The Doll's House

“The Doll’s House” examines the intricacies of girlhood within the insular setting of a rural New Zealand village. By using free indirect discourse that allows the reader to access several different characters’ consciousnesses, Mansfield establishes a somewhat objective scene. Girlhood is a tricky maze to navigate, especially for girls who find themselves lacking the benefits of socioeconomic privilege, and the changing point of view teases out the complexities of an often-minimized social setting.

The text critiques the trust that children have in adults and suggests that children may use the inability to trust the adults around them as opportunities to forge their own identities. The classroom becomes a battleground as the alliances and Social Divisions of the Adult World are played out through the proxies of their children. Though enforcing these socioeconomic divisions only harms the learning experiences and children’s sense of self, the adults believe that these conservative values must be entrenched and perpetuated in the next generation, protecting and preserving the upper-class townspeople’s reputations. Even the teacher reinforces this dynamic by looking down on the Kelveys and treating them poorly in comparison to her other students. Of the upper-class girls, only Kezia takes a moment to critically examine the maltreatment of the Kelveys by the adults in her life. Though it is difficult to go against what she has been taught, this represents a moment of crucial development for her.

This need to critically examine authority figures and institutions also mirrors the relationship between Mansfield and New Zealand. Finding her home country’s reputation for institutionalized racism and its treatment of Māori tribes unbearable, Mansfield declared herself an expatriate and relocated to Europe, which she believed to be more open-minded about minorities and indigenous people. Unable to trust her motherland, Mansfield set out on her own. In casting doubt on authority in “The Doll’s House,” Mansfield invites the reader to critically examine the leaders and institutions in their own lives and decide if these are worthy of obedience and subservience.

Though Mansfield wrote this story in Europe, the story is set in and clearly influenced by New Zealand. Post-war New Zealand, like other sites of British imperial conquest, found itself experiencing an identity crisis. Due to their isolation, New Zealand and Australia often benefited from less oversight by England than, for instance, neighboring Ireland. This freedom (relative to other colonies) gave them the moniker “the social laboratory,” and the tiny nation of New Zealand gained prominence as a site for progressive political experiments. For instance, in 1893, New Zealand became the first self-governing nation that gave women the right to vote.

After World War I, New Zealanders gained an even greater sense of autonomy; they had performed well on the world stage, and though they still somewhat benefited from a symbiotic relationship with England, they were more prepared to forge their own capitalistic identity. However, like any teenager, the young nation of New Zealand experienced considerable growing pains. Colonial administrators’ mistreatment and exploitation of Māori tribes would not be forgotten, and those who were eager to create a greater sense of national unification were willing to overlook this bloody history. While Kezia represents Modernist questioning of imperialist values, Isabel represents the colonial mindset; she is willing to perpetuate discrimination because she benefits from it.

The mood of the text enforces this sense of discomfort. The story’s vivid imagery establishes the beauty of the bucolic surroundings, and yet the children are enmeshed in an unsettling internal conflict. It is tempting to succumb to the relaxation promised by the pastoral, and yet to do so is to become complacent against the struggles of those who do not have the privilege to relax.

Because the author and most of the characters are female, feminist critics often highlight the way “The Doll’s House” comments on femininity. Appearances and clothes yield social currency and determine the extent to which a female character has performed femininity appropriately. The ability to perform appropriate femininity is heavily dependent on socioeconomic status; the Kelveys’ mother cannot afford new, feminine clothes for her girls, so they are forced to wear hand-me-downs that make them look boyish. Conventional female behaviors like playing with a doll’s house are praised, but unconventional female behavior like Kezia swinging on the gate outside is viewed as potentially dangerous. Indeed, this behavior leads to her inviting the Kelveys into the sacrosanct courtyard, which would not have happened if she were playing with skirts upstairs like her sisters.

In 19th-century Realism, literature and paintings that featured girls swinging on gates outside were coded as tomboys, figures of gender deviance and disruption. Mansfield would have been aware of this convention and the precedent set by George Eliot’s Maggie Tulliver and John George Brown’s swinging tomboys. Kezia’s small act of defiance―her refusal to contain her body indoors―enables her greatest act of social deviance: class mixing.

While Mansfield’s works have been the subject of feminist criticism, it is also helpful to consider them from a Marxist point of view. Like several other works of Modernist literature, Mansfield’s texts advocate for a new world order that shifts from antiquated, stratified, prewar ways of thinking. Part of this new world order includes overcoming class-based hierarchies. The text’s focus on class differences emphasizes the Marxist feminist idea that eliminating class hierarchies would necessarily improve women’s social status. The narrative structure also supports a Marxist reading, as the shifting points of view focus on the interiority of upper- and lower-class characters alike.

In the end, Kezia’s experiment with equality goes awry: The Kelveys see the doll’s house, but Kezia is punished for interacting with lower-class children. Aunt Beryl projects her feelings of powerlessness, rooted in gender and class, onto the Kelvey girls, reinforcing her place in the hierarchy. Kezia is sent upstairs, and the Kelveys are banished, indicating that the social order will remain intact. However, the Kelvey girls are forever changed by seeing the doll’s house. Else remarks, “I seen the little lamp” (13), and she has forgotten Aunt Beryl’s scolding entirely. She has literally seen the light, implying that the seeds of revolution have been planted.