The role of little girls in the life and literature of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Lewis Carroll

Abstract

It is of course widely known that Lewis Carroll’s remarkable attraction to prepubescent little girls in general, and to Alice Lidell in particular, compelled him to write and publish in 1865 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the first of his ‘Alice books’ which procured him a place among the pioneers of children’s books. However, it is fair to remark that he was by no means the first writer to feel this sway and reflect it in his literary works. By the time Carroll was born in 1832, in a much less conspicuous way, the American Nathaniel Hawthorne had already felt the strong influence of some "beautiful little girls" who made the creation of most of his children characters possible. Our aim in this article is to demonstrate that, although Hawthorne’s penchant may have not been as noticeable as Carroll’s, it was still perceptible enough to raise some suspicions that lead us now to a better understanding of his fiction.