The Compleat And Actual Adventures of Marcella White Campbell

Did you have a baby doll, once?

I had lots of baby dolls. Orange Blossom I received the Christmas my little sister turned one; when you squeezed her stomach she “blew” orange-scented kisses. And Martha Jean (renamed after my grandmother), my first treasured Cabbage Patch Kid.

Eventually, these dolls were lost to history, so to speak. I don’t have any of my old dolls. I’m an adult woman with two children. Kids play with dolls to prepare for parenthood, after all.

Or do they? Is something infinitely weirder going on?

Dare Wright’s The Lonely Doll series (recently reissued) followed the richly photographed adventures of the author’s own childhood doll, Edith (named after the author’s mother). Dare Wright, herself, sometimes coddled but mostly smothered by her mother, never stopped playing with Edith; the books were born of her already obsessive hobby of photographing herself and her doll in various handmade costumes.

Jean Nathan’s meticulously researched Dare Wright biography, “The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright,” argues conclusively that Dare Wright explored her sad childhood and stifling adulthood in her photographs and stories. According to Nathan, “Edith became a lonely doll, as Dare once had been a lonely little girl, wishing for a brother, however naughty, to play with, and a father who might be enlisted as a reliable parent to care for them both. In this rendition of the story, Edith’s wish comes true” (163).

Outside her home, Dare was a successful author, a sophisticated and beautiful sometimes model, pursued (hopelessly) by wealthy men; inside, Dare reenacted her traumatic childhood events with a cast of two teddy bears and a doll.  Dare never married or had children — she was too damaged for that kind of emotional intimacy — but I don’t think having a child would necessarily have changed her relationship with Edith. Dare didn’t see Edith as a baby, but as her own mirror image. With Edith, Dare could forever relive childhood, always closing with a happy ending.

I was left unsettled by the end of the biography, not thinking of Dare, but of myself. It had never occurred to me that, as a child, I might have thought of the baby dolls as versions of myself, not merely babies to play with. It makes a lot of sense though — children stop playing with dolls around the age they are beginning to craft what will ultimately be their adult identities.

I stopped playing with dolls around fifth grade, when I started being aggressively bullied. At about the same time, I developed a rich and detailed fantasy life, inventing stories where isolated young people found companionship, bullies were vanquished, and everyone lived happily ever after. Twenty-plus years later, I’m still writing stories about loners making good.

Dare Wright played with dolls well into her sixties. I don’t play with dolls — I write stories with characters.

That’s very different, right?