A New Doll
Disney loves a romance that crosses class divides. Except in Disney, it always ends well.
Yesterday, I watched one that doesn’t end in a fairy tale: “The Doll” at the National Theatre, accompanied by a live orchestra. An experience I’d recommend to anyone. The music works much as it does in Murakami: in “1Q84,” Janáček’s “Sinfonietta” accompanies pivotal moments. Here, too, the sound tells you that now is the time to look more closely.
The film is based on Bolesław Prus’s novel, and you’d like to believe its story is no longer relevant. For those who haven’t read “The Doll”: it follows Stanisław Wokulski, a merchant who has amassed a considerable fortune. Wokulski has survived exile in Siberia. Later, during the war, the thought of Izabela’s face—the woman he has idealised—keeps him going through the darkest moments. His dream is to be happy, and he believes he can only be happy with her.
And then there is her, the doll. Izabela Łęcka, a beautiful aristocrat whose family still has its name and social standing but is running out of money. In the adaptation I watched, she wants to become an actress or go to university, but to her debt-ridden father, she is simply an asset. Financial security. Wokulski could give her the life she dreams of: theatre, guests, high society. But he is a merchant, not a man of noble standing, so being seen with him makes her an object of ridicule in her social circle. In Prus’s world, the merchant and the aristocrat don’t get their happily ever after.
We might think this belongs a hundred and fifty years in the past. Yet a lawyer recently told me about young women signing agreements with their older partners—a kind of “insurance against wasted time.” They invest their best years in these relationships, put their own plans and careers on hold, and receive a promise of a shared future that doesn’t always materialise. They know that, in some men’s eyes, they will eventually stop being the “new doll,” and rather than pretending it couldn’t happen to them, they protect themselves. Shocking? As a pragmatist, I respect and support it, because they acknowledge that a promise might never become reality.
Wokulski, meanwhile, has given himself no such protection. When Izabela rejects him, he still has only one goal, one possible source of happiness. Not even meeting Geist, a brilliant scientist who shows him a groundbreaking invention and gives him an artefact as a keepsake, can change that. The possibility of another life opens up before him, but he still chooses her.
Eventually, Izabela realises that only Wokulski can give her the life she wants, and she accepts his proposal. He gives her the artefact and tells her he has given up everything for her—the life he could have had. To him, this object represents an entire future he has surrendered. When he places it in her hands, he believes she understands how much she is really holding. And she flirts with another man and mocks the gift.
And in that scene, I’m hurting alongside Wokulski—and, I suspect, some of you are too. Because something in us dies when we watch someone wipe their feet on our values or throw something we treasured into the mud. There is no going back after that. Wokulski leaves, even as Izabela asks him for help.
She ultimately chooses to enter a convent. I also read her decision as a refusal to remain merely her father’s “asset.” And him? Prus never tells us explicitly what happens to him. We are left with a clue: the ruins at Zasławek have been blown up—a clear signal that something has ended. But is it an ending that allows him to begin again, or the end of everything?
One thing feels certain to me: not every dream should come true, and the longer we dream about something, the more we idealise it. I say this from my structured, black-and-white, realistic perspective.
So when people ask why I don’t live in Japan, a country I love, my answer is: precisely because I love it. I’ve idealised it so much that I don’t want reality to touch it. Besides, what would I dream about then? Where would I escape to in my mind?
What about you? Have you ever had a dream that, as it was coming true, tasted different from what you’d imagined?
