As a kid, I loved dolls; I had dolls of all kinds except for barbies (for some reason I never really liked them). I used to have doll houses with little doll furniture and utensils, little showers and curtains, little combs and clips and pots and pans. I used to imagine being a part of their family, playing with them, teaching them, mothering them and even creating magic with them as I took off on one adventure after other, to the hills and distant sea shores, searching for toadstool rings and fairy shoes. During all of these escapades, I always felt like I was my doll's best friend, it never occured to me that my dolls might ever find me annoying or if they would prefer to do something other than what I wanted them to do ... Recently, as I was wandering through poetry land, I came across 'The Dolls' by WB Yeats, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century and that's when these thoughts entered my head, I am so glad I did not read this poem as a kid, and I hope no little girl ever reads it.
The Dolls
- WB Yeats
A doll in the doll-maker's house
Looks at the cradle and bawls:
"That is an insult to us."
But the oldest of all the dolls,
Who had seen, being kept for show,
Generations of his sort,
Out-screams the whole shelf: "Although
There's not a man can report
Evil of this place,
The man and the woman bring
Hither, to our disgrace,
A noisy and filthy thing."
Hearing him groan and stretch
The doll-maker's wife is aware
Her husband has heard the wretch,
And crouched by the arm of his chair,
She murmurs into his ear,
Head upon shoulder leant:
"My dear, my dear, O dear,
It was an accident."
