The Dollhouse

These chapters use Rose’s physical occupation of Darby’s apartment as a device to collapse the temporal and psychological distance between the dual timelines. When Rose, displaced and desperate, moves into the vacant unit, the past ceases to be the subject of her objective journalistic inquiry and becomes a subjective, tangible environment. The apartment becomes an archive, a physical container for decades of preserved memory. This structural choice is pivotal, as Rose’s discovery of Sam Buckley’s spice scrapbook and the Voice-O-Graph recording transforms her relationship to the story. As the direct, if illicit, inheritor of primary artifacts, Rose is now enmeshed in the lives of her subjects. The inscription in the scrapbook—“Darby, Stay where you are. Once the coast is clear, I’ll find you and we’ll make our escape” (120)—is a private, urgent message that Rose intercepts. By listening to the record of Esme and Darby singing, Rose bears witness to an intimate moment frozen in time. Her act of inhabiting Darby’s space transgresses personal and ethical boundaries. It also serves the narrative’s purpose of blurring the line between past and present, subject and investigator.

These chapters juxtapose two distinct crises of female autonomy to develop the theme of The Illusions and Realities of Female Independence. Rose, a modern professional woman, discovers the precariousness of her self-sufficiency when Griff’s departure precipitates a collapse of her financial and domestic stability. Her reliance on free accommodation in his apartment, coupled with the new strain of her father’s declining health, reveals that her perceived independence was contingent upon her relationship. In the 1952 timeline, Darby navigates a parallel struggle. The Katharine Gibbs secretarial school represents a socially sanctioned path to a limited form of independence, one explicitly framed as a holding pattern “until [the women] get married” (86). Its possibilities for the future are deeply constrained, as exemplified in the typing and phone-etiquette lessons: Graduates are expected to perform pleasant, menial automaticity. Conversely, the Flatted Fifth jazz offers the chance for authentic self-expression: Darby’s successful impromptu performance onstage is an act of self-actualization. However, there is no guarantee of artistic success or long-term financial stability in this potential future. By placing these two narratives side by side, the novel demonstrates that while the social frameworks governing women’s lives have evolved, the tension between self-definition and external dependency remains a persistent challenge.

The narrative also probes Friendship, Betrayal, and the Complexities of Female Bonds, illustrating how class and social hierarchy shape these relationships. The bond between Darby and Esme fractures when Darby gains access to social circles from which Esme is excluded. Darby is eager to capitalize on her newfound worldliness by bragging about going to the Flatted Fifth to her fellow students, but she leaves out her connection to Esme, aware that their cross-class friendship will be looked down on. In response, Esme acts out in jealousy of the class divisions that define their lives. When she confronts Darby about spending time with the models, whom she dismissively calls “giraffes” (135), her anger stems from a sense of both social and personal betrayal. She perceives Darby’s new friendships as an alignment with the power structure that relegates Esme to the role of an invisible servant. Stella’s relationship with Darby further complicates this dynamic. Her apology and invitation to a fashion show appear to be based in real feeling, yet her warning to Darby about Esme is ambiguous. It could be interpreted as genuine concern, but it also functions as a maneuver to pull Darby away from a “lower-class” influence and into her own more privileged orbit. The introduction of Charlotte, whose publishing career was secured through family connections, reinforces the idea that social mobility for women in this era is often based on connections, a world that Esme cannot enter but that might be accessible to Darby. These interactions reveal that female solidarity is often threatened by external pressures.

The novel employs the motifs of bebop jazz music, food, and fashion to contrast the prescribed femininity of the Barbizon and the subversive authenticity of the downtown jazz scene. Bebop jazz, with its improvisational structure, provides a soundtrack of artistic freedom; Darby’s exposure to it unlocks repressed feelings of grief and loss. This connection to the real self is furthered by the symbol of Sam’s spices, which represent a creative, multicultural form of self-expression, pleasure, and openness. In contrast, the world of the Barbizon is governed by narrow gender expectations. The fashion show, the dress codes for the Gibbs students, and the models’ glamorous attire all underscore a social order where a woman’s identity is linked to how she presents herself. The beret that Stella buys for Darby is another such symbol—a token of acceptance into a more sophisticated world that creates a visible rift in her friendship with Esme. This symbolic contrast establishes Darby’s central conflict as a choice between two entirely different ways of being.

However, beneath the veneer of strictures around women’s behavior are matching notes of rebellion from both sides of Darby’s life. Esme’s application of makeup to Darby’s face before her performance is a transformative and even transgressive act, a literal mask that allows Darby to perform a new identity. As Esme directs her, “For ten minutes of your life, forget about your mother. You will be one of those girls, the ones who fool around and don’t care and get into trouble” (112). Esme’s reference to sexual freedom echoes how Stella describes her past to Rose. In 1952, Stella is exactly the kind of “girl” whom Esme evokes—one who is happy to “fool around” with many young men as an escape valve from the pressures of performing “proper” femininity.