48.4gubar Ko Johnson

Lewis in Wonderland: The Looking-Glass World of Sylvie and Bruno Marah Gubar Since their publication in 1889 and 1893, Lewis Carroll’s two Sylvie and Bruno books have perplexed and disappointed both critics and casual readers, who have faulted them for bearing only a slight resemblance to their famous predecessors, the two Alice books. Walter Crane, who declined to illustrate Sylvie and Bruno, articulated what quickly became a common attitude toward the books when he noted that Carroll’s new project “was of a very different character from Alice—a story with religious and moral purpose, with only an occasional touch of the ingenuity and humor of Alice, so that it was not nearly so inspiring or amusing” (qtd. in Green, 148). Many Carroll critics concur, judging Sylvie and Bruno and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded “disastrous” if “interesting” failures (Hudson, 287).1 Even critics who admire the novels insist that they should be viewed not as successors to Alice, but “in [their] proper context” as Victorian romances (Miller), Menippean satire (Miller again), proto-Modernist experiments (Gattégno, Atherton, Wilson, Purdy), or post-structuralist meditations on textuality (Gordon, Deleuze).2 Thus, to justify his claim that Sylvie and Bruno is an underappreciated “masterpiece,” Deleuze notes that “in comparison with Alice and Through the Looking-Glass, [it] displays a set of entirely new techniques” (43). The claim that Sylvie and Bruno’s adventures bear only “minor similarities” to Alice’s seems at Þrst unassailable, given the many stylistic and structural differences between the two projects (Gattégno, 168). Eschewing the brilliantly eccentric economy of the Alice books, Carroll constructs a convoluted double plot in Sylvie and Bruno. One strand chronicles a political uprising in an imaginary country called Outland, which is aimed at depriving the fairy children Sylvie and Bruno of their rightful rule. The other involves a romance between two real-life residents of England, Arthur Forrester and Lady Muriel Orme. The books are narrated by an elderly bachelor who falls in and out of reveries that enable him to shift from one world to the other. Subject matter, size, and tone all suggest that these novels do not constitute another contribution to the genre of children’s fantasy. Not only does Carroll choose to focus on political and romantic Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 48, No. 4, Winter 2006 © 2006 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713–7819

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maneuverings, he also has his adult characters engage in endless dialogues about serious religious and philosophical issues, which bloat the books out to twice the length of Alice. Moreover, the saccharine sentimentality that hovers around the edges of Alice invades the main text of Sylvie and Bruno; the novels feature many scenes like the treacly one in which Bruno bestows a kiss on his sister, lisping, “‘I ca’n’t give oo nufÞn but this!’” (282).3 Despite all this evidence, however, I will argue that the two projects are intimately connected, and that Carroll himself was aware of the many parallels between them and determined to downplay them. His second two-volume fantasy in effect constitutes a looking-glass reversal of his Þrst: instead of sending a child into a dream world in which she suffers various indignities, he inßicts the disorienting vision of an alternative reality on himself. The narrator of Sylvie and Bruno, who baldly announces “My name’s Lewis Carroll” in his Þrst Þctional appearance, supplies us with a Þrst-person account of the strange ordeal of traveling through Wonderland (“Bruno’s Revenge,” 78). Carroll puts himself in place of Alice, I suggest, because he was aware of the aggression inherent in the kinds of games he wanted to play with children, and anxious to make amends for it. Sylvie and Bruno and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded repeatedly attest to his concern that adult and child cannot be partners in play, because their uneasy alliance inevitably degenerates into a cruel game of cat and mouse. Critics like Jacqueline Rose, Carolyn Steedman, James Kincaid, and Catherine Robson have evinced anxiety about the ways in which authors like Carroll and J. M. Barrie use the Þgure of the child for their own psychic purposes, whether to reclaim a past self or to revel in the pleasure of the child’s “erotic Otherness” (Kincaid, 275). Such “child-loving,” they argue, constitutes an aggressive form of colonization, in which the adult projects his desires on to—and thereby objectiÞes—the child. But none of these accounts recognize the extent to which Victorian writers were themselves concerned about investing so much emotional capital in children. The engine that drives the narrative of Sylvie and Bruno is the Carrollian narrator’s consuming passion for his “Dream-Children,” and particularly his longing to possess Sylvie (473). Against Robson’s claim that Sylvie and Bruno “presents the pairing of the old man and the little girl as the most natural thing in the world,” I argue that Carroll portrays child-loving as a pathological and destructive act (129). As punishment for this sin, the adult swain is rendered doubly abject: he suffers the “pierc[ing]” pangs of unrequited love, as well as the very same kind of verbal and physical punishment previously inßicted on Alice, Carroll’s original “dream-child” (624, 11).4 Concerned that the power imbalance inherent in the adult-child relationship precludes reciprocity, Carroll reverses the position of the two parties precisely because he fears that no such switch is possible: adult and child are locked into the roles of ravenous hunter and unwilling prey.

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Adherents to the view that the Sylvie and Bruno books bear little resemblance to Alice invariably quote Carroll’s preface to the Þrst volume, in which he insists that his goal has been to write something completely unlike Alice. Noting that dozens of other authors have already re-trod the road to Wonderland, he declares, “[I]t would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again. Hence it is that, in Sylvie and Bruno, I have striven—with I know not what success—to strike out yet another new path” (257). But as his uncertainty here indicates, Carroll’s declaration of difference was motivated not by a conviction that the two projects had nothing in common, but rather by his concern that they shared too much. His original goal had not been to write a “new,” “graver” kind of book—as he claims in the preface—but to produce another entertaining “fairy-tale” for children, “a book of the same general character as Alice’s Adventures,” as he put it in an 1877 letter (Cohen and Wakeling, 121, 338). Thus, when Punch artist Harry Furniss agreed to illustrate Sylvie and Bruno in 1885, Carroll exultantly informed him, “Now that you are found, I shall go back to my Alice in Wonderland style of work with every hope of making a success” (qtd. in Green, 149).5 Writing to Furniss just three months before the publication of Sylvie and Bruno, Carroll reveals his real motivation for distinguishing between the two projects in the preface: namely, his concern that critics will say “this writer can only play one tune: the book is a réchauffé of Alice” (Cohen and Wakeling, 171). Explaining his decision to postpone the inclusion of a comic poem until the second volume, Carroll informed Furniss that “anything which would have the effect of connecting the book with Alice would be absolutely disastrous. [. . .] I’m trying my very best to get out of the old groove” (171). Carroll’s fear that he has continued to produce Alice-esque Þction also emerges in the text of Sylvie and Bruno. Jan B. Gordon identiÞes numerous passages that attest to Carroll’s uneasy sense of “the impossibility of saying anything new,” including one in which Lady Muriel observes that “‘there are no new melodies, now-a-days. What people talk of as “the last new song” always recalls to me some tune I’ve known as a child!’” (Gordon, 186; Sylvie and Bruno, 537). As Richard Kelly notes, such moments signal Carroll’s “anxiety about writing the same book over again” (136). But given the many differences between Sylvie and Bruno and the Alice books, why would he have worried about this? Kelly lists a few connections between the two projects, noting that “the peculiar brand of nonsense that characterized the Alice books reasserts itself” in the passages of Sylvie and Bruno that deal with eccentric characters like the mad gardener and the absent-minded professor. He also points out that both projects concern themselves with the contrast between “dreaming and waking states” and conclude with violent transformation scenes (137). But these disparate links do not seem substantial enough to

