The Dolls House

Question 1

Characters

Answer 1

Isabel, Lottie, Kezia - 3 chilldren. Isabel is the oldest and most dominant. Lottie followers her lead on most things. However, Kezia the smallest and youngest one has a heart of pure kindness and only knows what’s good.

Question 2

Who are the Kelvey’s?

Answer 2

The Kelvey’s are the poorest girls in the school. (Lil and Else). the daughters of the village washerwoman and the poorest girls at school. Everyone in the village gossips about the Kelveys, saying that their father is in prison, and many children, the Burnells included, aren’t allowed to talk to them.

Question 3

Plot Summary

Answer 3

The story follows the Burnell sisters, who receive a beautiful doll’s house as a gift. The doll’s house becomes a symbol of social class and privilege in their community, as the girls show it off to their classmates.

Question 4

Social Class

Answer 4

The doll’s house represents the divide between the upper and lower classes in society, highlighting the cruelty and unfairness of social hierarchies.

Question 5

Innocence

Answer 5

The story explores the loss of innocence as the Burnell sisters begin to understand the implications of social class and privilege.

Question 6

Conformity and Non-conformity

Answer 6

Characters like Kezia Burnell challenge societal norms by befriending the Kelvey sisters, who are considered “lower class.”

Question 7

Kezia Burnell

Answer 7

The youngest Burnell sister, who shows kindness and compassion to the Kelvey sisters.

Question 8

Aunt Beryl

Answer 8

Represents the conventional and judgmental attitude of society.

Question 9

The Kelvey Sisters

Answer 9

Lil and Else Kelvey, who are shunned by the other children due to their lower social status.

Question 10

Symbolism

Answer 10

The doll’s house symbolizes the rigid class structure of society and the way people judge and exclude others based on their social standing.

Question 11

Conflict

Answer 11

The conflict between the Burnell sisters’ desire to be kind to the Kelvey sisters and society’s expectations of class-based segregation.

Question 12

Irony

Answer 12

The irony lies in the fact that the most beautiful and perfect thing in the story, the doll’s house, is also the source of cruelty and division.

Question 13

The “sacking” covering the doll’s house is taken off to reveal the exterior of the house. It is painted a “dark, oily, spinach green,” with two chimneys and a door that looks “like a little slab of toffee.” There are also four real windows and a front porch, “painted yellow, with big lumps of congealed paint hanging along the edge.” The newness of the house is so exciting that no one else seems to mind the smell.

Answer 13

Mansfield’s initial descriptions of the house do not make it seem very attractive, but the Burnell sisters think it is wonderful nevertheless. While Aunt Beryl finds the smell of paint sickening, the younger, more innocent girls are too thrilled by the novelty of the house to care. Their fascination with the relatively modest toy reflects the provinciality of the setting.

Question 14

The Burnell girls have never seen anything so wonderful before and take in all of the details of the house—from the pictures painted on the walls, to the red carpet, plush pillows, beds with actual bedspreads, and kitchen fit with a small stove. Kezia, the youngest, notices a small lamp in particular, which sits on the dining room table and is filled with a liquid that looks like oil. She thinks the lamp is the best part of the house because it fits so perfectly, whereas the father and mother dolls look a little too big for the house and do not seem to belong inside it.

Answer 14

Kezia notices a small lamp and prizes it above all the other features of the house because it seems to fit so well. This suggests her innocence as the youngest Burnell sister, and her willingness to see the value in small, seemingly insignificant things. This also reflects the importance that “fitting in” will have in the story. It will soon be revealed that the poor Kelveys, with their mismatched clothing and simple lunches, do not fit in with the other girls, yet Kezia wants to invite them to see the doll’s house anyway.
ACTIVE THEMES

Question 15

The Lamp

Answer 15

Mansfield gives only half a sentence worth of viewing the doll’s house before Aunt Beryl interrupts and sends the Kelveys packing with her ‘cold, furious voice’. They had followed Kezia like ‘two little stray cats’; now Beryl ‘shooed them out as if they were chickens’. The animal similes demonstrate not only society’s attitudes towards the Kelveys, but how far they have come to accept them as normal. Mansfield also makes the reader privy to Beryl’s own stresses which have contributed to her temper, which condemns her more for taking out her private frustrations on innocent children. But the closing of the story is key, as the endings of most short stories are. The final view of the story is not unhappy, rejected children, but the triumph of Kezia’s act of generosity. It was Kezia, who saw the lamp in the house as the most important item, perhaps a symbol in the story of enlightenment, and at the end, Else Kelvey ‘had forgotten the cross lady’, who significantly is not even known by name, but she takes immense satisfaction that ‘I seen the little lamp’.

Question 16

The Kelvey Sisters

Answer 16

It is at school the reader is introduced to the Kelveys. While numbers of children ‘put their arms round’ Isabel to hear about the doll’s house, the only children Mansfield names are the Kelveys, even though they are ‘outside the ring’. This naming places the Burnells and the Kelveys in opposition, one family with social aspirations and the other family scorned by society. But Mansfield’s description of the Kelveys, exploring their rejection by other families, draws sympathy towards them as the reader recognises they are the victims of snobbery. The Kelvey children are ‘shunned by everybody’, including the teacher who has ‘a special voice for them’. Though they are dismissed as ‘daughters of a washerwoman and a gaolbird’, it is an assumption that their father is in prison and the narrative makes clear that the mother is ‘hard-working’. Her hard work is apparent in the clothes she makes for her daughters, which are cruelly mocked by others. This is reinforced later when Mansfield uses the adverb ‘spitefully’ and the verb ‘hissed’ as the other children taunt the Kelveys with unmistakeable cruelty. On the other hand, Mansfield makes the Kelveys appear humble and resourceful. It is also important that the girls trust each other completely – ‘The Kelveys never failed to understand each other.’ It is Kezia who asks her mother if the Kelveys can come to see the doll’s house and receives ‘Certainly not’ as a response.

Having given the reader the primacy of Kezia’s consciousness earlier in the story, Mansfield uses her character to break the taboo with the Kelveys. Mansfield makes it clear that it is not a spontaneous whim: ‘she had made up her mind’. Against the Kelvey girls’ natural reluctance and knowledge of their lack of welcome, Kezia encourages them to see the doll’s house. Mansfield presents her as the spirit of generosity and humanity, reaching across the social gulf, opening the gate and leading the two girls to the house, then opening it herself ‘kindly’.