SOURCE: "Edna O'Brien's 'The Doll': A Narrative of Abjection," in Notes on Modern Irish Literature, Vol. 1, Spring, 1989, pp. 6-11.

In the following essay, Carriker analyzes O'Brien's "The Doll," in terms of the author's use of the doll as a means of communicating the abjection of the narrator of the story.

In Edna O'Brien's short story "The Doll," the narrator and the doll stand in an uneasy juxtaposition which is exemplary of Freud's notion of "The Uncanny." The conflict of "The Doll" is centered in the question of the doll's subjectivity, and the story contains what Freud has called "a particularly favorable condition for awakening uncanny feelings." He discusses dolls as a significant element of childhood life, describing how children—like O'Brien's narrator—frequently maintain that their dolls are alive or that they themselves can make the inanimate dolls come to life. In conjunction with Freud's "Uncanny," [Julia] Kristeva's...