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justify authorial anxiety about self-repetition. To understand Carroll’s concern, we must take into account the genesis of the Sylvie and Bruno books. The novels grew out of a short story entitled “Bruno’s Revenge” that Carroll wrote for a children’s magazine in 1867, in between writing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1872). This story, which appears in virtually unaltered form as chapters fourteen and Þfteen of Sylvie and Bruno, is such an obvious rewrite of Alice that it would not be out of place in Alternative Alices, Carolyn Sigler’s anthology of the kind of imitative texts that Carroll criticizes in his preface. “Bruno’s Revenge” puts an adult character in place of Alice; the story chronicles how an unexpected meeting with a creature from fairyland draws “Lewis Carroll” into a new realm of existence. The narrator begins his tale by describing the day on which his adventure occurred: “It was a very hot afternoon—too hot to go for a walk or do anything—or else it wouldn’t have happened, I believe” (75). Feeling “sleepy,” he “lazily” wanders down “by the lake, partly because I had nothing to do, [. . .] and partly (as I said at Þrst) because it was too hot to be comfortable anywhere, except under the trees” (76). The atmosphere of this opening closely matches that of the Þrst Alice book. “[T]ired of sitting by her sister on the bank and of having nothing to do,” Alice nevertheless feels too lethargic to make a daisy chain, “for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid” (15). The reason for this similarity is revealed when the narrator of “Bruno’s Revenge” explains that these are the perfect conditions for spotting fantastic creatures. And indeed, both Alice and the narrator are jolted out of their languid state by the sight of an otherworldly visitor; just as the White Rabbit piques Alice’s interest, a little fairy named Sylvie intrigues the narrator. In both cases, moreover, the mysterious creature quickly disappears, leaving the protagonists to comfort themselves in much the same way. After losing sight of Sylvie, the narrator reports, “I walked on sadly enough, you may be sure. However, I comforted myself with thinking: ‘It’s been a very wonderful afternoon, so far—I’ll just go quietly on and look about me, and I shouldn’t wonder if I come across another fairy somewhere’” (77). Similarly, after losing sight of the Rabbit and Þnding herself unable to Þt through the tiny door that leads to the beautiful garden, Alice feels hopeful that she might be able to “shut [herself] up like a telescope” and pass through the doorway: “For you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible” (19). In both cases, the protagonist’s conÞdence that more unusual events will occur is conÞrmed: Alice does indeed “shu[t] up like a telescope” and the narrator’s desire to meet another fairy is fulÞlled when he runs into Sylvie’s younger brother, Bruno (21). Like the inhabitants of Wonderland, however, the residents of this fairy realm prove both difÞcult to engage in conversation and—to borrow

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Alice’s phrase—“decidedly uncivil” once they have been drawn out (59). Thus, the narrator has to ask Bruno “What’s your name?” twice before the fairy offers the following rude response: “What’s yours?” he said, without looking up. “My name’s Lewis Carroll,” I said, quite gently, for he was much too small to be angry with for answering so uncivilly. “Duke of Anything?” he asked, just looking at me for a moment and then going on with his work. “Not Duke at all,” I said, a little ashamed of having to confess it. “You’re big enough to be two Dukes,” said the little creature; “I suppose you’re Sir Something, then?” “No,” I said, feeling more and more ashamed. “I haven’t got any title.” The fairy seemed to think that in that case I really wasn’t worth the trouble of talking to, for he quietly went on digging, and tearing the ßowers to pieces as fast as he got them out of the ground. (78) Like the caterpillar who interrogates and insults Alice, like the hosts of the Mad Tea Party who abash and offend her, this strange creature behaves in an extremely aggressive way toward “Lewis Carroll.” Not only does he begin by making rude personal comments about the narrator’s large size and low status, he later scolds his new acquaintance for failing to listen carefully to a story he tries to tell him, and then insists that the narrator sit silently while he sings him a song. Similarly, many Wonderland creatures— including the Mock Turtle, Humpty Dumpty, and the White Knight—force an unwilling Alice to listen quietly to various sorts of recitations.6 As the aggression inherent in such encounters suggests, these texts share a dark theme: Alice, as Carroll once suggested in a letter to a child friend, “is about ‘malice,’” and so is the aptly titled “Bruno’s Revenge” (Letters, 108). More speciÞcally, both stories are about wreaking revenge on those who try to teach you. Thus, the Alice books Þnd Carroll parodying didactic poetry, underscoring the sadism of cautionary tales, and poking fun at the drive to divine morals everywhere. At the same time, Alice retaliates against the aggressive, unpredictable authority Þgures who boss her around; the climax of both stories involves her turning violently on these dictatorial characters, and vanquishing them. This theme emerges even more quickly in “Bruno’s Revenge.” When the narrator Þrst spots Bruno, the fairy is rebelling against his sister Sylvie’s efforts to educate him. Furious with his elder sibling for forcing him to do his lessons before going out to play, Bruno retaliates by “[s]poiling Sylvie’s garden”: digging up her ßowers, tearing them to bits, and “savagely [. . .] trampl[ing] on the pieces” (79).

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To be sure, “Lewis Carroll” quickly condemns such vindictive behavior, exclaiming, “‘Oh, Bruno, you shouldn’t do that [. . .]. Don’t you know that’s revenge? And revenge is a wicked, cruel, dangerous thing!’” (79). Rather than encouraging Bruno to wreak havoc in his sister’s garden, the narrator cajoles the fairy into Þxing it up for her. When Sylvie returns at the end of the story, she is delighted by the improvements made in both the garden and her brother’s behavior, and the two siblings are tearfully but joyfully reconciled. But this sappy happy ending, which purports to condemn revenge, is completely undermined by the opening of the story, in which the narrator openly admits that a vindictive purpose has driven him to write down the tale. Just after setting the scene as a hot afternoon, the narrator bursts out, In the Þrst place, I want to know why fairies should always be teaching us to do our duty, and lecturing us when we go wrong, and we should never teach them anything? You can’t mean to say that fairies are never greedy, or selÞsh, or cross, or deceitful, because that would be nonsense, you know. Well then, don’t you agree with me that they might be all the better for a little scolding and punishing now and then? (75) Though the story is entitled “Bruno’s Revenge,” it in fact chronicles the narrator’s attempt to revenge himself on the kind of gratingly good fairies who teach readers lessons, characters like Catherine Sinclair’s Fairy Teach-all and Charles Kingsley’s Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby. As when he parodies preachy poems by Watts and Southey in Alice, Carroll here turns a didactic script inside out, by having the subject of textual discipline rewrite the story to suit himself. Irked by what he sees as an unfairly onesided relationship, the narrator revenges himself by setting up an equally unjust double standard: he is shocked (shocked!) by Bruno’s vengeful campaign, which he Þrmly thwarts, but he successfully carries out his own act of retribution without a qualm. For Bruno turns out to be one of those pesky otherworldly do-gooders: “‘Aren’t you one of the fairies that teach children to be good?’” the narrator asks suspiciously, and Bruno admits that he sometimes does, whereupon Carroll turns the tables by teaching him how to behave (79). The plot of “Bruno’s Revenge” thus hinges on the vindictive pleasure of reforming the reformer, just as the Alice books dilate on the delight of turning discipline back on those who impose it. When “Bruno’s Revenge” was Þrst published, moreover, Carroll was not afraid to acknowledge this resemblance. In fact, he equates Alice with “Malice” speciÞcally in the context of discussing “Bruno’s Revenge.” Writing as Charles Dodgson, he informs a child correspondent that

