ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the physical space of a doll’s house offers an ideal location for girls to take on the role of home practitioners. An investigation of advice literature shows that the home-based leisure pursuits of doll’s house play enable girls to achieve a sense of ownership and selfhood through the reorganization and accumulation of artifacts contained within the miniature world. Equally, furnishing the doll’s house with miniature furniture and household accessories is expressive of a pleasurable activity between hand and imagination. This evokes girls’ fantasies of house-building and encourages their artistic endeavors to decorate and arrange their future homes. Equally, the doll’s house serves as a useful mechanism through which to investigate a girl’s early involvement with house planning and architectural design. While playing with a doll’s house elicits concerns about the meaning of girlhood within the context of late Victorian culture, it, nonetheless, underscores some of the most profound and intimate connections between body and domesticity, connections legitimizing the formation of a modern interior.
