Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson He chose to publish his works under the pen name Lewis Carroll He was bullied as a child at boarding school From a young age, he had a bad stammer and was deaf in one ear Later on, he walked with a limp and had a weak immune system He always loved games and puzzles He also loved spending time with children, especially little girls

Dodgson grew up in Oxford, England Dodgson grew up in Oxford, England. He attended and then taught math at Christ Church college, where he lived until he died in 1898.

Inspiration for Alice From his office window at Christ Church, he could see the park where Alice Liddell and her sisters would play. Lewis and the Liddell sisters became very close, and would sometimes take long boat rides on the river Thames. During these trips, he would invent stories for the children. Alice asked him to write her story down. Alice Liddell The Thames, pronounced “Temz”

Photography—a new invention! Not many people had cameras at this time, so the Liddell children loved to pose for his camera. Dodgson would have traveled with all of the equipment in the photo below!

Controversy Dodgson took many pictures of little girls, some of them totally naked. HOWEVER, it was totally normal during the Victorian era for rich families to commission and display nude pictures of their children. In Victorian times, children were put on a pedestal of innocence, like angels.

That wasn’t so weird… Now that’s weird. During the Victorian era, people also made fancy braided wreaths out of the hair of a dead person to honor and commemorate that person. Now that’s weird.

Historical Context: The Industrial Revolution CHILD LABOR! Poor children and orphans (as young as 3) worked in factories, mines, and as chimney sweeps. NO FREE, PUBLIC EDUCATION! In 1840, 20% of children went to school. In 1860, 50% went to school. Today, 100% go to school.

Children’s Literature This was the first time in history that children were seen as separate individuals with their own interests Other reasons for this boom in children’s literature include: technology that made paper/printing more affordable, more people learning to read, & the cultural shift toward leisure First edition of Alice, which was originally titled Alice’s Adventures Underground

Fantasy Genre Carroll was one of the first children’s writers to use this genre; Alice and Looking-Glass are purely imaginative, and NOT instructional Fantasy writing occurs when a story does not make sense as we know reality. Why do you think that children’s literature was making this shift? Which image looks like a more suitable reality for a child?

What is real? What is a dream? “I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir," said Alice, "because I'm not myself, you see.” "I don't see," said the Caterpillar. "I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly," Alice replied very politely, "for I can't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing." "It isn't," said the Caterpillar.

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave Plato’s Socrates describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Plato's Socrates, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. Socrates suggests the prisoners would take the shadows to be real things and the echoes to be real sounds created by the shadows, not just reflections of reality, since they are all they had ever seen or heard. They would praise as clever, whoever could best guess which shadow would come next, as someone who understood the nature of the world, and the whole of their society would depend on the shadows on the wall (Wikipedia.org).

The Matrix The Matrix (1999) depicts a dystopian future in which reality as perceived by most humans is actually a simulated reality or cyberspace called "the Matrix", created by sentient machines to pacify and subdue the human population, while their bodies' heat and electrical activity are used as an energy source. Computer programmer "Neo" learns this truth and is drawn into a rebellion against the machines, which involves other people who have been freed from the "dream world” (Wikipedia.org).

Curiouser and curiouser…Are you ready?