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Marah Gubar I have a message for you from a friend of mine, Mr. Lewis Carroll [. . .]. He told me you had once asked him to write another book like the one you had read—I forget the name—I think it was about “malice.” “Tell her,” he said “that I have just written a little story which is printed in Aunt Judy’s Magazine and that I have ordered a copy of it to be sent to her.” (Letters, 107–08)

Years later, when Carroll decided to try “my very best” to erase any “connecting link” between the two projects, he chose to bury “Bruno’s Revenge” halfway through Sylvie and Bruno rather than using it as his opening (Cohen and Wakeling, 171). This placement makes the stylistic and structural similarities outlined above much less noticeable: since the novel does not begin on a hot day during which the protagonist falls into a dream-like state and encounters fantastically rude creatures, readers are much less likely to link it to Alice. Nevertheless, the basic plot of the Sylvie and Bruno novels remains the same: the books chronicle the “strange adventure[s]” the narrator has when reverie frees him to explore a land full of “wonder[s]” (437, 297). Indeed, the geography of this dreamscape resembles Wonderland even more closely. During one of the narrator’s earliest trips there, he follows a mysterious old man “downwards into darkness” and lands unexpectedly in a beautiful underground garden (297). He often Þnds himself in “long passages” and other new spaces that “I had never noticed before [. . .] and [I] very seldom succeeded in Þnding the old ones again” (18, 326). Like Alice, he occasionally succumbs to feelings of extreme disorientation, especially when conversing with the eccentric inhabitants of this alternative universe. Alice often feels “puzzled” or even “dreadfully puzzled,” as when the Mad Hatter makes one of his nonsensical comments: “The Hatter’s remark seemed to her to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English” (197, 70). Similarly, the narrator frequently feels “bewildered” or even “utterly bewildered”; in response to an Outlander’s impenetrable remark, he remarks, “The sentence sounded well, but somehow I couldn’t quite understand it” (483, 522–23, 651). Just as Alice regards the mad Wonderland creatures “timidly” and “anxiously,” the narrator is “fearful of being left alone among all th[e] crazy creatures” that he meets in Outland (64, 61, 318). Carroll attempted to downplay these similarities in a number of ways. Besides shifting the placement of “Bruno’s Revenge” and postponing the inclusion of a comic poem that he likened to “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” he also insisted repeatedly that the narrator of Sylvie and Bruno does not dream about fairyland; rather, he falls into trances. In an 1890 letter to Ruskin’s cousin Joan Severn, for example, he asks her to inform her

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famous relative that “the book contains no dreams, this time: what look like dreams are meant for trances” (Letters, 776). Determined to explain this distinction to a confused public, Carroll published a letter in the St. James Gazette addressed to the “many readers of this book, who have [had] difÞcult[y]” understanding that “[t]here are no ‘dreams’ in [it]” (qtd. in Cohen, 490). Noting that “the many imitations that have appeared of my two ‘dream-stories’ have effectually barred me from any further attempt to write Þction of that kind,” Carroll explains that the narrator falls into “trance[s], in which, while his body remains apparently asleep, his spirit is free to pass into fairyland.” This spectacularly unhelpful explanation apparently did not clarify matters much, because Carroll decided to spend two pages in the preface to Sylvie and Bruno Concluded elaborating on it further, even going so far as to construct a detailed chart which “tabulates the passages, in both Volumes,” in which the narrator goes into “various psychical states” that are not dreaming! (464) It is no wonder that Carroll had to work so hard to dispel the public’s assumption that he had written another “dream-story,” given that he never once uses the word “trance” in Sylvie and Bruno. Instead, he repeatedly describes his elderly protagonist’s visions as dreams. As the novel opens, the disoriented narrator Þnds himself in fairyland one moment and back in the real world the next, a circumstance that prompts him to ponder the question of which environment is “a dream” and which “the reality” (272). Sylvie obligingly provides an answer to this riddle; in a later scene set in Outland, she explains that the narrator “ca’n’t walk, you know: [. . .] he’s dreaming, you know” (411). Rather than saying, “I had fallen into a trance,” the narrator invariably announces, “I had fallen asleep,” and when he “wak[es]” from such naps he struggles “to recall a few of the incidents of my recent dream” (290, 294). Furthermore, Carroll’s descriptions of the narrator’s abrupt transitions from dream to reality speciÞcally recall Alice’s awakenings. In one such scene, the narrator gives way to “a burst of indignation I could no longer control” and angrily denounces a particularly obnoxious inhabitant of Outland, whereupon “a sudden gust of wind swe[eps] away the whole scene,” and he Þnds himself back in the real world (289). This moment recalls both of Alice’s abrupt exits from Wonderland; unable to “stand [it] any longer,” Alice furiously attacks the pack of cards and the Red Queen, and is instantly transported back home (244). In addition, the new opening Carroll wrote for the adventures of Sylvie and Bruno establishes a tight thematic link between the dreams chronicled in this project and those in Alice. At the conclusion of Through the Looking-Glass, Carroll appends a poem in which he writes, in reference to children,

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Marah Gubar In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die: Ever drifting down a stream— Lingering in the golden gleam— Life, what is it but a dream? (250)

