Dolls in the Nutcracker and Little House

I based many of the dolls in The American Nutcracker on dolls relatives brought home as gifts when I was a very young child. I knew I wanted to include my favorite Jamaican doll in the story as part of the wider American saga that includes the Caribbean, but couldn't find her until very recently. Therefore, I did some research and put the story's doll, Chandice, into a traditional tiered dress, a bit like this one:

Chandice in the book has a dress with more tiers, but the idea is the same.

Then, lo and behold, I found my doll:

It is probably best in the end that I based the self-possessed Chandice on a doll like the first one pictured. I clearly remembered mine in a fancier dress--but what I most remember are her big gold loop earrings. She still retains one. The earrings made it into the story, where they often shimmer and quiver.

In a book that is, in part,  tribute to Laura Ingall Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods, I realize now that my original Jamaican doll is similar to Laura's Charlotte, the rag doll Christmas gift she receives in Big Woods:

She was a beautiful doll. She had a face of white cloth with black button eyes. A black pencil had made her eyebrows, and her cheeks and her mouth were red with the ink made from pokeberries. Her hair was black yarn that had been knit and raveled, so that it was curly.

It is hard to see in the photo but Jamaica also has black yarn hair, and her red mouth is painted on. She is obviously of black, not white, cloth, but she wears a simple dress, as does Laura's doll, which is dressed in calico.

The doll below is the closest recreation I could find to the original Charlotte of my imagination. The hair is brown but Charlotte's hair changed color over time. It's not much different from the Jamaican doll:

My vintage doll has some great underwear--and great legs! But I don't know about Charlotte!

The Nutcracker takes the place in my story as the beloved surprise "Charlotte" the main character receives. In a conflation of both Little House in the Big Woods and on The Banks of Plum Creek, the Nutcracker (and I follow the original Hoffman story) is harmed by a careless child. While it is hard to say if Laura knew the original Hoffman Nutcracker story (she would not have known the ballet, which did not debut in the U.S. until 1944), Big Woods ties deeply into archetypes, and Charlotte is a part of this.

Dolls are important to children, even to boys in the guise of soldiers and other masculine figures, and it was a pleasure to put them in a story and bring them to life.