Lady Liberty; Bartholdi's Big Doll

PBS recently aired a documentary on the creation of The Statue of Liberty.  In it, the narrator mentioned that Bartholdi referred to her as his American woman, or something like that. He spoke of her as a child might speak of a favorite doll, and what is a statue, after all, but a huge doll? Like Barbie, in fact, Lady Liberty inspired a lot of emotions, negative and positive.  A lot of souvenirs and memorabilia have been created in her image, including dolls, a Barbie here, a North American Bear or Betty Boop here. 


I wrote a long paper on Emma Lazarus, who wrote The New Colossus, the poem on Liberty's base.  Like Liberty herself, my paper seemed to stir up a lot of controversy.  Also let's play six degrees of separation.   Lazarus was a friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne's daughter, and Hawthorne wrote The House of Seven Gables, where dolls were featured, and have been made for several decades.




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