The prefatory poem to Sylvie and Bruno reiterates this very question. It begins, “Is all our Life, then, but a dream/ Seen faintly in the golden gleam/ Athwart Time’s dark resistless stream?” (253). As Brian Sibley and Martin Gardner point out, the two poems have the exact same meter and rhyme scheme. Moreover, the Þrst three lines of the Sylvie and Bruno poem feature the same last words as the Þnal three lines of the Alice poem, only in reverse order. Carroll here takes up the rhetorical question with which he ended Alice, “as though his thoughts had been but momentarily interrupted” (Sibley, 52). He then reasserts the centrality of this question in the opening scene of the novel, when the narrator reßects, after his Þrst disorienting shift from one world to the other, “So either I’ve been dreaming about Sylvie [. . .] and this is the reality. Or else I’ve really been with Sylvie, and this is a dream! Is Life itself a dream, I wonder?” (272). Thus, despite Carroll’s extra-textual efforts to differentiate Sylvie and Bruno from Alice, the novel itself urges readers to consider the connection between these projects. Because the prefatory poem precisely mirrors the Þnal verse of Through the Looking-Glass, it suggests that Sylvie and Bruno constitutes a looking-glass reversal of the Alice books. Whereas the former project chronicles the adventures of a dreaming child, in the latter it is the adult who “dreamily” drifts in and out of a land full of wonders, his “whole being [. . .] absorbed in strong curiosity as to what would happen next” (376, 297). Curiosity, as many Alice commentators have noted, carries an erotic charge, and Carroll’s decision to attribute this “absorb[ing]” desire to the adult rather than the child indicates a new willingness on his part to acknowledge the intensity of adult investment in children. Rather than pretending to chronicle a child’s dream, Carroll identiÞes the adult as the avid fantasist, and children as the sole—and ultimately unobtainable—objects of his desire. In the Sylvie and Bruno books, in other words, the child stands revealed as the chief wonder of Wonderland. The narrator of the Sylvie and Bruno books Þnds everyday life “tedious” and “wearisome”; for him, “Life and its pleasures seem like a mine that is nearly worked out” (473, 426). But one source of satisfaction never fails him; he experiences an intense “thrill of delight” whenever reverie grants him a glimpse of “the two Fairies, or Dream-Children [. . .] whose sweet playfulness had shed a magic radiance over my life” (358, 473).

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“Entranced” by the “subtle witchery” of their presence, the narrator constantly seeks out their company, wandering though woods and gardens “in the hope of meeting them once more” (560, 673, 439). He courts the “eerie feeling” that heralds their appearance by stretching himself out on the ground and musing about his “sweet little friend[s]” (350, 439). During one especially lonely evening, for example, he lounges at his hearth, “letting Fancy mould the red embers into the forms and faces belonging to bygone scenes. Now it seemed to be Bruno’s roguish smile that sparkled for a moment, [. . .] now it was Sylvie’s rosy cheek” (627). When the Þre threatens to die down, he revives it with a poker, thus enabling himself to sink again into an extended reverie about the two children. Each time he Þnds himself in their company, moreover, the narrator determinedly shadows their every step: “I took it for granted that wherever the children went, I was to go” (300). Inevitably, however, the two sprites manage to elude “my eager gaze”; they vanish as suddenly as they appear, leaving the narrator feeling lonely and bereft (372). Unlike the Alice books, in other words, the Sylvie and Bruno novels openly acknowledge that the “dream-child” functions not as the source of the fantasy, but as the object of it. To be sure, Through the Looking-Glass brießy entertains the idea that Alice is “only a sort of thing” in the Red King’s dream, but ultimately the question of “who it was that dreamed it all” is left unsettled (174, 249). Moreover, the desire to grasp the ungraspable is repeatedly projected onto Alice, even as Carroll’s prose reveals that she herself is the most appealing, unavailable object of all. The best example of this occurs in the scene in which Alice struggles to catch hold of “the darling scented rushes” (188). Even as she complains about how “provoking” it is that “[t]here was always a more lovely one that she couldn’t reach,” Carroll’s descriptions of her make it clear that she herself is the deeply desired, elusive ßower (188).7 This idea is introduced early on in Through the Looking-Glass, when the talking Rose refers to Alice as a ßower who is unfortunately “beginning to fade,” just as the dream-rushes “beg[i]n to fade, and to lose all their scent and beauty, from the very moment” that Alice picks them (147, 188). The Sylvie and Bruno books, by contrast, freely admit that the desire to grasp the ungraspable is the adult’s problem, not the child’s. Thus, the climax of the Þrst volume includes an incident in which grown-ups try with “breathless eagerness” and “trembling Þngers” to seize and preserve a bouquet that closely resembles the dream-rushes, consisting as it does of a “ßower [that] fades so quickly after being plucked, that it is scarcely possible to keep its form or colour even so far as the outskirts of the forest!” (403). In place of scenes like the one in which Alice unsuccessfully attempts to grasp the elusive products featured in the sheep’s shop, Carroll substitutes moments when the adult narrator tries and fails to snatch

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forbidden fruit. Seeing Bruno sampling the sweet produce of a Fairyland garden, for example, the narrator notes, “I tried to pick some myself—but it was like grasping air, and I soon gave up the attempt” (299). Such moments parallel the narrator’s constant, unsuccessful attempts to catch and catch sight of his dream-children. In scene after scene, he watches helplessly as Sylvie and Bruno “wande[r] off lovingly together, [. . .] each with an arm twined round the other, [. . .] and never so much as once loo[k] back at poor me” (370). In one particularly poignant example, the narrator looks on longingly as Sylvie suddenly begins to move away from him “as if walking in her sleep, her large eyes gazing into the far distance, and her breath coming and going in quick pantings of eager delight” (350). Determined to reach a “golden gate” that seems “so bright, so bright!”, Sylvie and her brother march steadily away from their old friend, who mournfully notes that “I knew it would be impossible for me to follow. I could but stand outside, and take a last look at the two sweet children, ere they disappeared within, and the golden gate closed with a bang” (350). Rather than characterizing the narrator’s affection for the children as avuncular or paternal, Carroll associates it with unrequited romantic love. Immediately after the children’s disappearance through the golden gate prompts the narrator to realize that his longing for them cannot possibly be fulÞlled, he enters into a conversation with Arthur in which his friend describes how hopelessly he pined for Lady Muriel before he earned enough money to request her hand. Pointing to the night sky, Arthur explains, “‘She was like that star to me—bright, beautiful, and pure, but out of reach, out of reach!’” (185). Suddenly, the relationship between the two intertwined plots of Sylvie and Bruno clicks into focus. Rather than simply interspersing Outlandish fairy tale action with real-life romance, Carroll presents readers with two parallel love stories; he links Arthur’s desire for Muriel with the narrator’s adoration for the children. Both men are infatuated with charming creatures who appear unattainable, sometimes because they seem so pure, and other times because their desires are directed elsewhere. Thus, just as Sylvie and Bruno ignore the narrator to fawn over each other or pursue other goals, Muriel decides to wed another man. The Þnal scene of the Þrst Sylvie and Bruno book therefore Þnds a brokenhearted Arthur vowing to bury his unrequited love and “withered Hopes” with the fading night and make a new start with the dawning day. After he departs, the narrator makes the same pledge: “So may it be for [. . .] me” too, he resolves, expressing his hope that “the deadly blight of sin, and the silent tears of sorrow” will “fad[e] with the Night,” along with “the memory of a dead love, and the withered leaves of a blighted hope, and the sickly repinings and moody regrets that numb the best energies of the soul” (455–56).

