In The Shadow of the Dreamchild

This is a book that may upset people who are sure that Lewis Carroll was either an active or a sort-of active pedophile. The book presents a very strong case for (1) that not being true, and (2) that he actually had relationships with grown women and one or more of those relationships, including one with Alice's mother, may have ended up a sexual relationship.

The reasoning of the author seems sound and there is no doubt she had done a lot of research into Dodgson/Carroll, what the times were like and the people he knew. There are also some photos.

Some of the main points that the book makes includes:

Some of the material from his diaries and some of his letters, and possibly other things, were destroyed by family members. People normally don't destroy things like that unless they are trying to hide something.

In point of fact it seems that there was actually rather a lot of gossip about Dodgson going on in Oxford and it seemed not to be some much focused on his relationships with young girls as it was on his relationships with grown women.

It's very possible that he and Alice's mother had a continuing sexual relationship and only when the gossip got bad (or perhaps due to some other reason) the two stayed away from each other for a while.

He was not centered on Alice Liddell. He actually had many young girl friends and them seem to remember him fondly and not a one of them every claimed he did anything physical with them that would today be called child abuse.

He had problems with his health (stammering, chest problems) and had major problems at times with depression.

He also spent a lot of time chastising himself for 'sins' he had committed.

According to the times a girl became 'sexualized' at fourteen.

It seems to me from what is in the book that a 'childhood friend' would kind of remain a child no matter how old the woman got, even if she was married. I think the evidence is pretty strong, too, that he related to girls and women far better than he related to males.

Things that were normal to Victorians are often now looked upon as distasteful, lewd, dangerous and sexualized.(I think this relates to our society being very, very skeptical and trustful and probably more bigoted than Victorian England. We are overly-quick to criticize and distrust.)

Something I found that I felt to be pathetic was that a lot of his belongings were disposed of via action. This doesn't count the many family members did to his diaries and letters.

This may have been due to a family disappointment with the assumed scandals that Carroll was involved in.

There was a 19th century 'worship of the little girl' that was tied in to the nude photos taken by various people. Carroll was definitely not the only man to take photos of that nature.

The female child was a symbol of purity and photos of nude young girls was mainstream (at the time.)

He did have images of naked women.

He had a normal heterosexual response to women but there is no evidence to indicate his approach to his photos of naked young girls was sexual at all. It was just normal, again for that time.

Dodgson's embrace of the theater (something looked down upon at the time) could be interpreted as an open defiance against his father's strict beliefs.

When he was around 26 years old something happened that sent destroyed his self-confidence.

There's a lot of discussion about Christ Church college and the reforms that Alice's father, who was not head, wanted to make,. Some of these Dodgson was strongly against and wrote pamphlets about.

The author builds a good case that Dodgson may have had a sexual relationship with Alice's mother, that something went wrong somewhere and this accounts for the time he stayed away from the family and it also accounts for his depression and his constant (for a while) worries about him being a sinner.

There is no evidence that Dodsgon was in love with Alice and no evidence that Alice's family believed any such thing was going on. Some of his written comments in his diaries indicate that he didn't have the highest opinion of Alice's personality.

The author also builds a case that Alice's father, the dean of the college, may have been aware of what was going on between Dodgson and his wife and this may explain why Dodgson was allowed to remain at the college even though he didn't do what he was supposed to and become a priest. The dean may have feared a major scandal that would remove him from power.

Dodgson and Alice's mother had a number of meetings together off-campus.

Dodgson was very strongly against vivisection (the cutting up of living animals. (I remember once in Biology in college the professor cut open a living frog to show us it's heart was beating. Now, let's be logical for a moment. If the frog was alive then, ergo, it's heart was beating. There was no need to cut it open to prove that it's heart was beating. Vivisection, by the way, was used by the Japanese Unit 731 during World War II but not on frogs, on people. )

The book also covers his death.

There are some of his love poems and other material in the appendices.