Lewis Carroll… Man or Monster you ask. Well I will inform you of the answer to this in the next assortment of paragraphs, ranging from his alleged drug use to his alleged pedophilia. Lewis Carroll was a real person but then again he was not. Lewis Carroll is a pseudonym for the name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Charles Dodgson was born on January 27, 1832 at Daresbury, Cheshire where his father Charles was a vicar or priest if you would prefer. Young Charles attended Richmond Grammar School in Yorkshire when he turned 12 years old. In his childhood Charles had a stammer, or more of a stutter.
Even though the stammer is only a conception people have made over the years about Charles it seems he would only have this so called stammer in the company of adults. In every biography you read or anything you hear, not one time does it mention a time when he would stammer when he was working with kids, would it reading to them, photographing them or just being in there presence. From this statement I myself concur that he was fond of children. Charles himself does say that he is fond of children but it becomes more evident not only from this but that his favorite type of photography was of young children. Even some were of children posing nude. After hearing this, a question of pedophilia arises to people’s minds. Was he a little too fond of young children? After reading four separate biographies on him I would say that yes he was a so called pedophile. But not in a physical way at all though, he seems like more of the type that simply liked to look. He was not physical or more so sadist if you will call it toward young children. I know there are many people even the readers of this among them that will not agree with my statements and conceptions of Charles as a pedophile, but just read what everyone has to say about him. If he was indeed not a pedophile, we can still accede that he was truly troubled with problems of his mind. Not only because of the types of photography he specialized in and liked doing, but from his writings and the overall nonsense of his pieces of work.
Throughout his life he wrote many stories and books. One of which I will use to aide in my opinions is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. All throughout this piece of work by Lewis, nothing makes sense. All that is said is nonsense making it seem he had some kind of help in thinking of these images. This brings us to Dodgson’s professed use of drugs or mind-altering substances. If you look at the effects that the drugs of his time have on the body and mind, it seems to coincide with his writings. Opium and Hash were both very popular in Lewis’s time, and he would have had them readily available because there were no laws against these at the time. I am not saying he did use these mind-altering drugs but that it is something that we will never know. This is because even though his pieces of work are nonsense, it all goes together and flows perfectly making it basically too nonsensical to be coming from the effects of a drug. Also his condition that he had or the Alice in Wonderland syndrome as it is called. This condition could be a sure cause of all this flowing nonsense he rights about because of the affects it has on ones head. Lilliputian hallucination is the scientific name for this syndrome in which the person has very severe migraine like headaches. With these migraines one will usually hallucinate or see things that are not there, further showing another reason for his creative writings. Also with these hallucinations, psychiatrists say that one will see things shrink and also grow taller just like he described in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now none of these accusations of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson will probably ever be proven.
One reason that these statements may never be proven is the fact that out of his journals/diaries, there are several missing that go from 1853 to 1863. Within these pages there could be facts about him that would further open up everything about his life that we do not know for sure. Many think that his family is the ones that caused these diaries to disappear for the sole purpose of conserving his reputation and keeping his good name alive and not have him go down in history to everyone as some pedophilic drug user. As this comes to an end, we can all make many accusations against Charles or praises for whatever reason we see fit but we may never know for sure.