Welcome to the Dollhouse

Dawn Weiner is a gawky, unattractive, unpopular girl who has been nicknamed "Weinerdog" by her fellow students. She is entering junior high school, and her only real friend is the even nerdier Ralphy, a sixth-grader who is watching Dawn's progress with genuine dread. That her best (and, apparently, only) friend is this goofy boy is significant in understanding Dawn. Kathleen Stassen Berger (19--) writes, "Having a best friend who is not the same age or sex correlates with being rejected or ignored by one's classmates and being unhappy" (p. 360). Dawn has been rejected by most of the people around her, and she is constantly struggle to find out where she might fit in.

Dawn is at the end of what Sigmund Freud labelled the latency phase, in his theory of the psychosexual stages through which individuals pass in their development. For Freud, latency is the dormant period between childhood and adolescence (Berger, 19--, p. 40); Dawn is emerging from b

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ising her are doing such a miserable job. Dawn's teachers are no better influences. Instead of being rewarded for turning in the school bully who tries to cheat by copying from her paper, Dawn is punished for "grade grubbing" and snitching on her classmate. One teacher insists she write an essay on dignity then hounds her throughout her presentation of the essay in class. These adults, who might have been able to provide some balance for her parents' neglect, instead provide no more effective role models. Dawn is left to figure out how a psychologically healthy grownup ought to act with no clear examples to follow. Dawn's older brother, Mark, has reached Erikson's stage of facing the conflict between intimacy and isolation. He receives a letter from a girl he met at camp who tells him that, with her mother's permission, she is willing to have sex with him if only he will bother to write back. Mark chooses instead to concentrate on his schoolwork, remaining isolated because he considers getting into a good college more important than having his first real girlfriend. Although some might argue that his decision shows maturity, in Erikson's scheme, Mark has not achieved a psychologically healthy balance between keeping to
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Approximate Word count = 1612
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)