Most of the time it’s a cause for parental rejoicing when a popular movie strikes up a teen or tween’s interest in classic literature and classic literary figures. But then, most classic literary figures aren’t Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll. A short internet foray into the life and times of the author of “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” will bring up drug use, pedophilia and child pornography – and that’s just the first page of the Google search. Not exactly the educational conversation every parent dreams of having post Saturday afternoon movie.
As President Obama would say, take this crisis and turn it into an opportunity. If your child is old enough to be using Google alone, or to read the world “pedophilia,” they’re probably old enough to talk about some of the more scandalous elements of Dodgson’s life. In fact, it’s probably past time to talk about drugs and sex if you haven’t had those particular talks already. Take this as a golden opportunity to talk about important life choices and to prove to your skeptical teen that classic literature isn’t boring, and neither were the people who wrote it or the times they lived in.
There have always been rumors that “Alice in Wonderland” is really just a literary drug trip masquerading as a children’s book. Given the fact that the book features, among other wonderfully weird characters, a hooka smoking caterpillar who sits on a mushroom that will make you bigger or smaller depending on which side of it you eat, the idea that it might be drug induced is hardly a logical leap. But scholars and fans of “Alice” still argue the subject hotly. Alice-in-Wonderland.net will tell you that “no evidence has ever been found that linked Carroll to drug use.” But the University of Texas Web site would argue that “Opium is also widely believed to have provided inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s hallucinatory images.” Given that cocaine and opium were perfectly legal, and often used medicinally, in Dodgson’s day, the fact that he might have been high as a kite when he dreamed up his fantastical voyage is distinctly possible and, for his period, not all that shocking.
The allegations of pedophilia, on the other hand, are a little more disturbing. Thankfully, it seems pretty clear that if Dodgson, aka Carroll, actually did have troubling romantic urges towards the young girls whose company he famously enjoyed, he never acted on them. Karoline Leach, a Carroll scholar, reports that close examination of the authors letters and his long censored diaries makes it clear that Dodgson was not the tortured, asexual permichild that he allowed his alter-ego Carroll to be cast as, but rather a bit of a horn dog. According to Leach’s research, Dodgson used the term “child friend” for all of the women he associated with, be they 7 or 40. In fact, it seems that this infamous term was more of a cover for scandalous affairs with grown up (and often married) ladies than it was evidence of a scandalous love for female children.
Dodgson did take a lot of pictures of young girls of all ages in the nude. This activity, which certainly would have gotten him arrested now, again, needs to be examined in the light of his own time period. Victorians found posed portraits of naked children charming, even putting them on Christmas cards. While we might find this hobby less than appropriate, Dodgson’s contemporaries found this obsession with childhood innocence to be charming.
In short, both Charles Dodgson and his alter ego Lewis Carroll were fascinating characters in their own right, so if Johnny Depp and Tim Burton have managed to ignite your child’s curiosity about the life and times of the author of “Alice in Wonderland” – encourage them. If Alice can teach us anything, it’s that curiosity makes life just a little more wonderful.
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