[In the following essay, originally published in 1984, Cohen discusses Dodgson's views on higher education for women and his personal contributions to the education of women and girls in mathematics and formal logic.]

We are all aware that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, nurtured all his mature life a special preference for the female of the species. The preference was special because it was a preference not for all females, but for young girls. Even in Victorian times—some would say particularly in Victorian times—the idea of an unmarried Oxford don, however respectable, pursuing friendships with pre-pubescent girls offended some sensibilities.

But now, more than three quarters of a century after Dodgson's death, when virtually all those young friends of his have also died, we should be able to look at the evidence coolly and clinically. The record of these friendships is formidable, not only because Dodgson himself kept diaries and wrote mountains of letters, but because those little girls collectively left behind yet another treasure trove of memorabilia—their own personal reminiscences. But nothing in these private documents reveals any greatly guarded secrets; there lurked behind the features of that benign Oxford cleric no sinister Mr. Hyde. The evidence makes us realize that, ho hum, nothing scandalous entered into those relationships. They were all open and free, something that both parties greatly enjoyed. No sordid details await us, nothing will titillate the prurient. Dodgson did not possess wandering hands, he made no attempt upon the chastity of those young female friends.

Psychoanalysts have a good deal to say, of course, about the Reverend Charles Dodgson's suppressed desires, and we may ourselves be certain that the man regarded any sexual promptings that he may have felt as inspired by the devil. So genuine and devout a Christian was he that he chained his natural instincts and allowed them, at least those that were sexual, no conscious expression. The result is that in his life we find idealized relationships, where purity and beauty are worshipped, where young girls become young angels and, when they mature, young goddesses. Sex does not enter at all. Dodgson wants to admire the girls aesthetically, he enjoys their companionship, he seeks to contribute to their intellectual and social development, and, perhaps most of all, he tries to amuse them.

For that is, after all, the aim to which he devoted much of his life, helping his young friends in every possible way. He wrote his two great children's classics to amuse the most famous of those young girls, and he wrote dozens of other works in order to entertain hundreds, thousands of other young friends, both seen and unseen, the world over. The young girls he actually knew and cared for he aided in a multitude of ways. He supervised their careers, he gave them spiritual guidance, he took them on outings to London, he received them as house guests at the seaside, he bought them railway tickets, he gave them books and other presents, he took them to the theater, he fed them and clothed them, he photographed them, he paid some of their dentists' bills, he told them stories, and, most relevant for our purpose, he tutored them in mathematics and logic, he arranged for them to have lessons in elocution, he paid for them to get instruction in French, music, and art, and he took a constant interest in cultivating their talents and in helping them to cultivate their minds.

Because a hundred years or so have passed since Dodgson engaged in all this tutelage, and attitudes have changed enormously in that time, we ought perhaps to remind ourselves what standard attitudes Dodgson's contemporaries held towards women, young or mature. True, Dodgson lived in an age of chivalry, when, at least in polite circles, gentlemen treated ladies with mannered courtesy. Often, womanhood was idealized, even idolized. This worship of the female, we know, was an extension of attitudes that prevailed during the Romantic Period that regarded women as closer to heaven's angels than to earth-bound men.

But that was not the whole story. All Victorians, even those who idolized women, saw them as the “weaker sex,” requiring protection and support. Those famous lines from Tennyson's The Princess capture the Victorian assessment of woman's place in the universe:

Man for the field and woman for the hearth:
Man for the sword and for the needle she:
Man with the head and woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey;
All else confusion.

Perhaps even more striking is that some of the medical authorities and scientists of the time pronounced the female inferior. Sir Almroth Wright, who invented the anti-typhoid inoculation and was one of the greatest pathologists of his time, as late as March 28, 1912, argued in The Times (London) that a woman's physiology, her “hyper-sensitivity,” her “innate unreasonableness,” her periodic “loss of proportion” made her unfit to vote. In earlier Victorian days the notion of woman as a weaker vessel was even more deeply rooted. The female body was capable of bearing children, but not of performing any other chores requiring physical prowess or endurance; to subject it to “manly” tasks would be to abuse it. Similarly, if one strove to educate the female mind, if one, as it were, subjected it to mental exercise for which the female brain was unfit, one would tax it beyond endurance and it might shatter. Women were, for the Victorians, quite distinct from men: they functioned differently, their purpose on earth was different, and one had a clear duty to recognize, protect, and even encourage that difference. Only by keeping woman in her place, in the home, as a mother, as a supervisor of the servants, a keeper of keys, a social butterfly—only in these ways were the true and natural functions of both woman and man fulfilled.

