Happy Anniversary to Alice in Wonderland

                

Lewis Carroll  (1832-1898)
Alice Liddell as "The Beggar Maid"   ca.1859

Albumen Silver Print
16.3 x 10.9 cm (6 7/16 x 4 5/16
 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation,
  

On November 26, 1862, a shy mathematician and published poet sent young Alice Liddell a manuscript of a story he had written to amuse her and her sisters.   Alice was ten years old. Charles Lutwidge Dodson was 30.  The manuscript was published a few years later as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland under the author’s pen name – Lewis Carroll.

Dodgson was a close friend of Alice’s parents.  Her father was dean at Christ Church College where Dodgson lectured in mathematics.  A socially awkward man with an embarrassing stutter, Dodgson developed strong ties with the Liddell’s children.   He would often take Alice and her two sisters on boating trips and entertain them with stories that would serve as the basis for his Alice narrative.

One of Dodgson’s hobbies was photography.  This was a common pastime for educated people of means during the Victorian era, and Dodgson was considered quite talented at this new invention that combined scientific as well as aesthetic knowledge.  Like many photographers of his day, one of his favorite subjects was children.  A number of his photographs were of young girls in various states of undress posed in artistic “tableaux.”  At his death, the artist left 3000 negatives which included portraits of the cultural elite in his social circle as well as their children, a number of whom were posed in artistic settings.  There is ample evidence to suggest that the young subjects always had parents or a guardian present during these photography sessions.  Nevertheless, Charles Dodgson has been under suspicion, especially in these past few decades, of having an unnatural sexual interest in young girls and in Alice in particular.   These photographs, plus Dodgson’s known attachment to the Liddell family and reports of a sudden, unexplained break in their friendship, have given rise to a number of treatises (both non-fiction and fiction) that Dodgson’s interest was not purely artistic. 

 

In truth, the bodies of children, girls in particular, were quite common in art of Victorian England.  The photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, another upperclass “hobbyist” was part of Dodgson’s and the Liddell’s  circle.  Cameron, who received a large measure of acclaim for her work, would frequently pose young unclothed children in narrative tableaux.  Dodgson was also friendly with a group of writers and artists who called themselves the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.”  This group wanted to return to art that they perceived as simple and pure -- the Medieval and early Renaissance art before Raphael.  They portrayed women as innocent, simple, virtuous creatures in constant danger of falling from grace, or as seductive femme fatales.  Not surprisingly, the innocent young girl became a standard figure in many Pre-Raphaelite works.  In fact, John Ruskin, one of the leading critics of the day, is rumored to have never consummated his marriage to his wife Effie (who ran off with the painter John Millais) because he was so horrified to discover that she had pubic hair. 

 

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879)

Venus Chiding Cupid and Removing His Wings, 1872 

                                          Albumen Silver Print, National Media Museum, The Royal Photographic Society

It is evident that during this period childhood innocence and virtue was celebrated and often expressed through the innocent youthful naked body. The truth is, we really don’t know whether Charles Dodgson had an unnatural interest in young girls.   However, based on the taste and standards of art of the time, we cannot condemn him based on the photographic evidence alone.