See www.donnediparola.eu/index.php/autrici/45-evelina-cattermole-alias-contessa-lara/
76-evelina-cattermole-alias-contessa-lara.html (accessed October 2013).
10. In ‘La febbre mangina’ (Favole al telefono, 1993, originally published in 1960), Gianni
Rodari writes that ‘Quando la bambina è malata, anche le sue bambole debbono ammalarsi per farle compagnia’ (p. 98).
11. The suspicion surrounding fashion dolls in the 19th and early 20th centuries may be read
in De Amicis’s Il re delle bambole, when the dollmaker tells the writer: ‘Lei credeva forse
che fosse il lusso delle mamme quello che sveglia l’ambizione nelle figliole . . . Si disinganni; è il lusso delle bambole’ (p. 11).
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