Geoffrey Bell December 3, 2012 Acaro, 4th Period Enriched English II Easter Sunday: The Objectification and Exploitation

of Women in The Youngest Doll

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In Rosario Ferrs The Youngest Doll a maiden woman lives with her sister and her sisters daughters. One day while the aunt is in a river near their home, an angry river prawn bites her leg and burrows inside. The doctor whom she hires to care for her does not cure her so that he can pay for his sons college education. When the doctors son returns from medical school he courts and marries the aunts youngest niece because of her high social status. When the youngest niece leaves her aunts home for the final time, the aunt gives her a life-sized doll with a very strong likeness of the niece. Once the niece realizes that the young doctor has only married her for her high status she switches herself out with the doll and the he fails to notice for many years time that his wife is gone. The doctors exploitation of the aunt for monetary gain and the young doctor marrying the youngest niece for her high social status in Ferrs The Youngest Doll successfully shows how women are objectified and exploited by society. After the aunt hires the doctor to cure her he chooses not to and instead he visits her every month to tend to her leg. The doctor is exploiting aunt so that he can pay for his sons medical school tuition. The aunt is being exploited for personal gain like she is an inanimate object and not a person. When the young doctor returns from medical school, he notices that his father could have easily cured the aunt and makes this comment aloud in front of the aunt. His father says in front of the aunt Thats true but I just wanted you to come and see the prawn that has been paying for your education these twenty years (Ferr 85). This quotation shows how the doctor sees the aunt as an object and how he could not care less whether she knows that

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he has been exploiting her because inanimate objects are incapable of sentiment, he considers her an inferior member of society and he does not believe she deserves dignity. It is clear that the doctor does not simply exploit the aunt only because he direly needs to pay for his sons education, for even after his son finishes medical school and is a practicing doctor neither he nor his son decides to remove the prawn from the aunts leg. Instead the young doctor continues to visit the aunt so that he may court her youngest niece because he is attracted to her high social status as part of the sugar cane aristocracy. After the young doctor successfully courts the youngest niece, he marries her, not out of love but rather because of her distinguished social standing. The youngest niece is worth something to the young doctor, but not because she is a person or because he wants to marry her, but rather she has monetary value. He knows that her high social status will help increase his clientele, eventually making him rich. His paper soul and shallow mindset are clear from the start, The young doctor took her off to live in the town, in a square house that made one think of a cement block. Each day he made her sit out on the balcony, so that passersby would be sure to see that he had married into high society (85). It is made clear that the young doctor marries the youngest niece not because he loves her but rather because he wants her as a trophy so everyone knows that he has married into the upper crust of society. This elevates his social status making him not only rich but part of the upper-class. Almost everyone in the town pays exorbitant fees to have the young doctor as their physician simply so that they can see a real, genuine member of the sugar cane aristocracy. The young doctor lets people come and stare at his wife like she is a prize animal not his wife, a women, or even a human being; this eventually makes him a millionaire. Even when she switches herself out with the doll, the doctor does not realize his trophy is gone.

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Ferr clearly shows that the aunt considers her nieces to have an equal or lesser value compared to the dolls. The aunt does things with the dolls that one would normally do with a child such as feeding them, singing lullabies to them and telling to them about how much they have grown. When the aunt makes the wax mold of the nieces faces then covers it with plaster she describes as being like a living face wrapped in two dead ones (83). This shows how she considers the dolls to be real, living things. When dolls are complete it is referred to as a birth (82) as though the dolls are the aunts real, living children. When the nieces marry and move out of the house, the aunt gives them their final doll and reassure the husbands by saying The doll was merely a sentimental ornament, of the kind that people used to place on the lid of grand pianos in the old days (84). This is significant because when the nieces realize that their husbands have not married them for love and only see them as objects they will be able to switch themselves out with the doll, essentially the doll becomes the niece. The aunt is acknowledging the wives position as a sentimental ornament. This all represents how it is not only men who objectify women in society, but rather women also objectify other women and see other women as inferior members of society. The reader could also make the point that: women are also objectifying and exploiting men in this story, making the situation a two-way street. For example, the youngest niece marries the young doctor not out of love but because She made up her mind to marry him because she was intrigued by his sleepy profile and also because she was deathly curious to see what the dolphin flesh was like. (85). One could also notice that the aunt never married and may have been left with a desire for contact with males, and the reader could then infer that is why she lets the doctor continue to visit her even though she knows he is exploiting her. However, unlike when men exploit women, when women exploit men, the man is not being hurt. When the

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young doctor marries the youngest niece for her high status she must sit out on the porch while passersby and patients marvel at her as though she is a strange and rare animal in a zoo. When the older doctor decides not to heal the aunt, she is left with a prawn in her leg; she does not ever marry; she is confined to her house, and must pay him monthly to visit her. It is clear that even if women are also exploiting and objectifying men, the plight of the women is much graver. One could also argue that the aunts plight was a self-imposed one, for even after the doctor did not cure of her the suitors did not stop coming. They continue to show up on her doorstep. She had been very beautiful, but the prawn hidden under her the long, gauzy folds of her skirt stripped her of all vanity. She locked herself in the house, refusing to see any suitors (82). Even though a prawn hidden within the folds of a dress cannot steal all of someones beauty and even though the aunt chooses to turn her suitors away, her struggle was not selfimposed. While the aunt may have still been beautiful, she most likely did not feel that way and as such felt that no man feel she was beautiful and as such She then resigned herself to living with the prawn permanently wrapped up in her leg. (82). If the doctor had not exploited the aunt she would have, more than likely, married and would have been able to lead a normal life. In the end one must ask In the long run, was what the doctor did to the aunt that bad? What would have happened to her had the doctor not exploited her and had she not been confined to her rocking chair to wait for her end? More than likely the aunt would have ended up unhappy and objectified, and would have married for reasons other than love with no escape from her dreary life. What would have become of the youngest niece? She, most likely, would have married another suitor and would have also ended waiting out her days unhappily and objectified, without an Easter Sunday.

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Works Cited Ferr, Roasrio. "The Youngest Doll." Trans. Diana Velez.Reading the World: Contemporary Literature from Around the Globe. Ed. Jim Strickler. Logan, Iowa: Perfection Learning, 2012. 81-87. Print.