Gwendolyn Doll

Elizabeth Bishop’s untitled poem that begins with “Where are the dolls who loved me so” is reminiscent of her autobiographical short story Gwendolyn. Throughout her short story, Bishop talks about Gwendolyn’s beauty and fragility as a child with diabetes who was consistently on the verge of death until she finally passes at the end of the story. After her death, and at the very beginning of the story, Bishop depicts her encounter with a doll she was also fascinated with that belonged to her Aunt Mary. At the end of the story, she concludes, with the help of her cousin Billy, that “the doll’s real name, all this time, was Gwendolyn” (Prose, 61).
In the unnamed poem, there is no mention of Gwendolyn, but her fascination with the dolls is similar
A doll, typically, should represent childhood and happiness but when tied with death it begins to represent the opposite. I am not sure why she would do that then if it was not a coping mechanism for her. Death is often a difficult subject to explain to children, or really to explain in general, so it is either brushed off or simplified to a phrase like “they’re in a better place.” However, Bishop’s childhood dealt with death quite often and while in some pieces she is shielded from it, like when her grandmother tells her not to go to Gwendolyn’s funeral in Gwendolyn, other times she is forced to deal with it like when her mother lifts her up to say “goodbye” to her dead cousin in “First Death in Nova Scotia.” I think Bishop uses dolls to simplify death as she does in the poem “First Death in Nova Scotia” and Gwendolyn. In turn, I think this allows her to cope with death and understand in a way that children can understand things. Death is not easily graspable but dolls are so likening them allows her to dwell on the subject without morbidity and with ease. If her cousin and Gwendolyn are dolls then they are not touched by death. Instead, they can live on as things that cannot be destroyed so