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Melanie Benjamin got the idea for her book “Alice I Have Been” after seeing several photographs of young girls by Charles Dodgson, who used the pen name Lewis Carroll.
One photo caught Benjamin’s attention.
It was of a girl named Alice Liddell, the daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, who inspired Dodgson’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” fictional tale.
This Alice was not the blonde and angelic one the world recognizes today.
The child was dressed rather inappropriatly for her stature. She froze for the camera, as a beggar-maid in a tattered dress, which was much too large for the 8-year-old’s frame.
Her dazed expression and penetrating eyes changed her and Carroll’s life.
Benjamin’s story was based off dairy entries and events when the Liddell family and Dodgson attended church together.
Benjamin uses the research to pen her historical fictional tale of Liddell’s life — beginning with her childhood relationship with Dodgson, to her married life.
It was known that Dodgson formed a strong bond with the Liddell girls, Ina, Edith and especially with the young Alice. He took them on private outings and took many photographs of the three girls.
Benjamin’s interpretation of the relationship between Dodgson and Liddell was quite disturbing. Many would question his real intentions of building a friendship with a girl who was 20 years younger than him. Did he like children or did he like children?
Whatever the answer might be, the truth will never be known. The pages of Dodgson’s diary of the period were ripped out and Liddell’s family never spoke of it. The gossip in the halls was the only form of record historians have.
It was in the book’s final pages where Benjamin attempted to describe the reason behind Dodgson and Alice’s relationship ending abruptly.
She shaped a good mystery throughout the book, which forces readers to finish it.
It was shocking, although not as surprising.
In the beginning, readers almost feel compassionate for Alice and grieve for her when she was denied the life she wanted. But the feeling disappears when it becomes apparent to how naïve Alice was on that summer day.
It helped bring more of an understanding on Alice’s emotional state as a young woman, wife and mother.
Benjamin has very vivid descriptions of the children’s carefully pressed flocks, the rivalry between sisters and the fussing socialite mother.
The most revealing chapter was Alice’s adult years.
However, Benjamin doesn’t treat it with the same care as the beginning. Everything seemed crammed in the last 60 pages.
The relationship between Dodgson and the adult Alice was brief. His death was explained in one paragraph, which was rather odd, considering he was a major character.
It was heartbreaking to read about Alice’s dying husband Regi, but it had no impact whatsoever on the story because there was nothing said about him earlier.
While the Alice in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” continues to live on in perpetuity and bringing happiness to millions, it is heartbreaking to know the trials of the real Alice.
At the end the of book Alice Liddell said, “Through the looking glass, indeed. For there really was no logic to my life; I had traveled and searched and questioned and loved and tried, so very hard, yet still I ended up in this place with no answers, no solutions.
“There was no Wonderland; there had never been a Wonderland. There was only me, looking at myself in a mottled glass, unable to recognize the child I had been, the woman I had become, alone now with nothing to my name but a crumbling old house.”
Reach Andrea Waitrovich at: lifestyle@thepolypost.com
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