Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Shadows Foreshortened, August 4, 2002
This review is from: In the Shadow of the Dreamchild: A New Understanding of Lewis Carroll (Hardcover)
Though comparatively slight, and not strictly speaking a biography (more a thesis), it can justifiably be claimed that Ms Leach's book should take its place as one of the two most important published accounts of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson yet produced. Adopting a satisfyingly rigorous approach to its subject matter, which is predominently (though not exclusively) an examination of Lewis Carroll's sexuality, 'In the Shadow of the Dreamchild' systematically debunks the nastiest of all Carroll myths - that Carroll was sexually attracted to pre-pubescent girls. In the process, the author also successfully challenges a number of other Carroll myths and provides an irresistable case for a complete biographical revision of one of Victorian England's most fascinating figures. In effect Ms Leach does for Lewis Carroll what Horace Walpole achieved for Richard III (Walpole, as most professional historians, though few others, know, showed that Richard III almost certainly was not responsible for one of history's most heinous crimes, the murder of 'the princes in the Tower'). One hopes that having achieved this, Ms Leach is not to be ignored (as was Walpole) by posterity. Fortunately Ms leach has access to a rather more efficient media than did Walpole. Using her access to the surviving Lewis Carroll Journals, published and unpublished letters, much original research and, above all, a keen understanding of Victorian mores and the complex nature of Victorian theological, political and social issues, Leach provides the reader with an insight into a supremely healthy (in the broad sense of this term) and intelligent person who, though complex, is in no way the paradoxical figure previously portrayed. She also provides us with a person who one can believe actually wrote the Alice Books, Hunting of the Snark and myriad other works without having to reduce those works to dark sexual metaphors. In so doing she has opened the Carroll Canon to serious mainstream literary examination and, hopefully, acceptance. One does not have to wholeheartedly accept Ms Leach's own conclusions, to recognise the importance of this work - though the reader is advised to treat everything Ms Leach writes with respect. The only note of caution regarding this work relates to the modesty of its primary aim. This was to show, by the simple device of checking freely available data, that by far the majority of Carroll's so-called 'child-friends' were actually mature women. It may have been helpful if Ms leach had been rather less modest in her ambition and placed more emphasis in demonstrating that, far from being socially inept and reclusive in regard to male companionship, Carroll was little different in this respect to others of his social class, circumstances and historical period. That he numbered among his friends many of the most notable names of the day has not been sufficiently noted - though Morton Cohen in his oddly discrepant biography does goes some way to correct this particular Carrolian myth. This book could well be seen, not as has been prematurely (and wrongly) claimed of Cohen's work, as the 'definitive Carroll' but the beginning of true Carroll scholarship. Dr John Tufail
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
For afficionados only, an oddity, September 28, 2004
This review is from: In the Shadow of the Dreamchild: A New Understanding of Lewis Carroll (Hardcover)
I went through some trouble to get a copy of this via Amazon-it's not readily available-and I am a bit disappointed. As others here have been detailed in their various reports, I'll simply say that while I appreciate Ms. Leach's search for "truth" as regards Carroll's life, and her unwillingness to simply take as gospel the often-expresed line that he was a (probably unconsummated) pedophile, I do think she throws the baby out with the bathwater in this too short but nevertheless repetitive book.
First, I'll say that I strongly agree with Leach that poor Lewis Carroll(real name Charles Dodgson)has been grossly misunderstood and is STILL, in this supposedly enlightened age, misrepresented as a victorian Humbert Humbert("Lolita"), BUT she tries way, way too hard to get over the idea that, really, Carroll cared little or nothing for Alice Liddell, his "muse" and the girl for whom his greatest work was written! This is done by way of mentioning the three or four "unflattering" remarks Carroll made in letters or his diary, and making whopping omissions of the fact that he not only photographed this little girl much more extensively at the time than any other child, in many more imaginative ways(she was clearly and in his own words his favorite model, at least) but often and warmly DID express just how "special" she was as a person, in his opinion. He did this so often that Leach has to do backflips to ignore loads of material Carroll himself wrote, as it would blow her contention that he was no more interested in Alice than in any other kid. True-when Alice grew a bit older-older than, say, 12-she apprently became a bit of a sulky adolescent(hardly unusual then or now), and obviously didn't prefer Carroll's company as she had from the ages of 4 to 10. I am most bugged that Leach pointedly chooses NOT to quote from one of the last letters the old Carroll wrote to the then much older matron Alice: "I have had scores of child-friends since your time, but they have been quite a different thing". While I *don't* believe he sexually loved little Alice, it's obvious that he *loved* the charming, spiritually pure, endearing, pretty and photogenic little toddler Alice very much indeed. Perhaps as a creative artist(which he very much was-with his camera-as good as any painter of the day)it was Alice's unusual looks which entranced him more than anything else. But to suggest that she had NO pride of place in Carroll's life is just not supported by the tiny amount of highly ambiguous "evidence" Leach found among the Carroll family papers.
I'd agree with another poster that unfortunately the author makes a big deal out of this "important discovery"-dragging out it's "reveal" until far too late in the book, and padding the rest of it quite a bit. It doesn't work as exactly scholarship OR as an afficionado's book-length treatise/biography. The only really valuable thing about it is her very sensible description of the context of victorian "child-worship"-in other words, why Carroll was NOT a weirdo for doing nude photographs of children-little girls, and why it's apparently impossible for our modern pundits to understand this. Those chapters are by far the best thing about the book.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The defense rests., January 4, 2005
This review is from: In the Shadow of the Dreamchild: A New Understanding of Lewis Carroll (Hardcover)
I was given this book as a gift by a friend who knew that I was a large fan of Carroll. I read it with some trepidation, as I generally dislike Carroll scholarship. I am interested in his writing, and not his supposed or real relationships with little girls.
I was both reassured and interested when I discovered that Leach had set out precisely to debunk the notion of Carroll as either an eunuch or a pedophile. Her thesis is that the image of Carroll as obsessed with little girls was a Victorian attempt to whitewash his image gone sadly wrong with the rise of Freudian psychology. She draws a sexually mature Carroll, primarily involved with adult women. Most specifically, she theorizes a relationship between Carroll and Lorina Liddell, the mother of Alice.
While the book raises reasonable doubts about the theory of Alice Liddell as the Dreamchild, her evidence is as circumstantial as the opinions that she is attempting to debunk. It is and remains an interesting thesis, but she offers no real proof. Perhaps the main flaw of the book is that it is both too long and too short. It is too long to make just the point debunking the "Carroll as pedophile" myth; she presents her evidence quickly, and then repeats it for the rest of the book. It is too short to be a full or real biography of Carroll; she settles for criticizing the more mainstream biographers. I think that the readers would rather have seen either more or less material.
Potential buyers should be aware that if you are not already familiar with the Dodgson/Carroll biographical material then this book will not be clear or meaningful. Recommended for Alice/Carroll fans and scholars.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
