"Lewis Carroll's Dream-child and Victorian Child Psychopathology" by Stephanie Schatz
Annotation by Delaney Krall
Schatz, Stephanie L. "Lewis Carroll's Dream-child and Victorian Child Psychopathology." Journal of the History of Ideas 76.1 (2015): 93-114. Humanities Full Text. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.
In “Lewis Carroll’s Dream-child and Victorian Child Psychopathology” (2015), Schatz examines how daydreaming and the use of imagination in children, which Lewis Carroll highly valued, were seen as signs of mental illness in the Victorian era. The random and bizarre scenes in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland only furthered the medical investigations discouraging imaginative thoughts, even in dreams, because they lead to mental instabilities later in life. By mentioning the opinions of Carroll and Victorian psychologists, the author is able to give the readers of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland a better understanding of the average-19th century-British man’s opinions and personality.
In “Lewis Carroll’s Dream-child and Victorian Child Psychopathology” (2015), Schatz examines how daydreaming and the use of imagination in children, which Lewis Carroll highly valued, were seen as signs of mental illness in the Victorian era. The random and bizarre scenes in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland only furthered the medical investigations discouraging imaginative thoughts, even in dreams, because they lead to mental instabilities later in life. By mentioning the opinions of Carroll and Victorian psychologists, the author is able to give the readers of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland a better understanding of the average-19th century-British man’s opinions and personality.