Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27, 1832 – January 14, 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was a British author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman and photographer.

Allegations of paedophilia

Dodgson’s undeniable fondness for little girls (especially Alice Liddell, from whom it is often said he may have derived his own "Alice", although he himself seems to have denied this origin), the sheer number of his child-friends, his collection of the early child photographs by Oscar Rejlander, his love of the London theatres before the child-actress reforms, and psychological readings of his work — especially his photographs of nude or semi-nude girls and his sketchbooks featuring his own drawings of nude or semi-nude girls — have all led to speculation that he was a paedophile, albeit probably a celibate one.

Related Topics:
Alice Liddell - Oscar Rejlander - Paedophile

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The issue has been contentious, with some arguing that child nudes were not uncommon during the era. (Other notable Victorian-era photographers who took images of nude children include Julia Margaret Cameron, Francis Meadow Sutcliffe, Oscar Rejlander, and others.)

Related Topics:
Julia Margaret Cameron - Francis Meadow Sutcliffe - Oscar Rejlander

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According to the 'controversial' investigation by Karoline Leach into what she calls the 'Carroll Myth' (see below), the first hints of allegations that Dodgson was a pedophile seem to have appeared in 1932, in The Life of Lewis Carroll by Langford Reed. Reed apparently was the first to claim that all of Carroll's female friendships ended when the girls reached puberty (around 16 in 1870s England), though Reed apparently only intended to suggest that Dodgson was thereby a pure man untainted by touch of lust for adult flesh. This claim that Dodgson lost interest in girls once they reached puberty was later caught up by other biographers, who remained unaware of the evidence to the contrary since Dodgson's family refused to publish his diaries and letters.

Related Topics:
Karoline Leach - 1932 - The Life of Lewis Carroll - Langford Reed - Puberty - 1870

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The view of Dodgson as having no adult life and being preoccupied with children persisted among his biographers, including Florence Becker Lennon (Victoria Through the Looking-Glass - UK title "Lewis Carroll"), 1945) and the highly influential Alexander Taylor (The White Knight, 1952). The debate tended to veer between those who believed Dodgson to have been innocently obsessed with children and those who believed this obsession to have been pedophilic.

Related Topics:
Florence Becker Lennon - Victoria Through the Looking-Glass - Lewis Carroll - 1945 - Alexander Taylor - The White Knight - 1952

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The issue was rekindled in 1995 with the authoritative Lewis Carroll, a Biography by Morton Cohen. Cohen writes:

Related Topics:
1995 - Lewis Carroll, a Biography - Morton Cohen

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"We cannot know to what extent sexual urges lay behind Charles's preference for drawing and photographing children in the nude. He contended the preference was entirely aesthetic. But given his emotional attachment to children as well as his aesthetic appreciation of their forms, his assertion that his interest was strictly artistic is naïve. He probably felt more than he dared acknowledge, even to himself. Certainly he always sought to have another adult present when nude prepubescents modelled for him."

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Cohen further notes that the children's mothers were encouraged to be present, and asks if these precautions were the result of Dodgson "insuring himself against slip-ups." (p 228–229) Cohen concedes that Dodgson "apparently convinced many of his friends that his attachment to the nude female child form was free of any eroticism," but adds that "later generations look beneath the surface" (p 229).

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The only recorded instance of trouble associated with the nudes of children was Dodgson's experience with the Mayhew family. In 1879, Dodgson wrote what have been called by Cohen "several curious letters ... to the family of Andrew Mayhew, an Oxford colleague ... He asked permission to take nude photographs of the three Mayhew daughters, ages 6, 11, and 13, with no other adults present." The Mayhew parents, who had previously allowed Dodgson to photograph their children, refused, and Cohen notes this same period saw a "sudden break in the friendship" between Dodgson and the Mayhew family (p. 170). Leach suggests that the problem lay with his desire to study the older daughters in frontal positions and not with the younger children.

Related Topics:
1879 - Andrew Mayhew

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Karoline Leach's work and the 'Carroll Myth'

A new analysis of Dodgson's sexual proclivities (and indeed the evolution of the entire process of his biography) appears in Karoline Leach's 1999 book, In the Shadow of the Dreamchild. She claims that the image of Dodgson's alleged pedophilia was built out of a failure to understand Victorian morals, as well as the mistaken idea that Dodgson had no interest in adult women which evolved out of the minds of various biographers. She termed this simplified, often frankly fictional image 'the Carroll Myth'.

Related Topics:
Karoline Leach - 1999

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According to Leach, who cites much prima facie evidence, Dodgson's real life was very different from the accepted biographical image. He in fact was keenly interested in adult women and apparently enjoyed several relationships with women, married and single; some of these were his child-friends with whom (in complete refutation of the mythic idea that he 'lost interest' in any girl over the age of 14) he retained good relations into adulthood, but others — like Catherine Lloyd, Constance Burch, Edith Shute, Gertrude Thomson (to name but a few) — were women he met as adults and with whom he shared very close and meaningful friendships. Suggestions of paedophilia only evolved many years after his death, when his well-meaning family had suppressed all evidence of these adult friendships in order to try to preserve his reputation, thus giving a false impression of a man only interested in little girls. While not all paedophiles are attracted solely to children, this does repudiate some of the classical evidence for the claim.

Related Topics:
Prima facie - Catherine Lloyd - Constance Burch - Edith Shute - Gertrude Thomson

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Dodgson's problems with societal disapproval, Leach says, stemmed not from his usage of nude child models but his attempts to get slightly older models to pose in 'bathing dress' and other immodest clothing. These studies of scantily-dressed older models have all disappeared, leaving commentators only the photos of young girls to comment on.

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In a review of the title in Victorian Studies (Vol.43, No.4) reviewer Donald Rackin wrote, "As a piece of biographical scholarship, Karoline Leach's In the Shadow of the Dreamchild is difficult to take seriously", however, for all the emotional intensity of his attack, he visibly failed to detail any actual errors in her work. Nor have any errors been pointed out so far by any other authorities, and many now regard her work as an important step towards a better understanding of Carroll. Her work has been paralleled by that of Hugues Lebailly whose studies of Dodgson's artistic and social interests also support the idea that the image of his 'obsession' with small female children was largely simplistic or mythic in origin.

Related Topics:
Victorian Studies - Donald Rackin - Karoline Leach - In the Shadow of the Dreamchild - Hugues Lebailly

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