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Given that the narrator has no other love interest, we must assume that the sinful, impossible passion he has decided to renounce is his longing to possess his dream-children. The opening scene of Sylvie and Bruno Concluded conÞrms this supposition. Just as Arthur cannot forget Muriel, the narrator remains obsessed with the two sprites. He admits that he Þnds life “unusually dull and tedious” because he “misse[s] the companionship of the two Fairies—or Dream-Children, for I had not yet solved the problem as to who or what they were” (473). Though he ends the Þrst volume by vowing to avoid “sickly repinings” that drain his will to live, he begins the second one by describing how he suffers through many “desolate hours,” during which he indulges in “dreary musings” about his lonely state (473). Both men continue to adore their idols from afar, but whereas Arthur Þnally wins over Muriel, the narrator never manages to catch his elusive dream-children. Thus, in the Þnal scene of Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, he describes how the vision of the two sprites and the love they represent “was fast slipping from my eager gaze” (674). “[I]n that last bewildering moment,” as the children drift further and further away, the narrator entertains the idea that Sylvie is an angel (674). He therefore remains in the position that Arthur inhabited at the start, when he considered Muriel an unreachable star that he could only “worship [. . .] from a distance” (351). The numerous scenes which feature the narrator gazing longingly after the children as they inexorably pass beyond his grasp recall the moment in Through the Looking-Glass when Alice leaves the White Knight behind in her single-minded determination to become Queen. Indeed, both works are intensely preoccupied with the possibility of “the child’s desertion,” as James Kincaid puts it (294). The difference is that the Sylvie and Bruno books openly acknowledge this concern. “The children desert us, you see,” the narrator dolefully informs an elderly inhabitant of Outland, who has already warned him that “Crabbed age and youth cannot live together!” (558, 553). In keeping with this increased candor, Carroll rewrites the White Knight scene in order to attribute nostalgic desire to the childlover rather than the child. As Kincaid and others have noted, this incident is one of the most unconvincing moments in the Alice books, because it tries to persuade readers that Alice—who has shown no real interest in the Knight throughout their encounter—nevertheless cherishes the image of him singing as her fondest memory of Wonderland. “Of all the strange things that Alice saw” during her adventures, the narrator declares, this was the one that she always remembered most clearly. Years afterwards she could bring the whole scene back again, as if it had been only yesterday—the mild blue eyes and kindly smile of the Knight— the setting sun gleaming through his hair, and shining on his armour in a blaze of light that quite dazzled her— [. . .] all this she took in like

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Here Carroll suggests that his heroine perceives of this man as a romantic Þgure—a knight in “shining” armor—despite the fact that Alice’s own reactions clearly indicate that she considers him “too ridiculous” to take seriously (220). She therefore fails to shed any sentimental tears upon hearing his song, as the Knight expects her to do. In Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, Carroll presents a looking-glass reversal of this scene; rather than having a young girl gaze in “dazzled” fascination as a man warbles a tune, he shows an entranced man drinking in the sight of a young girl singing. Describing this climactic moment, the Carrollian narrator employs language that precisely echoes the White Knight scene: “And now ensued quite the strangest of all the strange experiences that marked the wonderful year whose history I am writing—the experience of Þrst hearing Sylvie’s voice in song” (624). Once again, “the setting sun shed[s] a golden halo” around the singer’s head, creating a glorious “pictur[e]” that prompts the observer to sink into a “dreamy” reverie (624, 623). But the difference is that this scene puts on display the adult desire that has previously been kept under wraps. Trying to describe the “indescribable” effect Sylvie’s song has on him, the narrator divulges the extent of his obsession with children. The intensity of the pleasure he feels when beholding such scenes is extreme: On me the Þrst effect of her voice was a sudden sharp pang that seemed to pierce through one’s very heart. (I had felt such a pang only once before in my life, and it had been from seeing what, at the moment, realized one’s idea of perfect beauty—it was in a London exhibition, where, in making my way through the crowd, I suddenly met, face to face, a child of quite unearthly beauty.) [624–25] Sylvie’s performance affects the narrator in just the way that the White Knight hoped his would Alice: “Then came the rush of burning tears to the eyes, as though one could weep one’s soul away for pure delight. And lastly there fell on me a sense of awe that was almost terror [. . .]” (624–25). Piercing pangs, “burning tears,” and incipient “terror”: the narrator’s choice of words indicates that his love for Sylvie engenders as much pain and anxiety as pleasure (625). Her singing voice is so sweet, he notes, that he can “hardly bear” to listen to it (626). Such discomÞture contrasts sharply with the serene bliss described in the lyrics of her ballad, which is entitled “A Song of Love.” Each verse celebrates a different kind of mutual love that brings “rest,” “peace,” and “delight”: that of mother for child, brother for brother, and God for his creation. Sibley identiÞes this song

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as the “theological core” of book, in which Carroll articulates his “vision of love as the embodiment of the Spirit of God, symbolizing the origins and aims of Life: strength, hope, faith, and peace” (57). The bond between Sylvie and her father exempliÞes this sort of natural, holy devotion; observing the two of them, the narrator notes, “it was a pretty sight to see the mutual love with which the two faces—one in the Spring of Life, the other in its late Autumn—were gazing on each other” (267). Clearly, though, the narrator’s one-sided obsession with his dreamchildren does not Þt into this happy category. Thus, his adoring gaze goes unreturned; although he considers Sylvie “the sweetest and loveliest maiden it has ever been my lot to see,” she is often “not in the least able to see me” (268). His passionate interest in the children is not reciprocated; he is fascinated by their every move, yet they frequently “t[ake] not the slightest notice” of him (344). Rather than empowering and calming him, his fruitless efforts to engage their attention inspire feelings of impotence and despair. As the children drift away from him in scene after scene, he records feeling “blank and lonely,” “bewilder[ed],” and hopeless: “No use to try and stop them!” he sadly exclaims on one such occasion (301, 674, 626). Burdened by the pain of his unrequited love, he feels “the real bitterness of solitude” (473). Far from portraying the narrator’s child-loving as a natural, holy act, Carroll characterizes it as a pathological problem. Thus, one of the Þrst things we learn about the narrator is that he suffers from a “Diseas[e] of the Heart” (273). Indeed, the action of Sylvie and Bruno is precipitated by this diagnosis; as the story opens, the narrator is journeying by train to seek a second opinion from Arthur, who is a physician. Unfortunately, Arthur concurs with his colleague: “I make no doubt he is right in saying the heart is affected: all your symptoms point that way” (272). But what are these symptoms? We learn nothing about them. The only fact we learn about the narrator’s heart is that he has completely lost it to a child. Thus, on that Þrst train trip, the narrator spots the veiled form of Lady Muriel, and immediately recognizes that this unknown woman is destined to be “the Heroine” of his story (271). But when he tries to picture the face behind the veil, he can only see one person: “In each such glimpse, the face seemed to grow more childish and more innocent: and, when I had at last thought the veil entirely away, it was, unmistakably, the sweet face of little Sylvie!” (272). This moment conveys the nature of the narrator’s heart defect: when he visualizes the ideal romantic partner, he sees a child. Such child-loving proves damaging not only to the narrator’s wellbeing, but to the primary object of his affection as well. Sylvie does not enjoy receiving special attention; on the contrary, the narrator observes that she “seemed always afraid of being praised, or even noticed” (510). When asked to perform music, Sylvie does so only because she has unselÞshly

