Bleak House - The Dear Old Doll

I'm not a psychologist. So why am I trying to analyse Esther's burial of her doll?

There's this matrix that goes.....

1. Unconscious incompetence
2. Conscious incompetence
3. Conscious competence
4. Unconscious competence

I.m at the conscious incompetence stage but am foolishly rushing in to this instead of maintaining an angelic stand-off.

Here goes.

Esther is reaching puberty when she buries her doll. The obvious conclusion is that she is putting childhood behind her as she leaves her first home to start at a new school.
Or
The doll could be a projection of herself, and she sees this as a symbolic suicide. She had no self-esteem, thought it was her fault that she received no love from anyone, and had been told by her aunt that it would have been better if she had never been born.
Or

How about we see the doll as a mother figure? Kids starting boarding school leave their mother behind and forge new relationships, putting their childhood behind them in this rite of passage.

There is also the possibility that they hate their mothers for this betrayal, and want them dead.
So..
                  Did Esther hate her mother and wish her dead?
                  Did she even see the doll as her mother?

Photographed by Mary Harrsch at The Enchanted World of Dolls, South Dakota

Esther definitely portrays the doll as a steadfast and mature help.

Dolly was beautiful.she used to sit propped up in a great arm-chair, with her beautiful complexion and rosy lips, staring at me—or not so much at me, I think, as at nothing—while I busily stitched away and told her every one of my secrets.

For Dolly, think Lady Deadbeat. Beautiful, remote and no bloody use? Whilst saying how much she loved her doll, and how she told her everything, Esther can still see that Dolly is staring away at nothing. Kill her!!!!!!!!!!!

Dolls are usually substitute babies. Esther doesn't overtly treat Dolly as a baby, in spite of the fact that she typically spends her life at the service of others, and is called so many names, none of them particularly motherly I must admit  (Mrs Shipton, Old Woman, Dame Durden) that 'my own name became quite lost among them'. Maybe the burial of Dolly is a proleptic device on Dickens' part, foreshadowing her loss of identity in the service of others. It's not until after the small pox that she experiences a sort of resurrection, and finds that people love her for herself.
 I know I should develop what those nicknames signify, old age? barrenness? foster children? but I'm trying to stop using the word 'should' and I'm embarrassed by my conscious incompetence. Also, I'm a wee bit bored with Dolly.
My conclusion is that she was saying goodbye to childhood.
THE END.