The Doll as a Girl's Double

The doll is presented as a girl’s double: a substitute through which she can imagine and relate to herself when no part of her body offers the kind of external counterpart that the boy finds in his penis. But this double is not an autonomous subject. It represents the body as a whole and as a passive object, anticipating a social education that encourages the girl to see herself as something to adorn, display, and care for. At the same time, the doll becomes her child, giving play a second direction: she rehearses the authority and care assigned to mothers.## A substitute selfThe argument first sets the doll against the boy’s experience of his body. In the account’s framework, the boy can treat his penis as an alter ego, an external object in which he locates autonomy and power. The girl, by contrast, cannot identify herself with any single bodily part in the same way. A doll is supplied as a foreign object that can take the place of such a double. The passage notes that even a bandage around an injured finger is called a poupée in French, but it is a figure with a human face—or, less elaborately, a corn husk or piece of wood—that most fully serves this function.## A whole body made passiveUnlike the boy’s bodily counterpart, the doll represents the entire body and is passive. The girl is encouraged to invest herself in her person as a whole and to regard it as an inert given. She pampers and dresses the doll as she dreams of being pampered and dressed, then comes to imagine herself as a marvelous doll. Compliments and admonishments teach her the distinction between being pretty and ugly; she learns that pleasing others requires looking pretty, and compares herself with princesses and fairies. The doll therefore links self-image to an external gaze: the girl is encouraged not merely to act, but to make herself into an image for others.## The doll as child and rehearsal of authorityThe doll’s role as double does not exclude its role as child. In play, the girl scolds, punishes, and consoles it, defending herself against her mother while taking on a mother’s dignity. By educating and caring for the doll, she can experience herself as sovereign over it; play can also turn punitive, as when she tears off its arms, beats, or tortures it. The doll thus accommodates contrary positions: the girl entrusts herself to it as a version of herself, yet exercises authority over it as a dependent child.## Social teaching, not innate instinctThe doll’s maternal meaning is reinforced by the girl’s surroundings. She observes that childcare falls to her mother, hears stories and reads books that confirm this assignment, and is encouraged to look forward to motherhood as a future source of fulfillment. Giving her dolls makes that imagined future tangible in childhood. The account consequently rejects an innate, mysterious maternal instinct as the explanation for this play: the girl learns the role through observation, instruction, and repeated confirmation. The doll’s double function—self-image and child—shows how childhood play can rehearse both the girl’s objectification and the domestic vocation prescribed for her.