The OO part in your topic is a red herring.

It has nothing to do with OO. Or bless. Or hashes. Or even references.

If you do this:

    $var2 = "foo";
    $var1 = $var2;
    $var2 = "bar";
    print $var1;
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Do you expect it to print "bar"? It won't, and shouldn't. If you replace in the above code $var2 with $object->{a}->{var2}, $var1 with $object->{b}->{var1}, "foo" with bless {}, "A1"; and "bar" with $dummy, you get what you are doing.

If you want to get at the current value of a variable, store a reference to that value.

    $var2 = "foo";
    $var1 = \$var2;
    $var2 = "bar";
    print $$var1;   # Prints "bar", not "foo".
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(Fixed typo pointed to by thor)