Alice in Smutland...

I knew, I knew when we started reading Alice in Wonderland in my Victorian Novel seminar that something would be ruined, because there is no such thing as an innocent text in grad school. Dig deep enough and you'll find laters of erotica, sadism, and malice in even the most charming of children's tales.

Now granted, Alice already bad a bit of a bad rap in lieu of the drugs-and-alcohol vibe throughout the novel (and you know, she does ingest a lot of random substances in there). And always-pervy Disney made the movie version somewhat trippier than it may have needed to be (Disney did a lot of unnecessary things including weird hidden porn in half their movies).

So, you know, I was ready to be introduced to the tale of utter debauchery that was Alice. What I was not ready for is to find out that Lewis Carroll is potentially a pervert of the ilk that would be arrested on Dateline NBC running off of someone's porch with his pants half-zipped.

Besides being a writer, as it turns out, Carroll was a photographer - and he took pictures of little girls. Lots of little girls, none of whom were his own. A lot of them clothed. A lot of them not. A lot of them nudes that, to me, are somewhat appalling.

Click here for an example of Carroll's more provocative works. FAIR WARNING - you may find these images disturbing (they do contain nudity) and they are NOT suitable for certain viewers.

Interestingly, there are two sides to this debate, and many scholars point out that taking Carroll out of historical context is quite unfair. To our modern, Dateline eyes and with our current (and very real fears) of child predators and pedophilia, what Carroll was doing hinges on pornographic and abusive. In Victorian culture, however, taking photographs of children was certainly acceptable, and while the majority were not nudes other photographers did occasionally take child nudes as a part of their work. So from a more Victorian context, while Carroll might certainly have been odd, he wasn't at all exploiting or abusive children. (For a similar debate, check out scholarship on J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan.) To be fair, there is no evidence whatsoever that Carroll had or desired sexual relationships with children.

I don't know. What I do know is, Alice now creeps me out like never before. And no matter how brilliant they were, I probably wouldn't let either of those men anywhere near any kids I knew.

- b -