The Dollmaker

Rating:
Summary: A passionate denunciation of industry and war
Review: An amazing book, especially considering it was published in 1954.
The opening scene is gripping: an uneducated rural housewife performs a tracheotomy on her dying son. She values their country life and holds to those country values even when war comes and she takes the kids and follows her husband to Detroit where he's been assigned to work in a war factory.
Wonderful characters, vividly drawn. But most of all, The Dollmaker is a passionate denunciation of industrialization and of war and all that it does to families and society.

Rating:
Summary: Brave or Coward
Review: As editor of The Mountain Laurel, a journal of mountain life, I found this book excellent in its descriptions of mountain people. It is a perfect example of two types of poverty and how mountain people cope with it - poverty at home in the mountains, where they have land and can raise their own food, but have little money, and poverty in the big city where they have jobs and have to buy everything they need to survive. The main theme in this powerful book is survival. If you wish to understand Appalachia, read The Dollmaker

Rating:
Summary: Real for Me
Review: Having grown up in rural Kentucky 'The Dollmaker' was far too real for me. Gertie is a real character, she is the typical strong and determined woman of the mountains. It is almost repulsive that she has to be paired with a man who is a weak and spineless character. Despite it all she was able to create beauty, honor her husband and children and to have dreams in all the despair. Her life is typical for so many women of rural Appalachia from that time.

I would say that one who has to see the movie to critique the book needs to remember that a movie is rarely as worthy as the book. Either read the book or see the movie, most often I choose to do the former. Why let a movie ruin a good book!

Stands out in my mind as one of the all time best reads, comprable to "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck!

Rating:
Summary: Crucial American Literature
Review: I will not go so far as to say Arnow is another Hawthorne. But what I will say is that this novel deserves a place in the American Museum of Literature for several reasons. First of all, Arnow presents us with dramatic images. Also, she creates an excellent picture of a country family who is forced out of their element. She then shows all the outside perseucution they are subject to. And perhaps this is her biggest accomplishment. Ever since the dawn of the novel, family disputes have been a major theme. This family faces so many problems from the outside, that they DO NOT have the luxury of going through a family dispute. Arnow masterfully shows us the different problems the different characters face and they suffer as a family. At first, I was a bit worried because of the size of this book. But the truth is it is never boring. Not only does this book belong in the museum of Women's Writing, but it also belongs in the museum of American Classics.

Rating:
Summary: An American Masterpiece
Review: The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow

This is a magnificant, powerful book about a woman's strength, endurance and inner beauty in the face of despair and hopelessness. The innocent faithfulness and innate goodness of Gertie, many times described as a massive, unattractive woman, turns her into an angelic, beautiful creature for the reader. Gertie, always the champion of her children and "good wife" to her husband, triumphs over adversity, fends for herself and emerges as a wonderful role model for people everywhere. For a person characterized with little education, she had the quick thinking, common sense intelligence of someone with far more education. The mountain vernacular was at times difficult to decipher, but with continued reading it became easier. The descriptions of nature and scenery were so richly detailed that it was easy to picture the story--almost as if a movie was being watched. One horrible part in the story was described in such a graphic manner that the reader could literally be sickened, because by this time in the book, the characters are your own, like family members.

This may be one of the greatest works of literature portraying "woman's strength" ever written. Give it a try--you'll like it.

