Alice Revisited
Mar. 27th, 2010 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloAsk me to name a favourite book and I'll probably say Alice in Wonderland- but up until yesterday I hadn't read it in decades.
What an anxious book it is. First we're anxious about our identity- am I Alice or Mabel? Then we're anxious about abandonment- all alone at the bottom of the well. Then we're anxious about the body- all that stretching and shrinking. Then we're anxious about causing offence- to the Mouse, to the Caterpillar.Then we're anxious about physical violence- as the plates fly at the Duchess's house. Then we're anxious about the sudden comings and goings of the Cheshire Cat, who- in an disturbing combination- is both the friendliest of the Wonderland creatures and the eeriest. Finally we're anxious about authority- as we encounter the monstrous Queen of Hearts. As a child I found it all a bit unsettling, but not unbearably so, because I took my cue from Alice herself- from her remarkable courage and commonsense.
What a wise book it is.
Was Lewis Carroll a paedophile? No, I don't think he was. He loved children the way Wordsworth and Blake loved children- because he was a romantic, and admired their openness and freedom from cant- that quality we misleadingly call "innocence". There's nothing creepy in his regard for Alice. He looks up to her; she's his hero; he hangs out with her because he knows she can teach him things.
What an anxious book it is. First we're anxious about our identity- am I Alice or Mabel? Then we're anxious about abandonment- all alone at the bottom of the well. Then we're anxious about the body- all that stretching and shrinking. Then we're anxious about causing offence- to the Mouse, to the Caterpillar.Then we're anxious about physical violence- as the plates fly at the Duchess's house. Then we're anxious about the sudden comings and goings of the Cheshire Cat, who- in an disturbing combination- is both the friendliest of the Wonderland creatures and the eeriest. Finally we're anxious about authority- as we encounter the monstrous Queen of Hearts. As a child I found it all a bit unsettling, but not unbearably so, because I took my cue from Alice herself- from her remarkable courage and commonsense.
What a wise book it is.
Was Lewis Carroll a paedophile? No, I don't think he was. He loved children the way Wordsworth and Blake loved children- because he was a romantic, and admired their openness and freedom from cant- that quality we misleadingly call "innocence". There's nothing creepy in his regard for Alice. He looks up to her; she's his hero; he hangs out with her because he knows she can teach him things.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-27 05:13 pm (UTC)Poem?
I loved Jonathan Miller's Alice in Wonderland (1966), by the way. It is disorienting and full of incomprehensible adult ritual and feels like something dreamed, but it's beautiful; and so is the cast (Wilfrid Brambell, Finlay Currie, Michael Redgrave, Leo McKern, Peter Cook, Michael Gough, Wilfred Lawson, Alison Leggatt, Malcolm Muggeridge, John Gielgud . . .).
no subject
Date: 2010-03-27 08:03 pm (UTC)I think it's the best version. I wish Miller had made more movies.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-27 08:38 pm (UTC)I can be patient.
I wish Miller had made more movies.
I grew up listening to Beyond the Fringe, but heretofore I'd only seen his Taming of the Shrew (1980) and Mikado (1987). After seeing Alice in Wonderland, I realized he would have been the perfect person to direct Gormenghast.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-27 09:18 pm (UTC)