The Alice Behind Wonderland

This is a rather interesting book. A great deal of it actually goes into the history of photography. The part that doesn't focuses a lot on the photo that Dodgson took of Alice as a beggar girl. The photo shows the young girl in rags, basically, standing as if she were begging. Her left nipple is shown (although the picture needs to be looked at with a magnifying glass to actually tell.

This is one of the controversial pictures that Dodgson took of young girls. The book points out, though, that it was part of a two-picture set that actually told a story. The first photo shows Alice as normal, as a rich girl. The second shows her as a beggar girl, thus pointing out that those who are rich one day could become poor the next.

The photo also relates to a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson of a meeting between a King and a beggar-maid. Something that is not pointed out in most books is that Alice's mother and nanny/governess actually helped dress Alice in the beggar clothes, so they knew well what was going on. It was also very likely that the mother, at least, was nearby as photos of the other two sisters were to be taken that day also.

In today's world Dodgson would be immediately assumed to be a child pornographer and would be arrested, but in those days the photographing of children in various states of clothing and undress was not considered in that kind of light. Thus, in the culture of that time, what Dodgson was doing by photographing young girls (and he photographed other people, also), was not really anything that was wrong.

He did have a major falling out with the Liddell family, and his contact with them was basically cut off for a long time. There is no specific known reason, but the author brings up that Dodgson might have been interested in one of the older sisters. The mother would not have approved since she expected all three sisters to marry rich men and Dodgson was not rich.

One other important thing to keep in mind. Many books give the impression that Dodgson took loads and loads of photos of Alice, but he actually only took eleven photos of just her and seven others with her and her sisters. Thus, he was not at all obsessed with Alice as far as taking pictures goes.

This is a quite interesting book.

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