Point of View

The story is told from the third person, but its primary focus is on Gertie - her actions, reactions, feelings, interpretations of events, and process of transformation. This aspect of The Dollmaker is developed in careful, at times exquisite detail - the same kind of detail with which Gertie carves her dolls and the Christ figure in the cherry wood block. That being said, there are sections in the book in which she plays an active role and others in which she is much more reactive. Interestingly it is in the novel's first third, containing the episode of her trip to the doctor with Amos and the near-acquisition of the Tipton Place, in which she is the most active, pursuing her goals with determination.

In the latter two thirds of the novel, when she moves to Detroit and struggles with all the challenges of settling...