“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” (Carroll 50). Madness and Absurdity were not the norm of the Victorian Era, and the man that set out to change that is best known as Lewis Carroll. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson went under the well known pen name of “Lewis Carroll” during his rise to fame as he wrote the children’s books that introduced us to a curious little girl known as Alice. Through Carroll’s fame he brought many conflicts into focus and challenged many morals of his time period. During the Victorian Era when ideals of good morals started coming into play, Lewis Carroll brought absurdity coupled with his fervent curiosity to his renowned work Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll …show more content…
The British Empire was expanding under Queen Victoria, and under her rule she introduced “family values.” These family values spread the idea of good manners and politeness all throughout Britain (Stanley 30). During this time the view of one’s childhood had two sides; childhood was either viewed as the happiest period of someone’s life or “best seen and not heard.” (Stanley 30). This separation of views on childhood led to Carroll’s motivation for the Alice books. With the spread of proper etiquette starting to form and the new views on childhood, Carroll’s books were not seen as very “child-friendly.” “Because of Alice’s Adventures nightmarish qualities and violent, even sadistic, elements, a few common factors have suggested that the Alice books are inappropriate for children; as a result, the stories are not always enjoyed by the audience for whom they were apparently intended” (“Carroll” 315). Because his books were for children, he mainly wrote in the fiction genre, but he also wrote in other genres. He wrote some poetry and nonfiction, and soon after he was accidentally introduced to the genre of fiction. This accidental introduction took place on the evening best known as the “golden afternoon” when he told the story of Alice to a little girl he loved named Alice Liddell (Cohen i). This unconventional story was everything opposite of the world they lived in, and little Alice Liddell loved