The Doll’s Uncanny Soul

Abstract

Her little bisque face is scarred by fine cracks, a mottled patina, and flaking coats of pallid paint feebly delineate her feather eyebrows, dimpled cheeks, and reddish lips. She is clothed in a white linen dress, which, although yellow with age, frayed and threadbare from years of fondling and pummelling, has preserved its delicate details. Laced cuffs conceal her ball-jointed wrists while drawing attention to her dainty ceramic hands and pink lacquered fingernails. Sporadic locks of ringlet curls protrude from the back of her head, poorly camouflaging patches of cork. Although time-worn, her mischievous facial expression remains unchanged: her pouty lips, partly parted and featuring two scratched built-in pearly enamel teeth, form a taunting smile as if promising a disclosure that might at any moment be put into words. Rimmed by unsynchronised drooping eyelids and long hair eyelashes, the irises are of a smoky grey crowded with fine lustrous lines radiating from unnaturally large pupils. One eye is afflicted by a retarded swivel, creating the impression of a lazy eye. Peering into her glassy eyes, a casual observer might for a fleeting moment wonder what secrets her deepest recesses harbour and whether these inner depths hide an enigmatic immaterial being. This transient hesitancy summons faded memories of a bygone childhood; it permits her to be once more endowed with an emanating glow conducive to her irresistible charm, and at the same time, it is what renders her deeply uncanny.