What would it be like, for a woman to be desired so possessively by a man that she is turned. in fact, into a possession? a “man-made woman“?

Let’s leave the real Alma Mahler out of it (and lord knows she took more than her share of heat for having so many famous and creative men fall in love with her: as if this is A) a bad thing and B) her sole “fault”). Consider instead the obsessive desire that led to the commissioning, the creation, of this literal love object, the buying of sweet Parisian underthings, the maid engaged to care for (and launder) the doll — and think of Oscar Kokoschka writing to the dollmaker, asking her to “carry out this task as I would wish, to deceive me with such magic that when I see it and touch it I imagine that I have the woman of my dreams in front of me” — the power of the object to become in his arms the authentic woman, if only for brief and heady moments — who deceives whom, and with what magic? Thus a performing object (for surely this doll was that) comes alive.

I wonder how many other dolls she made, and of whom.