Alice as Sadist

So I want this blog to accomplish a couple different thing: 1) To express the opinion that Alice might seem a sadistic character within the context she is written, but that I do not think Dodgson was a sadistic human being, and 2) to make the claim that while emotional appeal is in fact the first step to political or social change, this makes scientific exploration and philosophy more, not less, important. So Without further ado.

Much of the "sadistic" behavior that Alice exhibits to me seems more a sign of the times than actual Sadism. I disagree with Greenacre's belief that "Carroll is 'devastatingly sadistic but in so veiled and hidden a form as to produce tickling sensations rather than clear awareness of attack . . . readers are charmed and comforted rather than stimulated." (Anthology 482) It simply seems like a stretch to me. Of all that we've learned of Carroll, he was an exceedingly gentle, loving creature. In fact, many make the claim that the Alice books were written as a form of release for Dodgson, an escape through fantasy from temptations of the flesh that drove Carroll mad with shame. As a result, his writing may have been inadvertently aggressive, which could explain the Duchess' actions toward the pig-baby, or Alice's mention of her cat Dinah to Mouse. He also could have been vicariously experiencing through Alice the kind of forwardness or courage he wished he could have exhibited in reality. All in all, I see the Alice books as hiding place, an escape into the fantastic for a brilliant but very unhappy man. The use of animals as playthings or objects seems more silly than sadistic, the poems more mathematically nonsensical than speciesist. Carroll may have in fact been speciesist, but as I said before, it was more an attribute of his era and culture than a lack of virtue. He was Western, Victorian, not to mention a devout Christian. As uncommon as animal rights activism is today, it was all but unheard then. I do not believe that Carroll was sadistic in the same way I don't believe all people who eat meat are nazis. The comparison may in some ways be valid, but that doesn't mean it's one-hundred-percent true.

Moving on, I do not agree that we must let go of reason in order to make a connection with other beings and begin on the road for change. It is just the first step. Frankly, art and witness and love and empathy can only get so much done. "Derrida's blow is delivered not by science but by literature,  by an amazingly concise yet powerful demonstration of how the verbal imagination  invites us to 'see' with our mind's eye. . . awakening in the reader the feeling of unity with all species . . . (Anthology 489) I understand completely that it is emotional, and not necessarily reason, that is the initial driving force behind political movement. It's fairly intuitive that people react more from emotion than reason. However, as I said before, this is just one step along the path to eliciting real change. You cannot take emotion to the House Floor in Congress as the sole basis for a bill proposal. You won't be listened to. So we must employ reason, and facts. And the key here is that those facts must be unemotional in order to be taken seriously. This is where science comes into play. Prove with science that animals think and feel like us, and prove with facts that the atrocities which we have reacted so strongly to actually occur. Pathos absolutely has a place in every claim. It is what initially grabs our our attention, makes us want to know. But next must come logos, the evidence and logic behind that which we want to change. (Yes, I'm using high school English here) So philosophy and science cannot be written off completely. They should not be the only two bases upon which we live, but they have a place.