{"id":3081,"date":"2016-03-22T03:50:38","date_gmt":"2016-03-21T22:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=3081"},"modified":"2016-03-22T03:50:38","modified_gmt":"2016-03-21T22:20:38","slug":"can-we-love-lewis-carroll-in-a-post-metoo-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=3081","title":{"rendered":"Can We Love Lewis Carroll in a Post-#MeToo World?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

T<\/span>he list of books that both children and adults can fully enjoy is pretty thin, and there are few better examples than Lewis Carroll\u2019s <\/p>Alice\u2019s Adventures In Wonderland<\/span><\/i> (published on this day in 1865) and <\/span>Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There <\/span><\/i>(1871). Even as a child, though, the titular Alice was never my favourite character. (That honour is reserved for the Cheshire Cat.) As everything spins madly around her, Alice is a visitor from our mundane realm, <\/span>helplessly<\/span><\/a> buffeted by the wild winds of Wonderland and Looking-Glass. <\/span>\n\nAlice in Wonderland drinks from the bottle that says \u201cDrink Me\u201d and eats the cake that says \u201cEat Me\u201d. In <\/span>Through the Looking-Glass<\/span><\/i>, she is dragged into a game of chess and ends up becoming a Queen entirely by accident. Naturally, there is no power or consequence that comes with this title. <\/span>\n\nAs I grew older, I became more charitable towards Alice, a child thrust into a ludicrous dream, realising that the way she was written was not her fault. That blame lies with Lewis Carroll \u2013 a man whose views on <\/span>little girls<\/span><\/a> in general, and on Alice in particular, were eccentric at best and predatory at worst. <\/span>\n\nCarroll imagined the story for a real-life Alice. Alice Pleasance Liddell was the 10-year-old daughter of Carroll\u2019s friend, an Oxford dean, who was <\/span>regaled<\/span><\/a> with his tales of Wonderland on a picnic. It was she who requested Carroll to write them down. Carroll himself was actually Rev. Charles Dodgson, a brilliant logician and mathematician, as well as a deacon, <\/span>writer<\/span><\/a>, and photographer. His subjects were mostly <\/span>children<\/span><\/a>, especially young girls like Alice Liddell \u2013 in the nude.<\/span>\n\nLooking back at 1865 through our modern lens of suspicion, Dodgson\u2019s fascination with young girls takes on a <\/span>sinister<\/span><\/a> tinge. Some historians suggest that the abrupt end to his relationship with the Liddells was due to Dodgson wanting to marry Alice, then 11. <\/span>\n\nThen there\u2019s the story Carroll dreamed up, where a young girl is dropped into a confusion of logical twists and deliciously complex wordplay that she never understands; a land of arbitrary violence and French puns. It is this veneer of nonsense over a meticulously ordered structure that makes <\/span>Alice <\/span><\/i>such a delightful repeat read, with more to discover each time, and that places Alice entirely out of her depth. It\u2019s a peculiar choice for a children\u2019s book \u2013 one that makes you wonder if <\/span>Alice<\/span><\/i> is a children\u2019s book at all. <\/span>\n\nIs Carroll\u2019s beloved fantasy series actually Dodgson\u2019s attempt to play the Pied Piper, encouraging a young, impressionable Alice Liddell to believe in six impossible things before breakfast? Is he a <\/span>man<\/span><\/a> whose interests, however distasteful, were not <\/span>stigmatised<\/span><\/a> in his time? Was he just an avuncular genius trying fondly to entertain a child, or making a didactic comment on the nature of life as a religious intellectual?<\/span>\n\nOf course, any possibility is coloured by what has unfolded in the last one year. It is now impossible to not view Alice through the post <\/span>#MeToo<\/span><\/a> lens. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\n\nLike many others, the list of TV shows, movies, and other media that I can wholly enjoy following the #MeToo revelations is alarmingly shortening by the minute. It is important for us to re-evaluate the art we consume based on what we know about the artist. So it\u2019s harder now to view Kevin Spacey\u2019s too-casual callousness in <\/span>House of Cards<\/span><\/i> (or <\/span>The Usual Suspects<\/span><\/i>, or <\/span>American Beauty<\/span><\/i>) as merely good acting. Or to disassociate Woody Allen\u2019s obsession with older men <\/span>romancing<\/span><\/a> ing\u00e9nues from his real-life paedophilia scandal. <\/span>\n\nSo radically has #MeToo changed our <\/span>perspective<\/span><\/a>, that even going back a few years feels like glancing into a different time, when the permissive mores of a bygone era allowed a climate of harassment to flourish. <\/span>\n

Is Carroll\u2019s beloved fantasy series actually Dodgson\u2019s attempt to play the Pied Piper, encouraging a young, impressionable Alice Liddell to believe in six impossible things before breakfast?<\/blockquote>\nMany have argued that Carroll\u2019s nude girls were, in the Victorian era, seen as a symbol of purity, and parents would consent to their daughters being photographed. In an age of <\/span>star kids<\/span><\/a>, true crime, and Toddlers and Tiaras, we\u2019re used to kids being sexualised and preyed upon. Perhaps Alice herself is meant to be the innocent that represents us all, stumbling blindly against forces unseen and rules unknown.<\/span>\n\nOr maybe that\u2019s just my way of holding onto my decades-long love of <\/span>Alice <\/span><\/i>in an endlessly problematic, post-#MeToo world.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lewis Carroll based his most famous character on Alice Pleasance Liddell, the 10-year-old daughter of his friend. Carroll\u2019s views on little girls bordered on the predatory. So how do we read the beloved Alice\u2019s Adventures In Wonderland in a post #MeToo world?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":208,"featured_media":3082,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[2588,6030,6031,6032,6033,6034,2593,6035,1854,6036,6037,6038,6039,6040],"class_list":["post-3081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-metoo","tag-alice-in-wonderland","tag-alice-pleasance-liddell","tag-alice-through-the-looking-glass","tag-alices-adventures-in-wonderland","tag-cheshire-cat","tag-harassment","tag-james-gunn","tag-kevin-spacey","tag-lewis-carroll","tag-me-too-movement","tag-red-queen","tag-through-the-looking-glass-and-what-alice-found-there","tag-woody-allen"],"yoast_head":"\nCan We Love Lewis Carroll in a Post-#MeToo World?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Lewis Carroll based his most famous character on Alice Pleasance Liddell, the 10-year-old daughter of his friend. 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