The Donor Mystery Searching for the mystery donor for these wonderful story book dolls.

MOTAL: Storybook Dolls Artifact Article 1
Author: Katie Rutz-Robbins

These storybook dolls are made of fabric and represent beloved characters in nursery rhymes and fairy tales. The dolls are between four and five inches tall and from two to four inches wide, depending upon their costumes. They are used as tools to accompany and enhance the stories read to children and stimulate children’s imagination and communication through play.


Mother Goose & Miss Muffet
This character is a goose dressed as Mother Goose and holding a book of her nursery rhymes. Mother Goose nursery rhymes are of the most well known and beloved children’s poems and are often republished with new illustrations. The origins of Mother Goose are unclear, though some believe she was a widowed woman with the last name of Goose who lived in Boston and sang songs to her grandkids and the neighboring children. However, with French texts in the seventeenth century referring to a Mother Goose, the exact origins of the mysterious mother and her rhymes are uncertain. What we do know is that French author, Charles Perrault, published moral fairy tales and Mother Goose in the late seventeenth century, with the subtitle Contes de ma mère l'Oye or The Tales of Mother Goose. This publication also contained Perrault’s version of the stories of Cinderella, Puss and Boots, and Little Red Riding Hood, among many others. These renditions of the classic fairy tales were intended to communicate morals and cautions to readers and are the most similar to the fairy tales that we often hear today.


One of Mother Goose’s popular rhymes is Miss Muffet:


Little Miss Muffet. 
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
There came a big spider,
And sat down beside her,
And frightened Miss Muffet away.


Miss Muffet is depicted in this storybook doll with her bowl of curds and whey— a curdled milk dish similar to cottage cheese— and the spider on her arm. The identity of the real Miss Muffet is debatable. The rhyme could be referring to the daughter of Dr. Thomas Muffet who was an entomologist in the late sixteenth century. As the story goes, Miss Muffet was eating her meal and was frightened when one of her father’s specimens— the notable spider— joined her. In this case, Little Miss Muffet would be a description of someone with arachnophobia (irrational fear of spiders). It is also possible that Miss Muffet and the spider represent Mary, Queen of Scots and minister John Knox who had differences during the Scottish Reformation in the sixteenth century. 


Funding for this article has been provided, in part, by California Humanities and the State of California through the California State Library (Grant Number CC20-3010).


Sources:
https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/fantasy-and-fairytale-in-childrens-literature#


https://www.pookpress.co.uk/project/brothers-grimm-biography/


https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/playing_with_a_variety_of_toys_leads_to_appropriate_growth#:~:text=Playing%20with%20toys%20such%20as,social%2C%20emotional%20and%20language%20skills.&text=Playing%20with%20a%20doll%20leads,without%20being%20frightened%20of%20them.


Foster, S., & Redman, L. (2008). Hey Diddle Diddle: our best-loved nursery rhymes and what they really mean. Summersdale.


Goldthwaite, J. (1996). The natural history of make-believe : a guide to the principal works of britain, europe, and america. Oxford University Press.
poetryfoundation.org/poets/mother-goose


About the Author:
Katherine Rutz-Robbins graduated from the University of California, Irvine, where she majored in Art and minored in Literary Journalism. While at UCI, she led the photography section of her campus newspaper, New University, and edited for an online marketing magazine. During her final year at UCI (right before the pandemic hit) she interned for the Education Department at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana and assisted the Public Programs Manager.


She is currently a graduate student pursuing her MA in Cultural Studies with a concentration in Museum Studies at Claremont Graduate University. She is looking forward to contributing to the museum world, telling the stories that need to be told, and creating engaging and educational content. ​