Chapters Dollhood: A Woman's Choice Introduction
July 2049
Emily the doll stared mindlessly ahead, perched on the edge of her seat in the fine drawing room of the Hodgkinsons’ home, her gargantuan chest heaving up and down, each breath tugging on her two remaining wedding rings making her ever-sensitive nipples even sorer than they were before. Across from her sat Chastity and Hope Hodgkinson, the two daughters of the house. They both stared vacantly ahead, they both had heaving breasts, they both had minute waists, and they both were devoid of their arms. All three wore elaborate fleur-de-bouches in their mouths to stop the drool from exiting. All three had been modified into dolls.
Two automaids entered in their fineries, accompanied by a third pushing a cart, which carried their daily meals. In the corner of her locked vision she saw the two girls shift a bit in their place. Were they new to this, or perhaps even eager? Emily was neither. Upon the cart lay three clear rubber phalluses, revealing a core made of the finest looking nutritional mush this side of London. Her maid released the false flower in her mouth with an embroidered cloth placed below to prevent the discharge from falling onto her prominent chest and down her stays. Without further ado (for none was needed or offered), her attendant lodged the sizable feeding apparatus into her mouth. Her tongue and supplemental muscles went to work reflexively, slowly massaging out her food, and with nothing better to do but stare into empty space and guess which Hodgkinson doll would finish first, her thoughts drifted to the past…
The right-hand Hodgkinson Doll finished her meal first. I know because I remember which attendant removed its charge’s decanter first, because that Doll was me: Hope Hodgkinson. Well, that was my name before I married. Now I am Hope Collins, loving wife and property of John Collins. I am his wife but I am not a woman.
I am a Doll.
I remember Emily. Once upon a time, I envied her, I sincerely did. She was the example of a perfect woman, a happy woman, a true doll, and Father rightly believed that having such an example around once in a while would be good influence on my sister and I, so she was paraded before us by Father’s friend, Mr. Battersby, every other Sunday, and truly we all longed to be her. Of course, none of us remotely guessed how unhappy she was inside, as was to be revealed years later in her writings and activism. How could anyone be unhappy when they looked, moved, and behaved so wonderfully, so refined and elegant? How could anyone be unhappy if they were a Doll with a man to love them, and beyond that an estate as luxurious as Humphrey’s?
Yes, we were quite naive.
Why did I shift a little in my place when our food was brought by the automaids? Was I trying to adjust my frozen gaze? Was I disturbed by it? Was I eager? Even now that question is hard to answer. That was a long time ago, and I was still a new Doll at that time; “fresh out of the box” as the saying amongst the dolling community goes. I was eager because I was told that one should be, that this was what every girl wanted, that swallowing puréed food like that was the height of delicacy, efficiency: consumption without moving a voluntary muscle, refuelling for our singular purpose.
Yet I was disturbed too, troubled; for I was beginning to sense that maybe, just maybe, everything they had told us might not be entirely accurate. For the first time in years I was bursting with questions, unafraid of the consequences, but only after losing the voice I had been given by God to ask them with. Why did the size and shape of the feeder feel so degrading; why did I miss my arms by my sides; why did I miss having the energy and ability to walk and run freely; why did I miss being able to converse and express my emotions?
Why did I miss my life before it was “perfect?”
These days, I am much more content. There is little that I miss and nothing that I regret. I am still a Doll and I am still John Collins’s wife, but much has changed. And so I offer you this chronicle as my quiet rebuttal to Emily Rivers (neé Lowood)’s writings on our community. She may wish to abolish the entire practice of Dollhood, and surely I see how her experience may inform that position, but I implore the reader to make their own opinions after reading my tale. This life is not without its unique joys.
But I am getting well ahead of myself. Instead, I should go back, way back, twenty years back, to when my beloved sister Chastity and I were still small children playing in the nursery, and our darling nanny was reading us a story…