Jurado

Aimee Jurado

Dr. Kelman

ENG 307

3/12/19

Dolls and Shells: The Burdens of Exploitation

“The Youngest Doll” by Rosario Ferré encapsulates the harsh realities of women being

exploited by men and the burdens that their exploitation entails. The story follows a woman who

becomes a victim to a debilitating prawn bite, ultimately becoming a source of income for a

corrupt doctor who never allows her to heal. Handicapped by her accident, the woman devotes

her life to caring for her nieces and crafting personalized dolls for each of the nine girls. The aunt

gives a doll to each girl on their birthday, building the doll to resemble their likeness and their

exact size that given year. The accumulation of these dolls and the physical space they occupy

within the home is representative of the space and weight that exploitation occupies in the lives

of women. The amount of space these dolls occupy also reflect the inability for women to grow

beyond their past, leaving them in a constant and inescapable cycle of exploitation.

Every doll crafted by the aunt is made in resemblance of each girl, meaning they are life-

sized and occupy space in the same way people do. Ferré describes the overwhelming presence

of the dolls saying that, “opening the door gave the impression of entering a dovecote, or the

ballroom in the Czanna’s palace, or a warehouse in which someone had spread out a row of

tobacco leaves to dry. But the aunt did not enter the room for any of these pleasures” (Ferré 245).

While in the story the aunt only dedicates a single room to the dolls, this description of the space

suggests that the dolls not only occupy physical space but exude an overwhelmingly large

presence. Comparing their presence to that of a ballroom or a dovecote, Ferré is also indicating
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that the presence of the dolls is not peaceful but rather busy, cramped, and uncontrollable. These

connotations develop a basis in the story in which anxiety is building in both the home and the

aunt related to the accumulation of these dolls.

The presence of the dolls can also be seen as a burden in the aunt’s life in the way she

enters the room but not for feelings of pleasure. The aunt crafts these dolls not for pleasure but

rather to cope with her “incurable” prawn bite. Since the aunt makes these dolls as a result of her

doctor’s exploitation, it can be inferred that if given the choice the aunt would not have chosen to

devote her life to dolls and would not have wanted their overwhelming presence in her home.

Similar to the way the aunt coexists with her prawn, the aunt is simply accepting the dolls’

presence. The dolls can also be compared to prawns in the way that prawns molt out of their

physical shells and how the dolls act as metaphorical shells of who the girls once were,

“measuring out each year of their lives against the hollow they left in her arms” (Ferré 245). For

prawns, their old shells are forgotten and no longer occupy space in the prawn’s life once they

are grown out of. For the girls however, the dolls remain in their lives as empty hollows, or

shells, of who they once were, impeding their ability to forget their old selves completely. In

regards to the exploitation of women, this could be Ferré’s way of illustrating an inability for

women to move past exploitation that has happened throughout history and how carrying these

“shells” remain a burden for them today.

With this in mind, it’s possible that the reason the wedding doll is the last doll the aunt

makes for the girls is because the aunt knows that burden takes different shapes and forms. For

the aunt, the dolls symbolize the burden of exploitation and she knows that the girls will

experience their own version of burden within their marriages. Going off of this, the wedding

doll then exemplifies how this burden is carried by each girl not only throughout their childhood
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but even into adulthood and marriage. It can even be argued that the aunt is aware of this cycle in

the way she handles the dolls’ eyes, “[leaving] them submerged at the bottom of the stream for a

few days, so that they could learn to recognize the slightest stirrings of the prawn’s antennae”

(Ferré 246). Since the dolls are also representative of the nieces, it’s possible that the aunt wants

the girls to be aware of the ways in which prawns behave. In this way, the aunt doesn’t want her

nieces to be blind to the intentions and actions of prawn, or exploiters, as to not get hurt and

debilitated the same way she did.

By her actions however, it seems as though the aunt does more to reinforce this cycle

than to break it. When giving the wedding doll to her nieces, the aunt “would reassure the

grooms by explaining to them that the doll was merely a sentimental ornament, of the kind that

people used to place on the lid of grand pianos in the olden days” (Ferré 246). There is

something interesting about the way in which the aunt describes the doll – a symbol of her

exploitation and burdens – as something sentimental, and resembling something of the “olden

days.” It is as if the aunt is suggesting that this burden is something of tradition and worth

holding onto. In this way, the burden of exploitation is systematic in the lives of women. Other

ways the aunt yields to this system is in the way she doesn’t react when the doctor confesses to

his son that he has been using her to pay for his schooling. It is almost as if she wasn’t surprised

that she had been exploited, and maybe even expected it. Even the youngest niece takes no action

against her husband despite realizing “it wasn’t only her husband’s silhouette that was made of

paper, but his soul as well” (Ferré 248). By the aunt and niece noticing an issue but not acting on

it, this could then be commentary on how the passiveness of women to end the cycle reinforces

the system of exploitation. This is not to say though that women are self-imposed victims but
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rather, the burden of exploitation is just so deeply ingrained and debilitating that women are

unsure how to break the cycle.

Acting as a symbol of their oppression, Ferré uses the dolls to amplify the overwhelming

presence of exploitation and to illustrate the ways in which these feelings and this treatment

occupy space in the lives of women. This occupation of space is not only overwhelming in the

lives of women but also overpowering. Through the aunt’s passive actions, it becomes evident

that there is something methodical in the way women are treated which leads to a system of their

oppression. Interestingly, Ferré doesn’t seem to be suggesting any type of solution to this cycle;

instead, she is highlighting the ways in which it is systematic and unavoidable. In this way, Ferré

could be showcasing the exploitation of women in a new perspective, highlighting its long term

effects on the lives and nature of women.

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Works Cited

Ferré, Rosario. “The Youngest Doll.” Trans. Rosario Ferré and Diana Vélez. Feminist

Studies 12.2 (Summer 1986): 243-249.