In most matters, Charles Dodgson was a man of his time. In spite of his great gifts of imagination, he did not often, as a person, transcend Victorian structures. True, he had a mind of his own and indeed decided major issues for himself. In the face of a dictum of Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, proclaiming the theater a form of godless entertainment, Dodgson was courageous enough, for instance, to insist openly that the English theater offered wholesome and uplifting experiences, and he attended theatrical performances and often took his young friends to them. Dodgson also had the courage to depart from the “high church” fold of his father and earlier progenitors because he found high church formality and ceremony too elaborate for his simple tastes. He was more comfortable as a broad churchman and he became one.

These examples attest to an independent man who thought for himself and made significant decisions either with or against the tide, according to his own lights. And yet, in examining Dodgson's whole life, one must conclude that he did not often break new ground, nor did he frequently break with convention. He was, in the main, in religion, in politics, even in art, conventional.

We should not be surprised, then, to find that in his attitudes to women he tends to accept past standards, to hold the line, to resist change. In his general attitude to work, for example, and in particular to the studies of mathematics and logic, he is stern. He believed in a carefully thought out and disciplined approach, he would not compromise and he would not be compromised on the requirements he set for himself, for his colleagues, or for his students. He regularly opposed lower standards of admission to Oxford and lower standards for passing examinations. He showed compassion for the unqualified and for those who failed to make the grade, but before any of them received Dodgson's “seal of approval,” they simply, each and every one, had to climb the steep cliffs of Higher Mathematics on their own.

Of course, most of Dodgson's pupils—certainly all of his official ones—were men, the men of Oxford. When we ask about Dodgson's attitude towards women and women's education—how he stood on the issue of opening the gates of Oxford to women, to granting them degrees, to accepting them as equals—when we ask these questions, knowing the man and his time, we have every right to expect a conventional reply: a woman's mind, like her body, is inferior to a man's, women are not capable of higher education and granting them university educations would be contrary to their best interest and to the best interest of society. Certainly, that is the sum and substance of conventional Victorian attitudes.

But on examining Dodgson's record on the subject of women's education, we come in for some surprises. We cannot cast him as a champion of change—it would have violated his character if he took a liberal stance on these issues—but, on the other hand, he is not a dyed-in-the-wool Victorian.

As we know, higher education for women began, more or less, at Queens College in London in 1848, but Queens was a college only in name and offered women separate and far-from-equal education. Queens College apart, real education for women in England still had to arrive at the established male universities. Of these, Cambridge first allowed women to sit for examinations, and that landmark was passed in 1868, when Dodgson was thirty-six years old. At Cambridge, too, in 1869, the first important woman's hall was established, if not as part of the university itself, certainly on the fringe: Newnham Hall, later Newnham College. And in 1873, again at Cambridge, the hall that would become Girton College was founded. Oxford, you see, lagged behind.

Although women could attend lectures and take examinations at the University of Oxford from 1875, no hostels for women existed there until 1878, when the earliest women's halls, Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville College, opened. From time to time, the women of Oxford struggled fiercely against the iron gates of the University, but they made slow progress. Not until 1894 were all University examinations in arts and music open to women. But no woman could yet earn an Oxford degree.

Actually, the question of degrees for women first became a real issue in 1896, two years before Dodgson's death, and he took a genuine interest in the debate. In March of that year, Congregation, the University governing body, was to vote on whether Oxford should grant degrees to women. In the months before the crucial vote, newspapers were full of articles and letters stating arguments for and against the proposal. People in Oxford, and it seems from the widespread material that appeared on the subject, people everywhere in England, took one side or another and believed, in each case, that he or she had something new or freshly persuasive to say on the subject. The letters columns in The Times were largely devoted to the debate, public meetings were held and reported in the press, and a good many dinner tables groaned under the fists of pundits all too eager to pronounce on the merits or, more likely, the demerits of degrees for women.

