And then there's the fanning that she does before she starts to shrink, and the salt water that laps her chin once she's mere inches tall – both acquire a decidedly masturbatory glossing. Locks and keys were seen as symbolic of coitus, and the caterpillar – well, wasn't he just a bit… phallic? Inevitably, some saw penis envy in the text, rendering Alice's extending neck a kind of copycat erection. Re-examining the text, critics found plenty of gynaecological imagery, from the rabbit hole itself to the curtain that she must push aside. With the waning of Victorian prudery and the birth of psychoanalytical theory, his book came to seem a good deal less innocent. It's not only Dodgson himself who has come under fresh scrutiny as society has evolved. Moreover, what caused eyebrows to be raised among Dodgson's contemporaries wasn't the idea that he was spending time with very young children but that he might be fraternising with girls nearing what was then the legal age of consent: 12 (it would rise to 16 in 1885). For a start, the pictures he created weren't unusual – another pioneer of photographic portraiture, Julia Margaret Cameron, shot plenty of images of children both in costume and in various states of undress. Victorians, of course, looked on the situation differently. The Liddell girls weren't the only children Dodgson befriended, and while there is no proof of anything explicitly untoward in his relationships with them, from our 21st-Century vantage point, it's hard not to view as queasily suspect a grown man who not only sent his young playmates wonderful letters full of puns and puzzles, but also requested locks of their hair and asked them to sit on his lap and pose for photographs, occasionally nude or semi-nude. His lens was especially drawn to Alice, and she stares assertively out of the portraits he obsessively took of her, meeting the gaze with striking self-possession. He was an avid practitioner of the newfangled art of photography, and their friendship evolved through his efforts to capture her and her sister on film. Inscribed "A Christmas Gift to a Dear Child in Memory of a Summer's Day", it carries the nom de plume under which he'd previously published some poetry, Lewis Carroll.Īlice was the daughter of the dean of Christ Church, the Oxford college where Dodgson taught. Meticulously handwritten in sepia ink, it contains not a single mistake and is filled with his own detailed illustrations. It proved such a hit that Alice insisted Dodgson transcribe it, which he duly did. The book began life modestly in 1862, as entertainment for 10-year-old Alice Liddell and her two sisters as they boated on the River Thames with mathematician Charles Dodgson and his clergyman friend. The 21st Century's greatest children's books Why Where the Wild Things Are is the greatest children's book Read more about BBC Culture's 100 greatest children's books: Delve into the writings of generations of critics, scholars and bloggers, and this beloved juvenile classic becomes variously an allegory on drug culture, a parable of British colonisation, and the story of a heroine with a bad case of penis envy. Yet its most capacious by-product by far is alternate readings. There's even a neurological syndrome named after it. Over the course of a century and a half, it's inspired films, paintings, a ballet and computer games. Lewis Carroll's fantastical tale of magic cakes and secret doors, grinning cats and warbling turtles, has never been out of print since it was first published – and has just come second in BBC Culture's Greatest Children's Books poll. To fully experience what it means to tumble down a rabbit hole, just ask the internet about hidden messages in the book that so vividly gives us the image, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. When Alice ends up in the court of the tyrannical Queen of Hearts (Verna Felton), she must stay on the ruler's good side - or risk losing her head.This is an updated version of an article originally published in 2016. There she encounters an odd assortment of characters, including the grinning Cheshire Cat (Sterling Holloway) and the goofy Mad Hatter (Ed Wynn). When Alice (Kathryn Beaumont), a restless young British girl, falls down a rabbit hole, she enters a magical world. Lewis Carroll's beloved fantasy tale is brought to life in this Disney animated classic.
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