Anyonr read...

[Anthony Furze]

Has anyone read "Still She Haunts Me" by Katie Roiphe? I ve just finished it and found it to be both disturbing and challenging to read. Like some thoughts,please.

[EAP]

Hi. :)

Maybe you'd like to tell us something more about the story? What is it about? A brief synopsis of the overall plot, themes etc would be very nice.

[Anthony Furze]

It concerns the "strange relationship" between Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and Alice Liddell. ts quite a confused book in many ways but also haunting as the title itself suggests...

[EAP]

I have read The Annotated Alice and it offers some pretty fascinating insights into Dodgson's dealings with the Liddell family.


Martin Gardner argues,


There is no indication that Carroll was conscious of anything but the purest innocence in his relations with little girls, nor is there a hint of impropriety in any of the fond recollections that dozens of them later wrote about him. There was a tendency in Victorian England, reflected in the literature of the time, to idealize the beauty and virginal purity of little girls. No doubt this made it easier for Carroll to suppose that his fondness for them was on a high spiritual level, though of course this hardly is a sufficient explanation for that fondness. Of late Carroll has been compared with Humbert Humbert, the narrator of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita. It is true that both had a passion for little girls, but their goals were exactly opposite.


Obviously, it takes the official stance with regard to accusations of paedophilia and existance of romantic feelings often fired Caroll's way by modern critics and socialogists. Given the double-edged morality of the victorian social ensemble, it wouldn't surprise me if the actual truth was very different from that.

[Anthony Furze]

Hello EAP. Thanks for replying.
Whats curious is the missing diary pages which I understand have been reconstructed.Carroll was very religious and it may have been just his own sensibilty.
I ve also got "In the Shadow of the Dreamchild" by Karoline Leach about Carrolls image in history and literature.