{"id":36,"date":"2010-03-13T11:39:14","date_gmt":"2010-03-13T11:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carrollmyth.wordpress.com\/?p=36"},"modified":"2010-03-13T11:39:14","modified_gmt":"2010-03-13T11:39:14","slug":"wilful-myth-blindnessi-alice-i-never-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/2010\/03\/13\/wilful-myth-blindnessi-alice-i-never-was\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilful Myth-Blindness 1: "Alice I Never Was""},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We\u2019re going to be doing an occasional (probably very<\/em> occasional) series called \u201cWilful Myth-Blindness\u201d, where we look at examples of writing that determinedly re-states the old Carroll Myths, or indeed any other tired old Myths, as if the evidence to the contrary just wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n

To kick this off, here\u2019s Melanie Benjamin\u2019s\u00a0 2010 historical novel Alice I Have Been<\/a>, a fictional account of Alice Liddell\u2019s life, and most importantly, her relationship with\u00a0 Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll. Now don\u2019t\u00a0 get me wrong, I\u2019m sure that – as fiction – this is a very good book. I’m sure it’s engaging and enjoyable and a credit to its author’s talent. We aren’t debating any of that.\u00a0 For us the question really is \u2013 why is a book about the \u2018shy Oxford Don\u2019 and his \u2018dangerous\u2019 love for his \u2018child-muse\u2019 Alice Liddell being written at all ten years after a lot of evidence was unearthed that showed most of this was baloney?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s\u00a0 Ms B on that famous \u2018missing page\u2019 in Dodgson\u2019s diary that was long supposed to have covered some indiscretion between him and the child Alice\u2026:<\/p>\n

“For 150 years, historians have been trying to figure out what happened. Alice and her family never ever spoke of this. There were rumors around Oxford, but what I take away from this, 150 years later: we still so very much want to know what happened.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Come on, Melanie, there\u2019s information all over the web\u00a0 (see\u00a0 here <\/a>and here <\/a>for\u00a0 a start) about ‘what happened’, and how we can now, given recent discoveries,\u00a0 be fairly certain it had nothing to do with Alice Liddell, or any pedo indiscretion. Yet that is exactly the tired, old, discredited and discreditable scenario you tout in your book. So, what’s that all about? Ok, you\u2019re writing fiction, but it \u2018s fiction based on real people\u2019s real lives, doesn\u2019t that give you some kind of responsibility to be as accurate as you can?\u00a0 To not obliquely libel the dead and defenseless ?\u00a0 To basically make sure you do your research and get your facts straight? And if you don\u2019t want to go to that trouble, then invent your own characters, because then you can make them do anything you want and no one will have a problem.<\/p>\n

Though, having said that, personally I\u2019m not sure I\u2019d ever be comfortable with a book about seven year old girls getting\u00a0 illicit \u201cshivers<\/a>\u201d when old men smell their hair,\u00a0 because I would be unsure of the message I was sending.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, Melanie, congrats you’re the winner of the very first Contrariwise\u00a0 La-La I’m Not Listening Wilful Myth-Blindness Award<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

But I have a feeling you won’t be the last.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re going to be doing an occasional (probably very occasional) series called \u201cWilful Myth-Blindness\u201d, where we look at examples of writing that determinedly re-states the old Carroll Myths, or indeed any other tired old Myths, as if the evidence to the contrary just wasn\u2019t there. To kick this off, here\u2019s Melanie Benjamin\u2019s\u00a0 2010 historical novel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[18,73,19,21,26,77],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wilful-myth-blindness","tag-alice-i-have-been","tag-alice-in-wonderland","tag-alice-liddell","tag-carroll-myth","tag-lewis-carroll","tag-wilful-myth-blindness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17WIo-A","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contrariwise.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}