ABAW: Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

Alice I Have Been: A Novel by Melanie Benjamin, Delacorte Press 2009 (library copy)

Alice I Have Been is a novel about the life of Alice, of Wonderland fame. It’s an imagining of the “real” Alice who inspired Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) to write Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Melanie Benjamin uses historical facts (and documented rumors) from the life of Alice Hargreaves (nee Liddell) as the major plot points around which she builds this charming and heartbreaking story about love, loss, and dreaming.

Alice’s father was the Dean of Christ Church, so Alice and her siblings grew up in the rarified surroundings of Oxford. Dodgson was a professor of mathematics and a good friend of the children, frequently taking them on outings. A sudden break in the peculiarly intense friendship, missing letters and diary pages, Dodgson’s odd collection of photographs, and the beloved children’s story known the world over, all add up to a puzzle about Alice’s young life and the nature of her relationship with Dodgson. Benjamin builds an engagingly beautiful story around the facts, filling in some of the most important gaps with details that elevate the story to the bittersweet and tragic.

The story is told entirely from Alice’s perspective, fleshing out her hopes, dreams, and disappointments in four distinct stages of her life (each with a historical photograph): as a young girl full of wit and imagination, as a young woman courted by a prince, as a mother of young men going to war, and as an old woman finally reconciling the pieces of her life. Alice’s life of privilege is illustrated in great detail: the clothing, manners, expectations, rumors, scandal. Benjamin allows each character, great and minor, to have complexity and emotional depth, often wrought with a few spare words, or a certain glance or gesture. I could feel Alice’s social danger in the scenes with Leopold and Ruskin. I was short of breath from the pinch of her corsets. I was cut by her losses, and she had many in her long life.

In spite of the horrifying possibility of pedophilia tangible in the story, Benjamin gives us a depiction that is without accusation and grants agency to all of the characters involved, especially Alice.

Random Reading Club Recommendations:

Read this book together with Lolita. Discuss, with particular attention to Lolita and Alice, and to Humbert, Dodgson, and Ruskin.

Read this book together with any of the classic novels of manner, such as Pride and Prejudice. Discuss, with particular attention to the alternately smothering and protective social norms and expectations.