Choose one of the following questions, and in your response consider the controlling metaphor of A Doll’s House. In a follow-up question on Monday, I will be asking about thematic connections between all three plays, but here, as we did with M. Butterfly, I would like to explore first the context for meaning:

1. What is a doll house?
2. Who plays with a doll house? Why? Is it a toy? A simulacrum?
3. Who controls what happens in the doll house? What does that control represent? Does the control carry over to space outside the doll house?
4. What happens when the person who imagines a life of the dolls walks away (no smart-aleck Toy Story 11 answers)?
5. Have doll houses been relegated to girls primarily? They are models of architecture, and architectural spaces are sites of consciousness and imagination (see Gaston Bachelard). Do we assume boys do not have the specific imaginary need or capacity for which a doll house provides a stimulus?
6. Is Barbie’s Dreamhouse or a plastic, mass-produced model still a thing? Are toys related to the consciousness of their historical moment?

Note this Discussion closes Tuesday evening.