Rating:
Summary: Arnow opens our eyes to the past and humans within it.
Review: The Dollmaker was a beautifully written book. Once I started to read it I could not put it down. It is about the life of a woman during World War II, who under certain circumstances regarding her husband, is obliged to move her family from Kentucky to Detroit. The change that Gertie, the mother, is forced to undergo and adapt to is evident through the course of the novel. Arnow opens our eyes to life during this period for many people like Gertie. People, with "big" dreams, go to work in war factories that over work them and place them in dangerous conditions. Because money made is necessary for payments, food, or other foolish neccessities, families are forced to live each day as it comes. This view of society during this period was new to me. I had never realized the adjustments, cultural shocks, and advantages people could take of others during this time, or during a war. Arnow tells the events that take place in Gertie's life so well. The images she creates our realistic. She doesn't try to make a romance or happy-go-lucky ending out of the book. She tells about Gertie's sufferings as they are. Her book is more like a historical documentary, except we get to experience, emotionally, what the characters do. Some would argue that this book is too depressing, but Arnow wanted us to realize that life can be like this some times. There is no cruelness or situation that occurs to Gertie or others in this book that we don't see in our own lives or could empathize with. I felt emotionally and mentally as drawn to this book as I did to The Grapes of Wrath. I saw the same spirit of human survival and courage in both books. The Dollmaker gives an inside look into what changes in surroundings can do to a family. Just as in The Grapes of Wrath, we see the gradual deterioation in the family structure. This was sad, but truthful. You have to read this novel to understand or feel what I mean in describing it. If your realistic and perceptive, you'll enjoy this novel. It will be mind boggling at times. I recommend you have a box of tissues at your side before beginning. In any case, after reading The Dollmaker you'll certainly be more open minded and sympathtic towards others' sufferings and realize that you and I have it easy.

Rating:
Summary: Long but good
Review: The Dollmaker was a novel about a family and it's struggle to stay together. The main character Gertie Nevel moved her family from Kentucky to Detroit in an effort to survive. It was during War World II and Gertie's family was in dire need of money. Though Gertie is strong willed, her fight in the chaotic wartime of Detroit thrusts her into a life she is at times unable to bare. The type of life she lived before and her morals she brought up with her to Michigan is something she continued to battle with through out the book. Her love for land, crops, and the country throws her into despair. Her Detroit home smothered her with disbeliefs of never being happy in an environment such as a city life. The home itself was small and she felt like she could have been suffocated at any moment. Her perception of urban life is not a good one either. She views Kentucky as this beautiful place where life should be, and instead she's in Detroit where there is nothing but evil. Another problem Gerite faces is in her leisure time; there she is incapable to whittle the small dolls for Cassie, her youngest daughter. Now she has to make ugly, unwanted dolls to make money. Gertie is a character with a lot of inner strength, and yet her spirit was broken through out the novel. Although this book was stretched out in miniscule detail it allowed the readers to understand more clearly how life changes for the better.

Rating:
Summary: A painful, shattering tragedy, beautifully written
Review: This is a haunting story. In it, a unique woman with clear and powerful dreams and goals, betrays her self by listening to the advice of the average folk who surround her. In following their advice, she forever loses her chance of attaining her own dreams, and also betrays and loses 2 of her children - one of whom returns to the land they left, one of whom, tragically, dies.

This is one of the most painful books I have ever read. At the beginning of the book, Gertie is portrayed as nearly superhumanly powerful in her determined success in saving her youngest child's life. Then Gertie forces herself to give up her lifelong dream of owning her own farm - when it is almost within her grasp! - to follow her husband into the ugly heap of industrial Chicago in the name of the war. She does this because she is convinced by vast numbers of average folk that it is the RIGHT thing to do. She convinces herself that her private dreams are mere selfishness, and that she should sacrifice them to "follow her man".

Echoing the same mistake again later, she bows again to popular opinion, and banishes her most beloved and unique child's imaginary playmate. As an indirect result, her daughter dies. Fleeing to play alone - where none can hear/watch her with her imaginary playmate - she has a horrific accident in the train yard, and dies nightmarishly in her mother's arms. And yet, Gertie does not see that these betrayals of all that is most unique, sensitive, and artistic at her core is evil. Instead, she continues to see it as self-scrificing, when she is killing the best self she could be and sinking into the dross around her. Symbolically, at the very last, she gives up her beautiful cherrywood carving of Christ to be cut up to make mass-produced dolls; her final betrayal. Ah, no wonder she could never see his face!

This story will never leave me. In many ways, I wish it would. But it teaches a hard lesson; that to be true to anything, one must be true to oneself. To a religious reader, it truly brings home the lesson of the parable of the talents. One must not misuse or waste the gifts of talent given by the creator. But, oh, poor Gertie!