Title: Men in wonderland : the lost girlhood of the Victorian gentleman /
Authors: Robson, Catherine, 1962-
Publisher: Princeton University Press,
Year: 2001
Subjects: Carroll, Lewis, Characters Girls.; Ruskin, John, Characters Girls.; English literature History and criticism; Girls in literature.; English literature Male authors History and criticism; Innocence (Psychology) in literature.; Gender identity in literature.; Children in literature; Sex role in literature; Men in literature
Abstract: "Fascination with little girls pervaded Victorian culture. For many, girls represented the true essence of childhood or bygone times of innocence; but for middle-class men, especially writers, the interest ran much deeper. In Men in Wonderland, Catherine Robson explores the ways in which various nineteenth-century British male authors constructed girlhood, and analyzes the nature of their investment in the figure of the girl. In so doing, she reveals the link between the idealization of little girls and a widespread fantasy of male development - a myth suggesting that men become masculine only after an initial feminine stage, lived out in the protective environment of the nursery. Little girls, argues Robson, thus offer an adult male the best opportunity to reconnect with his own lost self." "Men in Wonderland contributes to a growing interest in the nineteenth century's construction of childhood, sexuality, and masculinity, and illuminates their complex interconnections with a startlingly different light. Not only does it complicate the narratives of pedophilic desire that are generally used to explain figures like Ruskin and Carroll, but it offers a new understanding of the Victorian era's obsession with loss, its rampant sentimentality, and its intense valorization of the little girl at the expense of mature femininity."--Jacket.
Contents: Of prisons and ungrown girls: Wordsworth, De Quincey, and the construction of the lost self of childhood -- The ideal girl in industrial England -- The stones of childhood: Ruskin's "Lost jewels" -- Lewis Carroll and the little girl: the art of self-effacement -- A "new 'cry of the children'": legislating innocence in the 1880s -- Lewis Carroll's letter to the St. James's Gazette, July 22, 1885.