Vintage Victorian Christmas Card with Child & Gifts

Why does this girl look less delighted by Christmas and more like she's made a binding life decision about her doll? Frances Brundage's contribution to Victorian psychological warfare: a curly-haired girl in a pink polka-dot dress so aggressively frilly it could weaponize ruffles, gazing down at her tiny blonde doll with an expression that reads less 'Christmas joy' and more 'I have made my decision about you.' The doll — also impeccably dressed, also slightly vacant — stares into the middle distance with the thousand-yard look of someone who has seen things, while a pristine wrapped gift with a red bow sits completely ignored on the floor like a rejected job applicant. The holly sprig decorating said forgotten present is doing its absolute best, bless its heart, but nothing in this composition is competing with the girl's deeply unsettling maternal intensity toward a toy that appears to be roughly the size of her torso.