Excerpt from Alexsandra Serrano's Dissertation

Discussing the ‘unhomely’ in Laurie Simmons’ work 

In and Around the House 1977-78.

            Figure 1: Woman/ Kitchen, 1978

In this materialization of domesticity and family identity, it is disturbing to see that the only protagonist is also an object herself, for she is no other than a doll. The doll is a normally inanimate object, but here the latter has come to life. A very uncanny and surreal impression which one may associate with Hoffman’s story The Sand-Man, in which the main character Nathaniel falls in love with Olimpia who is in fact an automaton created by the Sand-Man himself . The notion of automatic and mechanical processes is another disturbing aspect discussed by Freud in The Uncanny and which we also encounter in Simmons’ work through the doll’s explicit and grossly made articulations. But dolls are not only synonymous with unease and discomfort. In fact, they can also connote the very opposite. They arouse desire, for dolls are also idealized humans, they represent female perfection, eroticised and sexualised. This is even reflected linguistically when men speak familiarly of an attractive woman as ‘a real doll.’ In the New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Freud discusses the meaning of playing with dolls. He explains that the latter is no other than a form of maternal identification. The young girl’s game of playing with dolls, Freud wrote, “ served as an identification with her mother with the intention of substituting activity for passivity. She was playing the part of her mother and the doll was herself ”. Therefore, in Laurie Simmons’ work, the doll would simultaneously represent herself and her mother for she, the doll, is playing the role of the mother. What does this say about Laurie Simmons’ perception of her own mother or more broadly, what does it teach us about the representation of women throughout the 1950’s? The space in which the latter is depicted is also very important, for the position she holds within the household is reflective of her social status. It is therefore interesting to point out that Simmons seems to place the doll predominantly within the kitchen as the latter appears twelve times within the series, thus being the most photographed space. Historically, with the exception of the 17^th Century Dutch home, the kitchen has always been regarded as a relatively unimportant space within the house. In Parisian bourgeois houses for example, the kitchen occupied a room off the courtyard but without direct access to the main rooms. In English terrace houses the kitchen, adjacent to the servant quarters, continued to be located in the basement until the 19^th Century. In that sense, the kitchen was often detached from the rest of the house, hidden and exclusively female. A highly connotative space which epitomises the traditional domestic division of labour. Therefore, by choosing a doll to stand as her female protagonist and by placing it in the kitchen, Simmons undeniably plays with the stereotypical and undermining representation of women as housewives. Although the 1950’s offered progressive gender equality due to the sudden introduction of women into the labour force during the Second World War, housekeeping and raising a family were still considered ideal female roles.           

This very separation  between female and male, private and public is very illustrative of the 18^th Century bourgeoisie from which this compartmentalization of society dates. As explained in 1892 by Jules Simon, a moderate republican: “a man’s vocation is to be a good citizen. A woman’s? To be a good wife and a good mother. One is some way called to the outside world, the other is retained for the interior” ²¹ (my italics). This notion of containment, of social enclosure regarding women is very explicit in In and Around the House and, thus further reinforces the unhomeliness of Simmons’ interiors. As a result, the home is presented as a place in which the female inhabitant feels oppressed and unfulfilled. A sense of claustrophobia and restraint can be read through the pressurized placement of the female figure in shallow depth of field, thus making the room much smaller than it would appear. The latter is also visually confined both by lighting and composition. In that sense, the doll has become what Baudrillard refers to as a “sequestered object” that is, an object one sequesters so as to be the only one to enjoy it. An object that we hide from others, that we do not lend, for to lose it or for it to be damaged means castration. This sexually perverse behaviour is emphasized by the fact that the photograph is taken from above, giving the impression that the doll is being constantly looked at, or at least offered for sight.