Alice in Wonderland is an absurd but wonderful fairy tale in which the protagonist is a little girl who enters the magical space by chasing the talking bunny.
Speaking of which, this story is indeed very simple, but if you really want to trace the prototype, I am afraid that you will have another feeling: the gift of love.
This is the author's own original words, he thinks it is a love, but in a different way.
So, who is the prototype of this story, and what kind of love is there between him and the author?
Let's go back to England in the mid-nineteenth century.
In 1856, Henry Liddell, dean of oxford theological seminary in England, had 10 children with his wife, Lorina.
One of the daughters, named Alice Liddell, was a quiet and melancholy little girl.
She is the prototype of Alice in Wonderland, and she met the author when she was 3 years old.
Those familiar with the history of that period should know that Alice was a beautiful girl who was later proposed by Queen Victoria's youngest son, Leopold.
But there was no possibility between them, and the frail Leopold was not the type Alice liked.
What about Carol, author of Alice in Wonderland?
He was nearly twenty years older than Alice, and it was obvious that with such an age gap it would be difficult to come together, but that didn't stop him from liking the little girl (Carol was an adult by then).
Carroll, whose original name was Charles Ludwig Dodgeson, was actually a scholar who taught mathematics at Oxford University at the time and was good at photography, writing was his pleasure.
But Carol had a serious illness as a child, one ear could not hear sound, there was a problem with the chest cavity, and he stuttered, which made him prefer to think rather than express.
However, it may be more relaxed in front of the child, so when Carroll is with the child, she will behave very differently: she is patient, she can make up stories, and she is not so stuttering.
At the time, Henry Liddell lived close to Carol.
He thought Carol was a learned man, and with his decent job, it was entirely possible to trust him.
So, he was relieved that his child was with Carol, and in this way, Alice, who was only 3 years old, became Carol's little audience.
Apparently, of all the children, Carol was the most patient with Alice, seeing her as the embodiment of the muse and taking many, many pictures of her.
It should be said that this is the beginning of Alice's contact with photography, she learned to pose and look at the lens under the influence of Carol at a very young age, as long as she takes the photo, she will not be afraid to look at the camera at all, and her head is slightly raised.
As Alice grew older, Carol took more and more photographs, sometimes even dressing her up as a little beggar, pulling the shoulders of her dress under her shoulders.
At this point, no one knew what Carol was thinking.
When Alice was 10 years old, Carol took them on a boat trip on the lake, and they had a happy tea party, and the story came into being at this time.
Later, Alice recalled the scene like this:
"In the afternoon when we went to the river with Mr. Dodgeson (Carol) to play, he brought out a basket of cakes, and a kettle, which we used to boil under the hay, and on rare occasions we would spend the whole day outside..."
During such a long time together, the girl asked to hear a story, and Carol happily agreed.
So the model of Alice in Wonderland appears, the girls are happy, and Alice asks Carol to write the story down and give it to herself.
Carol nodded in agreement, but no one knew why, and carol later broke off contact with Henry's family for a year.
Two years later, however, Carol actually wrote the story into a book called Alice's Underground Adventures and gave the manuscript to Alice, whose signature was Lewis Carroll.
The following year, in November 1865, the book was officially published, but it seemed to draw the attention of adults to another point: Why did Carol cut off contact with Henry's family?
Sinwadon, the scholar who studied Carroll, put it this way:
"Lewis Carroll's personal life has piqued the interest of adult readers because Alice in Wonderland is a book for children, but the photographs of young girls stripped naked by the author, no matter how naïve, are unpleasant in the eyes of our moderns."
Therefore, many people believe that Carol stopped interacting with Henry's family because Alice's parents were aware of this inappropriate behavior.
But then Carol's niece came out to object, believing that this speculation was all slander against Carol, because her uncle had a favorite girl, that is, Henry's eldest daughter Lorina.
Lorina was 15 years old, and in Victorian times it was time to be proposed.
The answer to Carol was never seen again, he had been writing a diary since he knew Alice, but when people opened his diary, the important pages were torn off.
But we have reason to believe that Carol's feelings for Alice are not so simple, and when he gives alice the first manuscript, he tells Alice that it is a gift of love.
I am afraid that I can understand too much about this, love friends, love juniors, love family, can also be the love of men and women... He photographed her for more than 7 years, enough to produce a different kind of emotion.
Will Blue, a professor at Kingston University in the United Kingdom, also had doubts about the relationship:
"Originally, 'Alice in Wonderland' was just treated as a funny but little bit of a children's story... In the '90s, people began to ask, what was going on with Lewis Carroll, and whether his relationship with the little girl was a little too intimate. ”
However, Alice, who grew up, did not have a bad opinion of this matter, and even felt unhappy or even disgusted by people's marginal speculations.
Alice married cricketer Reginald Hargreaves at the age of 28 and lived an aristocratic life.
The story ends, Carol is long gone, and Alice died at the age of 82.
The relationship was settled. However, when people open the book "Alice in Wonderland" again, it is inevitable to think of the author's feelings for the little girl Alice.
The whole thing is confusing, there is a long list of little girls who have actually been photographed by Carol, but alice has become different, which is an answer in itself, isn't it?
As Carol wrote to Alice after she got married:
"Since then, I've had dozens of kids, but they've given me a different feeling."