The Golden Gate: A Novel

The Dy-Dee doll is a symbol of transferred trauma and the violent destruction of innocence. Far more than a simple clue, the doll acts as a physical incarnation of Iris Stafford’s physical and psychological pain, becoming a key that links Walter Wilkinson’s murder in 1944 directly to the tragedy at the Claremont Hotel in 1930. The doll’s symbolic weight is established early through Isabella’s fragmented memory: “My Dy-Dee doll died twice. Once when I snapped her head off…and once under the sun lamp trying to get warm, she melted” (7). This childhood recollection foreshadows the dual tragedies of the novel. The doll’s first “death” represents a simple act of childish anger, but the second, a melting under intense heat, evokes the immense pressure that destroyed the Bainbridge family from within. The doll found in Wilkinson’s closet is not just any toy; it is a meticulously altered effigy of Iris. Its melted left foot mirrors Iris’s own foot since she had polio as a child, and a deep groove carved into its arm matches the location of bruises on Iris’s body, suggesting a deliberate and sinister transference of pain. The doll becomes a vessel for Iris’s identity and trauma, and it is a relic that Wilkinson kept for 14 years.