Betrayal In Rosario Ferré's The Youngest Doll

In the short story, “The Youngest Doll”, Rosario Ferré tells a tale of betrayal while simultaneously illustrating how women are treated as objects. The short story focuses on an aunt that has been bitten by a prawn, which has managed to make a home within her leg. As a result, her life is changed as she becomes self-conscious, causing her to deny any suitors, and instead focuses on her nieces. In addition, the aunt concentrates on perfecting her craft of making dolls by hand, with their eyes being the only exception, as depicted when the narrator states, “They were mailed to her directly from Europe in all colors, but the aunt considered them useless until she had left them submerged at the bottom of the stream for a few days, so that they would learn to recognize the slightest string

This demonstrates how the aunt was used as nothing more than a way to make a profit in order to benefit another man and his narcissistic tendencies. This is further emphasized as the young doctor, the son of the aunt’s doctor as well the youngest niece’s husband, uses both his wife and the doll to satisfy his won selfish desires. This is depicted as the narrator writes, “One day he pried out the doll’s eyes with the tip of his scalpel and pawned them for a fancy golf pocket watch with a long, embossed chain” (248). The young doctor takes out the doll’s eyes after realizing they were diamond eardrops without asking his wife, despite the doll belonging to her. In addition, he shows a lack of compassion and greed, as he selfishly uses the money to buy himself a gift as opposed to using the money for an object desired by both himself and his wife. As a result, just as the aunt was used as a way to make money, the youngest niece was also used as a pawn to satisfy her husband’s