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“resolved [. . .] to give pleasure” to others (560). She herself dislikes being put on display: “Sylvie looked round at me, with tears in her eyes. I tried to give her an encouraging smile, but it was evidently a great strain on the nerves of a child so wholly unused to be made an exhibition of, and she was frightened and unhappy” (560). This scene reveals Carroll’s recognition that the voyeurism of adults like the narrator—who enjoys viewing children at London exhibitions—has painful consequences for the child. Entering into such imbalanced relationships, in which all the desire and pleasure are on one side, does not simply endanger the emotional wellbeing of children. It imperils their very existence, Carroll suggests, because such uneven couplings inevitably involve coercion. Numerous incidents in the Sylvie and Bruno books attest to his concern that children do not enter freely into adult games; rather, they are the game—vulnerable prey who are hunted down and consumed with pleasure by ravenous adults. Carroll’s anxiety about such nonreciprocal relationships emerges explicitly in two separate contexts: his condemnation of “false sport” and his dismayed contemplation of the “game” of cat and mouse.8 The specter of the former haunts the Þrst Sylvie and Bruno novel to such an extent that Carroll feels compelled to condemn it in the preface as well as in the body of the novel. As he explains it, “genuine ‘Sport’” differs from its specious counterpart because the two parties involved are equally matched, as in the case of a man and a “man-eating” tiger. Since both participants are strong and dangerous, Carroll declares that he can heartily admire [the man’s] courage [. . .] and I can heartily sympathize with him when he exults in the glorious excitement of the chase and the hand-to-hand struggle with the monster brought to bay. But I can but look with deep wonder and sorrow on the hunter who [. . .] can Þnd pleasure in what involves, for some defenseless creature, wild terror and a death of agony [. . .]. (263) Reciprocity is what differentiates genuine from false sport. It is morally unproblematic to hunt man-eating tigers, Carroll suggests, because they themselves aggressively pursue humans. His description of man versus tiger combat as a “hand-to-hand struggle”—an anatomically incorrect characterization—attests to his conviction that these two parties are equally matched. When the strong pursue the weak, by contrast, the built-in power imbalance guarantees that the interaction is not a game, but rather a sinful form of false sport that engenders misery and distress. Many of the scenes that follow reveal Carroll’s concern that the interplay between adult and child itself constitutes a form of false sport. He drives this point home in a scene that occurs near the end of Sylvie and Bruno, in which Sylvie discovers a dead hare lying on the ground.

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The victimization of this helpless creature disabuses a devastated Sylvie of her notion that “hunting [i]s a thing [people] pla[y] at—like a game” (418). Attempting to justify the hunters’ actions to her, the narrator explains that men who must hunt “Þerce” creatures like tigers in order to protect themselves “get to enjoy it,” and since “in this country, there aren’t any lions and tigers, [. . .] they hunt other creatures, you see” (418). Immediately spotting the weakness in this logic, Sylvie asks, “Are hares Þerce,?” forcing the narrator to admit, “No [. . .], a hare is a sweet, gentle, timid animal” (418). Throughout this scene, Carroll links the adult narrator to the brutal hunter and the child with his helpless prey. To begin with, he makes a point of describing Sylvie and the hare in precisely the same terms, as “sweet, gentle, timid” creatures (418). Moreover, both girl and animal are associated with innocence. When Sylvie asks the narrator if God loves hares, he replies, “Yes! [. . .] I’m sure He does! He loves every living thing. Even sinful men. How much more the animals, that cannot sin!” (419). In response, Sylvie naïvely remarks, “‘I don’t know what ‘sin’ means” (419). Impressed by her perfect purity, the narrator privately wonders how to explain the hunters’ actions to her: “Sweet angel! [. . .] How am I to get the idea of Sport into your innocent mind?” (418). As this remark suggests, the narrator himself is not innocent; he falls into the category of “sinful men,” and for this reason he identiÞes with the hunters. Not only does he speak on their behalf, he also knows their movements and can guess their motives. After he and Sylvie discover the dead hare, he remarks, “I know the harriers were out yesterday. But they haven’t touched it. Perhaps they caught sight of another, and left it to die of fright and exhaustion” (418). Unlike Sylvie, he understands the pleasures of the chase, as indicated by his explanation of how the men who hunt wild animals “get to enjoy it [. . .]: the running, and the Þghting, and the shouting, and the danger” (418). As the climax of this scene reveals, their empathy leads them in opposite directions. Separating herself from the narrator, Sylvie aligns herself with the hare: “Pulling her hand out of mine, she ran back to where the dead hare was lying, and ßung herself down at its side in such an agony of grief as I could hardly have believed possible in so young a child” (419). It is no wonder that the narrator fails to comfort his young friend, given that he is so strongly associated with the hunters, and she with the prey. Indeed, throughout the Sylvie and Bruno books, Carroll depicts the narrator as a hunter in hot pursuit of childish game. Whether he is in England or Outland, the narrator constantly tries to track down Sylvie and Bruno, who “race away, bounding over the turf with the ßeetness and grace of young antelopes” (414). Walking in Kensington Gardens, for example, the narrator notices “a small creature, moving among the grass”; after “making an ex tempore cage of my two hands, I imprisoned the little wanderer, and

