A Topsy-Turvy doll is a double-ended

doll A doll is a model typically of a human or humanoid character, often used as a toy for children. Dolls have also been used in traditional religious rituals throughout the world. Traditional dolls made of materials such as clay and wood are foun ...

, typically featuring two opposing characters. They are traditionally

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

cloth folk dolls which fuse a white girl child with a black girl child at the hips. Later dolls were sometimes a white girl child with a black '' mammy'' figure. Precise facts about their origins are rare, but as late as the 1950s, "Topsy and Eva" dolls were marketed by

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

Montgomery Ward Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a world-pioneering mail-order business and later also a leading department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001. The curren ...

, and The Babyland Rag company (aka Bruckner).

Meaning and use

As objects of material culture, Topsy-Turvy dolls have provoked a great amount of interpretive controversy. Karen Sanchez-Eppler suspects that Harriet Beecher Stowe's ''Topsy'' in ''

Uncle Tom's Cabin ''Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly'' is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U ...

'' may have taken her name from the dolls, making for a "poignant and somewhat disturbing pairing with little Eva". Doll collector Wendy Lavitt writes, "It has recently been suggested that these dolls were often made for Black children who desired a forbidden white doll (a baby like the ones their mothers cared for); they would flip the doll to the black side when an overseer passed them at play." Alice Taylor echoes this idea. “Scholars and doll enthusiasts continue to speculate about their original purpose and how children would have used them. The dolls likely were produced for slave children and perhaps as 'maid dolls' for white children. The issue of how children played with these dolls remains hotly debated”. Kimberly Wallace-Sanders addresses the controversial question of the possible meanings and uses behind the doll's design in her social history of the image and myth of the Southern mammy figure. She writes:

African American slave women may have given dolls like these to their daughters as a preparation for a possibility of a life devoted to nurturing two babies: one black and one white. Topsy-turvy dolls are designed for children to play with one baby at a time, and this accurately reflects the division of caregiving that African American women encountered, having to care for white children during the day and their own children at night. These handmade dolls are important, creative expressions of those otherwise silent women we know only as "mammy."

Wallace-Sanders also disagrees with the "forbidden white doll" theory, arguing that the idea of a secret doll that would be forbidden to own makes Black mothers seem extremely irresponsible. File:Topsy-Turvy dolls - Cinderella - as a servant.jpg, A pair of Cinderellas dressed as servants File:Topsy-Turvy dolls - Cinderella - ready for a ball.jpg, A pair of Cinderellas ready for a ball

Collections and museums

Many Topsy-Turvy style dolls can be found in the Hatch Collection of Black Cloth Dolls. Another in a red checked apron, "called a double ender because of the two opposite heads", is on view at the

Philadelphia Doll Museum The Philadelphia Doll Museum is located in Philadelphia at 2253 North Broad Street along the Avenue of the Arts. It is the only known museum in the United States that emphasizes the collection and preservation of black dolls as artifacts of histo ...

References

{{Reflist Traditional dolls

Meaning and use

Collections and museums

See also

References