ABSTRACT
The social and historical climate when the image was made is important to understand, especially if these aspects have changed - society’s attitudes to nudity, for example. As mentioned earlier, personal experience and understanding will affect how theinterpret an image. Responses to an image can differ wildly and perceptions be dramatically altered by historical fact. Take for example, the image on this spread. On one level, it is simply a picture of a young girl asleep in the daybed. Today, internet commentators condemn Dodgson as the ‘patron saint of paedophiles’ and appear to be completely - if pointedly - unaware of Victorian society’s deep fascination with childhood. Both nineteenth-century art and society elevated the young girl as an ideal of purity and innocence. Some artists of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood considered that the only thing of beauty to everyone was the face of a female child.
