Still She Haunts Me: A Novel of Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell

by Katie Roiphe

Book Overview

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was a shy Oxford mathematician, reverend, and pioneering photographer. Under the pen name Lewis Carroll he wrote two stunning classics that liberated children's literature... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 038533530X
• ISBN13: 9780385335300
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Delta
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

The definition of attraction...

Katie Roiphe's book raises critical questions which concern not only the relationship between Dodgson and Alice Liddell, but the very idea of attraction between humans.That he was attracted to Alice, to the point of obsession, is not in question. Was he sexually attracted to her? In truth, we can never know, but in examining the nature of attraction, especially in the light of the 20 year age difference, we are lead into many interesting areas.Katie Roiphe's projection that he finally made the quantum leap into photographing Alice naked, as he had done with other young girls, is not entirely unreasonable. The reclining nude 'study' of Evelyn Hatch is one of the few surviving examples of his child nude phase. Apparently he took a substantial number of child nude photographs, of which only perhaps four have survived.Whether the attraction was based on past-life karma, mere aesthetics or something darker is again unknown. His sexual attraction to an eleven year old Alice is not unthinkable as there is an inevitable level of male biological response to the presence of sexually maturing females, based on a simple reproductive urge. While there is no estrus response as such in humans, there will be other factors, other signals, which trigger attraction and the equivalent of a mating ritual.His attraction of whatever kind to the four year old Alice, is more problematic. Given his ability to think in child-like fantasy terms, as evinced by the books, it may be that at some level, the four year old in Carroll had a simple crush on the young Alice, and that simultaneously he projected her future development into adult form as a possible future soul mate.There is still debate over whether he actually proposed to the eleven year old Alice, and whether this, rather than the nude photography, may have been the final straw for her family.Whatever the reality may have been, Roiphe's story is challenging and well developed, and not entirely unsympathetic to his situation, projected or otherwise. Roiphe's view seems to be that even if he was sexually attracted to her, he did at least control himself.For me, the bottom line in terms of the real world, is that if there is a male hanging around your family 'because he loves children so much', there is a 99% chance he has pedophile tendencies and should not be trusted under any circumstances.The downside of Carroll/Dodgson is that he was a pompous oaf, who wrote very condescendingly about others, imagining that he could charm his way into the lives of an infinite number of young girls and their often witless parents. Was he a calculating monster? I think not. Was he in love with Alice? Yes. Were his attentions and the form they took excessive? Yes.Somewhere in between those who dismiss him as a pedophile and those who would completely whitewash his disturbing obsessions, may well lie the truth.

Great Book

I throughly enjoyed this book. It is one of the better novels that I have read of late. The characters roped you into thier world. Very hard to put down.

AN ASTONISHING, MOVING PIECE OF WRITING...

Katie Roiphe's novel of the relationship between Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) and Alice Liddell (for whom he wrote Alice's adventures in Wonderland and Through the looking-glass) is one of the most beautifully-written books I've read in some time. The questions surrounding the relationship are long-standing - was Dodgson's obsession with Alice grounded in innocence or in lust (even if repressed)? How did Alice herself view the relationship, both as it was happening and, as she grew older, in retrospect? There is mention of a reference to Dodgson by Alice, written for a magazine when she was in her 80s, that is warm and sentimental - but even in this reference, she mentions the fact that all of the letters Dodgson wrote to her when she was a child were destroyed by her mother. This novel might not answer these questions completely and thoroughly - how, indeed, could it do that, given the passage of time and the destruction of crucial `evidence' - but it seems that Roiphe has done her very extensive research with accuracy in mind, and the results make for an extremely readable, compelling and moving story.Like any relationship that involves even a hint of the possibility of child abuse or pedophilia, there are undercurrents and subtleties swimming just beneath the surface of the more obvious events and emotions. The story of Dodgson and Alice raises questions as questions are answered. The mathematics lecturer met Alice and her family (her father was his dean at Oxford) when the girl was only four years old, and remained close to the Liddells until Alice was eleven, when events caused the tensions which had been simmering for seven years to boil over. There was very obviously some degree of discomfort on the part of Alice - despite her honest affection for Dodgson and his attentions - that was harder and harder for her to contain as she approached adolescence. As she became less and less of a little girl and more of a young woman, she found it difficult not only to reconcile her feelings for and about Dodgson, but to come to grips with the natural changes occurring within her own psyche and body - a transition that's difficult at best, challenging each of us as a rite of passage into adulthood.Like another reviewer, I had some serious and deep-rooted questions about Alice's mother's ongoing reaction to Dodgson's attentiveness to her middle daughter. She expresses misgivings about it from the beginning, mostly based on `gut' feelings and motherly instinct. Why in the world would a mother experiencing any misgivings about another adult spending time with one of her children not look into the matter more thoroughly and take action to prevent lasting emotional damage to her child? The answer to this perhaps lies in the age in which the events took place. While pedophilia undoubtedly occurred then as it does now, I'm sure it wasn't given the media attention it receives today, especially considering what was considered `discussable' in

Stars in a Box

'Still She Haunts Me' is one of the most beautiful books that I have read in the past year. Fiction or non-fiction, it doesn't really matter. What is written on these pages is not a minute by minute account of Charles Dodgson's life, but instead, a clever telling of the story of Alice Liddell and 'Lewis Carroll' and of what befalls the pair. Other books on Dodgson's life that I have read have left me bored, but this book held my intrest until the last. Anyone claiming that this is an uninteresting book could never be a true Carroll fan. Katie Roiphe makes you feel as though Dodgson is a person that you could know. He's the shy professor at your college or the witty man that you see at the library. This book is a must-read for all Carroll fans.

Mesmerizing Tale of Lost Innocence

What a haunting novel. Set in 1850s Oxford, this novel is infused with a feeling of things coming to an end. Sadly, like a summer turning to fall. Charles Dodson/ Lewis Carroll is achingly pathetic, and wins our sympathy. Little Alice is bewitching. The novel contains researched speculation as to what happened to cause a rift between Dodson and the Liddell family, but it seems that the friendship of Dodson and Alice was doomed already-- she had to grow up. I haven't read "Alice in Wonderland" since I was a child; I'm reading it now. This beautifully-written novel is like a dream. Weird, frightening and somehow hyper-real.