A missed chance

Rating: 1/10 (12 March 2010)

Charles L. Dodgson, Professor for Mathematics and Logic at the renowned Christ Church College in Oxford gave his two Alice-Books that he wrote under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll as Christmas gifts for Alice Pleasance Liddell, the little daughter of his boss and director of the College. Other books followed, letters, too, in which Carroll got more and more clear and serious about his sexual interest in the little girl. The family Liddle excluded him from the annual invitation, and forthwith he was isolated in his University, at least his job was not taken away - from fear of a scandal in Victorian England. In the preamble of "Through the Looking-Glass", he wrote: "Child of the pure unclouded brow / And dreaming eyes of wonder! / Though time be fleet, and I and thou / Are half a life asunder (...). I have not seen thy sunny face, / Nor heard thy silver laughter: No thought of me shall find a place / In thy young life's hereafter / Come hearken then, ere voice of dread, / With bitter tidings laden, / Shall summon to unwelcome bed / A melancholy maiden! (...)". The case is clear: Alice should always remember the love of her fatherly friend when some day - as Carroll is convinced - Alice will be "laid" (cf. laden) by male brutality in her future child-bed. Not only is it unthinkable for Carroll that an other man will come in Alice's life, for him, Carroll, love comprises only that subtle form of touching the hardly sprouted blooms. What a great idea would it have been if Alice was allowed to go back to her trip down to the Wonderland together with Carroll. Strictly speaking, according to the above quotations, she has no right and (most supposedly) no possibility to enter that reign of her youth anyway. Despite the concession of every artistic freedom, I see here in Burton's movie first a gigantic and unforgivable misunderstanding of Carroll's work, and second, sadly enough, a missed chance that would have open quite newer horizons for this movie than repetition according to the pattern of theme and variation.