Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly
As children, dolls can be physical manifestations of our most intimate fantasy worlds. We can develop entire histories and personalities for our dolls, and they can help us to navigate the adult world. As we grow, we similarly idolize and identify with authors and fictional characters. The women writers whose work survives to today remind us that we’re not alone, that another woman somewhere understood our feelings about being human beings and about being women.
Virginia Woolf
The brilliant Etsy craft vendor DollMonster combines youthful pleasure in toys with adult joy in literature in her brilliant wooden sachet dolls of female writers, many of whom were women’s rights activists and feminist theorists. Just as my childhood doll, fortified with my own imagination, emboldened me to bravely enter the world of grown-ups, these dolls offer us an inspiring symbol of the women writers we hold most dear. Virginia Woolf is my personal favorite; who’s yours?
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Anne Bronte
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Beatrix Potter
Elizabeth Gaskell
Emily Dickinson
George Eliot
Thanks to DollMonster and Flavorwire
Images via DollMonster