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felt a sudden thrill of surprise and delight on discovering that my prisoner was no other than Bruno himself!” (474–75). Bruno informs his capturer that anyone who traps a fairy who has not willingly revealed his location has the right “to eat” that fairy (475). Not only has the narrator experienced the thrill of the chase, in other words, he is also entitled to the customary reward of killing and consuming the creature he has captured. Coupled with the huge disparity in size between hunter and prey, this reference to death suggests that the narrator’s pursuit of “tiny folk” like Bruno is not a mutually amusing game, but rather a false sport—an unequal engagement that threatens the life of the smaller, weaker party (476). Carroll’s anxiety about this possibility also emerges in moments that highlight the cruelty implicit in the “game” of cat and mouse. Like the issue of false versus genuine sport, this topic Þrst emerges as a philosophical question, and later resurfaces during actual incidents involving the narrator and his child friends. Conversing with Lady Muriel and her father, the narrator offers the following response to the “great riddle” of why innocent beings like horses ever suffer: The sufferings of horses [. . .] are chießy caused by Man’s cruelty. So that is merely one of the many instances of Sin causing suffering to others than the Sinner himself. But don’t you Þnd a greater difÞculty in sufferings inßicted by animals upon each other? For instance, a cat playing with a mouse. Assuming it to have no moral responsibility, isn’t that a greater mystery than a man over-driving a horse? (619–20). Even as the narrator differentiates the game of cat and mouse from encounters involving innocent animals and sinful men, his chief concern remains the same: namely, that the strong sometimes toy with the weak, disregarding the latter’s vulnerability in their drive to amuse themselves. Indeed, the “game” of cat and mouse constitutes the ultimate example of false sport, since it involves no real reciprocity; all the pleasure is on one side. Rather than functioning as a partner in play, the mouse gets coerced into participating in an activity that puts his very life in jeopardy. This issue arises again during the climactic banquet scene in Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, when a “remarkably fat” feline wanders into the dining room. Moments later, a mouse enters, spots the cat, and decides to leave, despite Bruno’s reassurance that he “needn’t be ßightened. The Cat’s welly kind to Mouses’” (650). When his dinner companions question the truth of this claim, Bruno insists that the cat “‘plays with the Mouses [. . .] to amuse them’” (651). Speaking on behalf of his feline friend, Bruno defends the cat against the accusation that his real goal is to kill the mice: “Oh, that’s quite a accident! [. . .] It ’splained all that to me, while it were

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drinking the milk. It said, ‘I teaches the Mouses new games: the Mouses likes it ever so much.’ It said, ‘Sometimes the Mouses kills theirselves.’ [. . .] It said, ‘Dead Mouses never objecks to be eaten’” (652). Clearly, Carroll intends readers to see through the fat cat’s self-serving Þction that this “game” is mutually entertaining. And once again, he aligns the narrator with the prowling predator and the child with prey; the chapter entitled “Bruno’s Picnic” characterizes the narrator as a monstrous cat, a voracious lion whose favorite dish is children. As this scene opens, Sylvie and Bruno seem to have successfully coopted the adult role of storyteller; the narrator passively listens as they spin out a bizarre tale about a little boy named Bruno’s encounters with a variety of talking animals. But the moral of this story is that small creatures invariably get victimized by larger ones. Therefore, its hero is Þrst introduced not as a boy named Bruno, but as “a little tiny mouse,” whose identity is deÞned entirely by his extreme vulnerability; the mouse is so small, Bruno explains, that “[i]f anything happened to it, it would die” (578–79). In other words, the only possible plot that a character this powerless can be involved in is that of the hunt. Thus, when Sylvie takes over the tale, she describes how a hungry group of owls “were looking to see if they could Þnd a nice fat Mouse for their supper” (580). Although the characters in this story go through multiple transformations, the plot remains the same: the big feed on the small, and this violence is linked to the act of storytelling. Suddenly, the hungry owls are replaced by a lion, and the mouse by a little boy, who “ask[s] the Lion to tell him a story. And the Lion said ‘yes,’ it would. And, while the Lion was telling him the story, it nibbled some of his head off [. . .]. And when it had nubbled [sic] all his head off, he went away” (580). Even as Sylvie usurps the role of narrator, the story she tells suggests that such role reversal is impossible: children function not as storytellers but as the hapless victims of storytellers. Carroll equates the act of telling a story to a child with consuming the child, and suggests that young people cannot escape their position as prey. Thus, although the title “Bruno’s Picnic” suggests that the boy hero of this tale will himself consume some food, in fact he continues to function solely as a tasty snack for others. In the incident that inspires the title, the boy—who has now been identiÞed as Bruno—gathers various kinds of food for a picnic, only to discover that he himself is in danger of becoming the main dish. As he walks to the picnic spot, he hears a threatening noise, “a sort of a Thump! Thump! Thump!” behind him, which turns out to be the Lion chasing after him again (585). To be sure, the Lion claims that he no longer eats little boys, but given that the entire Þnal section of Sylvie’s story focuses on a group of foxes who lie about their ravenous appetites, his declaration seems just as unbelievable as Bruno’s assertion that the cat is “welly nice” to mice. Moreover,

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the terms of the Lion’s defense inextricably link him to the narrator, since both characters insist that age has dulled their desires and rendered them harmless. Just as the narrator reassures Arthur that his advanced years disqualify him as a romantic rival, the Lion exclaims, “Little Boy! Little Boy! You needn’t be afraid of me! I’m a very gentle old Lion now. I never nubble little Boys’ heads off, as I used to do” (586). Yet the excitement evident in his next speech suggests that his desire has not really abated: as they went along, the Lion said “Oh, I’ll tell you what I used to do when I was a young Lion. I used to hide behind trees, to watch for little Boys [. . .]. And, if a little thin scraggy Boy came by, why, I used to let him go. But, if a little fat juicy [. . .] Boy came by, why, I used to spring out and gobble him up! Oh, you’ve no idea what a delicious thing it is—a little juicy Boy!” (588) This passage echoes the moment when the narrator traps Bruno in Kensington Gardens and discovers that his boyish prey is “deliciously good to eat,” as well as the line in the prefatory poem Carroll wrote for Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, in which he refers to Sylvie as “Thou delicious Fay” (475). Carroll thus aligns adult storytellers with the hungry cat, as surely as he associates the child with the endangered mouse. Such moments suggest that Carroll, who frequently bemoaned his status as a literary “lion,” harbored some anxiety about the intensity of his own desire to chase after children.9 Concerned about the risks of adult-child interaction, Carroll rewrites the Alice books to acknowledge the presence of the swooning adult: rather than being alone in Wonderland, the dreamchild is pursued by a fascinated grown-up. And whereas Charles Dodgson often insisted that loving children was a spiritually purifying act, Lewis Carroll refuses to portray the narrator’s obsession in this appealing light. Not only does he characterize it as a disease of the heart and a form of false sport, he also stresses its sinfulness by repeatedly punishing the narrator for indulging in an unreciprocated passion. The method of castigation he employs makes the looking-glass reversal of Alice complete: besides attributing the burning desire to grasp the ungraspable to the adult rather than the child, Carroll also subjects his stand-in to precisely the same kind of abjection that he had previously inßicted on Alice, who experiences many moments of painful incompetence while in Wonderland. Alice’s most abject moments in Wonderland occur when she loses control of her own voice and body. After inadvertently producing a parody of Watts’s “How Doth the Little Busy Bee,” for example, she weeps with frustration. The narrator of the Sylvie and Bruno books likewise Þnds himself uttering words that he has not chosen to speak. On one such

