Chapter Synopsis

Memoirs of a London Doll
January 5, 2009

Chapter 4: The Little Milliners

The bright, shiny newness and excitement of the bakery is wearing off. Maria is paying less attention to all the sweets and is focusing on the people coming into the shop and what they are saying. Her mind is actively engaged in all she has learned since becoming a doll. She believes no doll ever lived who was more anxious to learn and know about all things good, pretty or wonderful than she was.

Things are about to change, however, as seven-year old Ellen is to be sent to be a milliner to her aunt who employs a great number of girls that make ladies’ dresses. Ellen is sad at leaving her grandfather’s home but he believes it will be best for her.

Aunt Sharpshins is a very tall, thin, pale-faced woman, always dressed in a long gown made up close to the throat, the color of old nankeen, with a faded bed-furniture pattern around the hem at the bottom. She has a nose like a parrot and speaks through it. She keeps 15 little milliner girls as her apprentices to work as long as she pleases. The youngest is Nanny Bell, who is about 10 years old, and she and Ellen become great friends directly.

All 15 apprentices work in the same room. They sit in chairs with no backs so that they cannot lean back and rest themselves when tired. They work from six in the morning until eight at night with only a half-hour’s rest at one o’clock and some of the girls get so tired they fall off their chair. When that happens, Aunt Sharpshins allows them only bread and water for dinner and sometimes gives them a hard slap on the shoulders.

One day while Aunt Sharpshins was out, Ellen and Nanny were sitting in the back parlor after dinner. Ellen was expressing her desire to go back to her grandfather’s bakery, but she has been told that someday she will be a partner with Aunt Sharpshins in the millinery business. This is not what Ellen wants, but Nanny says that if she owned the business, Ellen would not be cruel to her girls and not make them work from early morning to late at night and would see that they were fed properly. They would work only as long as Ellen did not grow tired. When she did they would take a break and go down for some cake, and later when they would tire again at the end of the day they would go down for tea, and they would relax and dance.

DISCUSSION:

This is a depressing little chapter. To go from the brightness and happiness of the bakery to the dullness and long work days at the millinery shop -- the cruelness of Aunt Sharpshins, the punishment of being slapped if you fell off your chair, and not even to have a back on the chair so that you could sit back for a few minutes to rest, and then not even to have a proper meal. It must have seemed a hopeless existence.
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In this Chapter we find Ellen Plummy and Maria Poppet being sent away to Aunt Sharpshins. Ellen is to be a milliner’s apprentice. Aunt Sharpshins works the little girls in her employ very hard - twelve hour days with only a half-hour break. Still the children conspire to make some clothes for Maria. It is hard today in this country to imagine how cruelly children were treated. Some children in Third World countries are still treated this badly.
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I know~! I have to wonder if this wasn't so normal in the time this book was written, that it didn't seem cruel or odd to readers....or did this seem terrible to the children hearing this book for the first time?
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Remember that in the time of the story there was no welfare, no social security. If you did not work you did not eat or went to the work house or debtors’ prison. (At least in all those old English stories I read.) The grandfather probably thought he was preparing her for life on her own, when she had to make her own way in the world . . . she would have a trade. He would not have imagined that the aunt was such a slave driver, but long hours were common then, too.
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I really liked Ellen's plans for the milliner shop and how she would treat the girls.
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I liked Nanny and Ellen's plans for the future. It seems to me if you treated people better, they would be better employees. The same holds true today. I wonder why there was so much cruelty in those days, although I know it still exists today. The poor didn't stand much of a chance back then. Ellen was obviously not poor, but isn't it interesting how she went from a loving and kind grandfather, to a mean Aunt. No comparison at all. That she would treat her apprentices so poorly is one thing, but to treat her own niece the same way was pretty bad. She probably didn't want to show partiality to Ellen, but, still, to be so mean to the entire group.

I also wonder if the grandfather was pressured by the aunt to send her away to be an apprentice. She probably didn’t think it proper for Ellen to run free around the bakery. Not that she didn’t work, but I have the feeling there was no oppressive work conditions in the bakery.
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The grandfather did not seem to be someone who would send a little girl to such a cruel person. I don't think he really knew what the aunt was like.
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I know the story doesn't support this, but after a week and a half of minding grands, maybe the grandfather wasn't able to keep up with her on a continuing basis?
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I think she was just greedy.
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I just reread the chapter to refresh my mind--boy, the author sure is moral! She couldn't let her just leave the pastry shop, she had to moralize about the tummy aches of boys and girls who ate too much cake -- and then, on to Aunt Sharpshins! And what happens there? Little Ellen is overworked, along with 14 other little girls. And then, of course, to make sure we got the moral of that, Ellen and her friend tell us how they would run the shop.

Hmm!
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But then books of that period did tend toward morals. Actually, imagining another way to run the shop was pretty forward thinking - those were the days when that sort of shop was the norm, and children were working in mills and mines!
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I am not fond of moralistic children’s books, but this one could have been way worse. I agree – it is pretty daring of the author to suggest that the way the shop was run was wrong!
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Although the story is written from the doll's point of view, it seems to also show the point of view of others along the way. So I'm wondering if this chapter is more about Ellen's view. When we were kids we used to make up stories that depicted us in dire circumstances when we were punished or otherwise miserable. If we had to wait for a late supper, we would tell ourselves stories of us as starving children in graphic detail (a bit like the soap poisoning in the movie A Christmas Story). So maybe Ellen’s point of view is a bit exaggerated?

Of course, I'm sure people were much stricter with children in past times. On the other hand...anyone given the name of Sharpshins is likely meant to be overbearing.
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I hadn't considered that! I can remember doing the same thing. Once, my sister and I were pretending we were in a restaurant (at the dinner table) and we kept saying how bad the service was. My mother wasn't amused.

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