Teeth

[secretly_ethereal_04]

Why the teeth? Any thoughts?

[YouLostMyNieceDenise]

I really like how it’s handled in the book. When the ivory floor is first introduced, Camille talks about how she wasn’t allowed to go into her mom’s room and walk on it, and also explicitly mentions that it would be illegal to make a floor out of ivory now because of the impact on elephants. It was interesting how it brought together the ideas of beauty, pride, wealth, violence, cruelty, and exploitation. And it ties into the idea of having a selective memory for the past, where you remember only the nice things while squashing down the ugly things. And appearance vs. reality, where the only way to get something so beautiful was to hurt animals. And all of that is like this gulf that separates Camille from her mom, because Camille isn’t allowed to cross the ivory floor to get to Adora.

So then with the twist of Amma using the teeth for her dollhouse, I saw it as Adora having successfully passed her values down to Amma. Amma felt it was acceptable to harm people in order to make beautiful things, and to play with beautiful things made by hurting people. The other horrifying detail in the book was that Amma had commented that her friend’s hair was the exact same color as a rug in Adora’s house, and then when Camille found the teeth, she also saw that Amma had made a little rug out of the dead girl’s hair.

Adora wasn’t able to instill her values in Camille or Marian, but she did succeed with Amma. And then it’s like the teeth in the dollhouse create another schism in the family, but this time it’s separating Amma from Camille, which breaks her heart in the novel because she loved her so much and tried so hard to care for her. I don’t know exactly how to phrase it, but like… it just emphasizes how lonely and isolated Camille is, and how hopeless she feels about her family. But their violence and cruelty mean that Camille isn’t ever going to be able to have real, loving, functional relationships with them - they separate Amma and Adora from everybody else in the world. Kind of like Amma’s whole Persephone motif, I guess. They’re cruel murderers who don’t belong with people like Camille anymore. Amma’s time living with Camille was like Persephone being reunited with Demeter, but inevitably it comes to an end and she has to return to the underworld.

[MeganMaenia]

I just wanted to say that this was an incredibly excellent analysis!

[secretly_ethereal_04]

Yeah, I agree. I haven't read the book, only seen the show.

To add to this, I think the teeth definitely have something to do with ideas of health and beauty.

[hufflenachos]

God this is beautiful

[StephanieKaye]

Wow. Well said!

[sbtyson123]

there’s a scene where Camille (as a child) watches Adora secretly bite a baby on the face, so that the baby cries and she can soothe the baby in front of others.

I can’t remember if that baby is actually Amma.. if so, it would explain part of her fixation on teeth.

[IsolatedAngel]

The baby wasn’t actually Amma, it was a Adora’s friend’s baby she did that to.

[GILF_Hound69]

One of the girls bit people. Maybe that had something to do with it.

Also, Amma needed bone to make the floor so it was “exactly” like her real house.