Eliza Lee Follen's The Talkative Wig (1840) opens not with the wig but with a rainy Sunday and a girl reading Pilgrim's Progress in an old garret. The frame narrative quickly gives way to a chorus of animated objects—curling tongs, a coat, a spinning wheel—each demanding the wig fulfill its promise to relate its own history. The wig stalls, insisting two other objects speak first, a deferral that establishes the story's central tension: the wig is both a reluctant narrator and a commodity whose value depends on whose head it adorns.

The Wig's Reluctant Voice

The wig speaks only after being pressed by the curling tongs, called “Friend Frizzle,” who reminds the assembly of the wig's broken promise. The wig's reply—“I did agree to relate my adventures, but I said I would wait till all had told their stories”—reveals a character who uses procedural delay to avoid exposure. This verbal evasion mirrors the wig's physical nature: a constructed object that can be reshaped, boiled, or sold. Follen gives the wig a voice that is both petulant and strategic, hinting at a history it would rather not recount.

The Coat's Class Anxieties

The coat, by contrast, speaks with pride and class consciousness. It boasts of its “delicate white” fabric and its role in making a major of cadets, claiming “I think I did more to make the major than my Lord Sword did.” The coat's monologue reveals a hierarchy among objects: it looks down on the baize gown and insists on its own refinement. Follen uses the coat's voice to satirize social pretension, as the coat measures worth by its former human wearer's rank. The coat's self-importance is undercut by its current dusty state in the garret, a detail that quietly mocks its claims.

Alice's Hair and Maternal Sacrifice

The most affecting passage belongs to the wig's origin: the hair of Alice, a poor widow who cuts off her long locks to buy school supplies for her son William. The narrative lingers on the act: “Alice took her scissors, and cut off lock after lock, till all were gone, save a few which she left around her forehead.” The son weeps, valuing the hair “more than all learning.” Follen renders the sacrifice through sensory details—the blue ribbon, the muslin cap, the child's tears—without moralizing. The hair, once alive with the beatings of Alice's “gay and generous heart,” becomes a commodity, boiled into a wig.

The Hair Dealer's Pragmatism

When the vicar brings Alice's hair to a London dealer, the transaction is stark. The dealer handles the hair “as fondly as if I had been a baby,” but immediately declares, “I shall have to make a man's wig of it. The curls will all boil out.” The vicar's horror—he wanted to frame the hair “with a glass over it”—contrasts with the dealer's blunt trade. Follen uses this scene to expose the gap between sentimental value and market price. The wig's own voice, which narrates its journey from Alice's head to the garret, is haunted by this moment of commodification.

Readers should attend to how Follen distributes sympathy across objects and humans alike. The wig is not merely a gimmick; its reluctance to speak, its origin in a mother's sacrifice, and its eventual silence in the garret all comment on the stories we choose to tell—and those we suppress. The frame narrative, with its sleepy girl and purring cat, invites a dreamy suspension of disbelief, but the details of hair selling and class distinction anchor the fantasy in hard social realities.