Angela Carters 'The loves of lady purple' is a magic realism short story where a doll has magic abilities beyond explanation. As the story progresses, the doll gets more agile and more real as the professor gets more old and sick. there are patterns emerging where the characters repeat many of their actions due to lack of control over themselves. Through the presentation of relationship, repetition, Angela carter suggests that individuals have little to no control, of their lives and usually repeat actions by instinct. 

The relationship between the doll and the Asiatic professor shows that the doll will never have full control over herself.

The narrator points out this out by stating: "she must have been the masterpiece of a long- dead anonymous artisian and yet she was nothing but a curious structure until the professor touched her strings for it was who filled with necromantic vigour". This declaration accentuates the idea that the doll is nothing without its master. It only repeats what the professor wants it to do, mimic him and life. The doll always repeats the same shoe under the control of the professor.