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occasion, Lady Muriel asks the narrator why he has not brought Sylvie and Bruno with him to her house: “I’m very sorry,” I said; “but really it was impossible to bring them with me.” Here I most certainly meant to conclude the sentence: and it was with a feeling of utter amazement, which I cannot adequately describe, that I heard myself going on speaking. “—but they are to join me here in the course of the evening” were the words, uttered in my voice, and seeming to come from my lips. (536) Shocked by his own words, the narrator wants to declare, “That was not my remark. I didn’t say it, and it isn’t true!” (536). But he does not, because he is afraid that his friends will think that he is a “lunatic” (536). Alice expresses a similar fear after she involuntarily parodies Watts; she weeps not only because “her voice sounded hoarse and strange, and the words did not come the same as they used to do,” but because she is afraid that people will take her for her idiotic friend Mabel, who “knows such a very little” (26, 25). Understandably, such incidents make Alice and the narrator feel “very melancholy” and “very [. . .] helpless,” respectively (50, 290). Both protagonists have body problems that make them feel sadly incompetent, as well. To begin with, each faces the frustration of trying to move forward but not getting anywhere. During Alice’s second adventure in Wonderland, the Red Queen forces her to run as fast as she can, but “however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything” (151). The narrator of Sylvie and Bruno suffers through a similar situation; as he describes it, “I tried my best to walk a few steps: but the ground slipped away backwards, quite as fast as I could walk, so that I made no progress at all” (411). And just as Alice has trouble regulating her size shifts, growing large and small at unexpected times and with startling speed, the narrator constantly veers from visible to invisible without even knowing that such a change has taken place. One moment the inhabitants of Outland can see him perfectly, the next they can “neither s[ee] me nor hea[r] me” (344). He has no ability to control the timing of these shifts. Moreover, like Alice, the narrator experiences frustration and disorientation when he is unexpectedly transported from one place to another without his knowledge or consent. By tracing the similarities between the two projects, however, I do not mean to suggest that Carroll is right to worry that the Sylvie and Bruno books are merely an exhausted repetition of the Alice books. In teasing out the links between Alice’s adventures and the narrator’s, I have ignored huge swaths of text; many incidents that occur in the Sylvie and Bruno books have no correlative in Alice. Indeed, I suspect that parallel aspects of the two projects have gone unnoticed precisely because of the sheer

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bulk of the other, unrelated material. Still, these similarities are worth noting, because they reveal the evolution of Carroll’s attitude toward the act of child-loving. SpeciÞcally, they attest to his new willingness to acknowledge the intensity of his own investment in children, as well as his growing anxiety about the negative effects such relationships can have on both adult and child. Moreover, Carroll was not alone in expressing this anxiety about the act of child-loving. The Sylvie and Bruno books have been viewed as a deeply eccentric project, a lone and inexplicable literary oddity. But in fact, they Þt neatly into a small but deÞnite tradition that includes George MacDonald’s Adela Cathcart (1864) and J. M. Barrie’s The Little White Bird (1902), two other novels that incorporate children’s fairy-tales into the framework of a lengthy adult tome.10 All three of these works ponder the painful consequences of pursuing children. Each is narrated by an eccentric bachelor who expresses his obsessive interest in young people by composing narratives for or about them, and who acts as a doomed suitor to the child. Barrie’s eccentric “Captain W—” relentlessly chases after a little boy named David, “a Greek god” of a child whom he often manages to capture in Kensington Gardens, but never gets to keep (4). Similarly, MacDonald’s “John Smith” worships his “pet-child” Adela; but although he has “been a sweetheart of hers ever since she was in long clothes,” he knows he cannot marry her (109). All three of these eminent authors of children’s Þction thus reveal their recognition that the decision to tell tales to young people is driven by adult desire, even as the obviously pseudonymous names of their narrators suggest that such yearnings are a cause for shame.11 This shared apprehension suggest that we need to alter our deÞnition of the Victorian cult of the child to account for the critical selfconsciousness of authors who have previously been regarded as its most dangerous and unreßective participants. University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania NOTES 1. See also Berman, Cohen, Leach, and Lennon. 2. Quoted material is from Miller’s article “The Sylvie and Bruno Books as Victorian Novel” (138). 3. All citations given in the text to Sylvie and Bruno, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking-Glass are from the onevolume edition The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll. 4. Carroll refers to Alice as a “dream-child” in the prefatory poem to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (11). He may have picked up this phrase from Charles Lamb’s 1822 essay “Dream Children: A Reverie.”

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5. Only after it appeared in print did Carroll realize that Sylvie and Bruno addressed a different audience than Alice; an 1890 letter records his decision to “giv[e] my new book to mothers rather than daughters” (Letters, 778). 6. Against her will, for example, Humpty Dumpty insists on performing a “song for your delight” which he interrupts, after the Þrst stanza, in order to elaborate on (200). But when Alice cuts in with a comment of her own, he informs her, “You needn’t go on making remarks like that [. . .]: they’re not sensible, and they put me out” (200). Similarly, when Bruno Þnishes the Þrst verse of his song “Ting, ting, ting,” he pauses to explain the lyrics; but when the narrator then asks a question, the fairy responds, “You shouldn’t talk [. . .]; it interrupts the song so” (85). 7. Because Alice’s true function is as an object of desire, not an agent, Carroll employs the passive voice in a way that emphasizes her own alluring status as a “darling”: rather than saying that she rolled up her sleeves to grasp the rushes, he recounts how “the little sleeves were carefully rolled up, and the little arms were plunged in elbow-deep, to get hold of the rushes a good long way down” (188). Although Carroll provides no concrete details about what the rushes look like, he lovingly describes Alice’s appearance; with her “bright eager eyes” and her “ßushed cheeks and dripping hair and hands,” she resembles a bright blossom poised on a dripping stem. 8. This section of my argument owes a great deal to Kathleen Blake’s work on the distinctions among play, games, and sport in Carroll’s writing. 9. For example, Dodgson gripes about one celebrity-seeker, “[I]t can only be as a ‘lion’ he wants to know me, & a lion is the one animal I do’n’t want to be regarded as” (qtd. in Hudson, 291). Yet he also identiÞes himself as an avid consumer of children: just like the Lion who lets some children go by, so too Dodgson characterizes himself in letters as a devoted yet discerning customer: “He thought I doted on all children. But I’m not omnivorous! [. . .] I pick and choose . . .” (Letters, 781). 10. Just as the Sylvie and Bruno books include within them set-pieces like “Bruno’s Revenge,” which Carroll frequently performed for child-friends, Adela Cathcart includes fairy-tales like “The Light Princess” and “The Giant’s Heart,” while The Little White Bird includes nine chapters of the material that would eventually become Peter Pan. 11. Indeed, Carroll ultimately decided to withhold the name of his narrator altogether; one of the few changes that he made when he incorporated “Bruno’s Revenge” into Sylvie and Bruno was to replace the line “My name’s Lewis Carroll” with the cagier comment, “I told him my name” (358).

WORKS CITED Atherton, James S. The Books at the Wake: A Study of Literary Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. New York: Viking, 1960. Barrie, J. M. The Little White Bird: or, Adventures in Kensington Gardens. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902. Berman, Ruth. Patterns of UniÞcation in Sylvie and Bruno. Baltimore: T & K Graphics, 1974. Blake, Kathleen. Play, Games, and Sport: The Literary Works of Lewis Carroll. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1974.

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