Now, we have seen that Dodgson was not an adventurous trail blazer, and I should add, too, that when on April 29, 1884, twelve years earlier, the University, by a large majority vote, admitted women to additional examinations, Dodgson recorded in an unpublished passage of his diaries that he had voted “nonplacet.”¹ In the crucial vote on March 13, 1896, the vote was overwhelmingly (215 to 140) against giving Oxford degrees to women, and, no doubt, Dodgson voted with the majority. But, although in 1884 he was opposed to giving women access to more Oxford examinations and in 1896 to awarding women Oxford degrees, he certainly did not oppose giving women higher education. Quite the contrary. After the vote was taken and the women lost, Dodgson composed an essay on the subject and, like some of the other quieter souls in the Oxford community, he took the trouble to publish his views privately. His pamphlet, Resident Women-Students, consists of merely four pages and is dated four days after the crucial vote in Congregation.²

Characteristically Dodgson frames the issues involved as logical propositions. He begins thus:

In the bewildering multiplicity of petty side-issues, with which the question, of granting University Degrees to Women, has been overlaid, there is some danger that Members of Congregation may lose sight of the really important issues involved.

The following four propositions should, I think, be kept steadily in view by all who wish to form an independent opinion as to the matter in dispute.

The first proposition is that “One of the chief functions, if not the chief function, of our University, is to prepare young Men … for the business of Life. Consequently”—and here Dodgson presents his second proposition—“The first question to be asked … is ‘How will it affect those for whose well-being we are responsible?’” He then puts his third proposition, that any scheme for admitting women students as full-fledged members of the University will eventually make residency at the University compulsory. Consequently—and now we have his fourth proposition—“Any such Scheme is certain to produce an enormous influx of resident Women-Students.” Considering that three thousand undergraduate men were then enrolled at Oxford, Dodgson predicts that before long, an influx of some three thousand young women students would occur. “Such an immigration,” he goes on, “will of course produce a rapid increase in the size of Oxford, and will necessitate a large increase in our teaching-staff and in the number of lecture-rooms.” Then he asks this question: “Will the mutual influence, of two such sets of Students, residing in such close proximity, be for good or for evil?” Dodgson recalls at this point that he often discussed the issue with his old late friend Henry Parry Liddon, Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral, and that Liddon had expressed “most warmly and earnestly, his fears as to the effect … flooding Oxford with young Women-Students would have on the young Women themselves.”

Dodgson does not go on to say that he agreed with Liddon on this or on any other particular. Instead, he proceeds to offer a solution to the problem. “Surely, the real ‘way-out,’ from our present perplexity,” he wrote, is for Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin to “join in a petition to the Crown to grant a charter for a Women's University. Such a University,” he continues, “would very soon attract to itself the greater portion of young Women-Students. It takes no great time to build Colleges; and we might confidently expect to see ‘New Oxford,’ in the course of 20 or even of 10 years, rivaling Oxford, not only in numbers, but in attainments. At first, perhaps, they might need to borrow some teachers from the older Universities; but they would soon be able to supply all, that would be needed, from among themselves; and Women-Lecturers and Women-Professors would arise, fully as good as any that the older Universities have ever produced.”

He adds one last paragraph showing that he is aware that his proposal is not new and that one strong argument against it is that “it is not what the Women themselves ‘desire.’” But he rejects that argument as logically weak. Like the proper Victorian he was, Dodgson insists that “Even men very often fail to ‘desire’ what is, after all, the best thing for them to have.”

Dodgson's position, his propositions, and his proposals are not remarkable either for the man or for his time. They reflect, in fact, precisely the sort of person he was—not a great educational reformer, he was not in the forefront of social change. But having said that, we must add that he was at core a decent human being with sensitive feelings and a “sensible” outlook on life. What is remarkable about the man is not that he opposed making Oxford available to women students, but that he opposed their admission to degrees only on social, and not on intellectual grounds. He makes it quite clear that he has a deep respect for the intellectual potential of women and that women, in his view, were capable of the highest intellectual accomplishments. Indeed, had he believed otherwise, he would not have spent as much of his time and energy as he did in tutoring individual girls. Actually, even while Dodgson opposed opening Oxford to women, he spent much of his effort educating females, and he did that in three distinct ways.

One way was on a personal one-to-one basis. He gave individual instruction to a good many growing children throughout the years. He either went to their homes or they came to his rooms at Christ Church, and he took great pains with their instruction. He also carried on individual “correspondence courses” in letters, setting problems for his pupils to solve, correcting answers they sent him, and trying to explain their errors when they went wrong. Toward the end of his life, he conducted a long correspondence with one of his sisters, herself a woman of some age by then, instructing her in formal logic.³

The second way that Dodgson taught young girls was by inventing games and puzzles and by writing texts for them. Many of his writings are mathematical or logical games and exercises created for his young friends. Among his published works that fall into this category are Castle-Croquet, Court Circular, Doublets, The Game of Logic, Lanrick, Mischmasch, Syzygies, and A Tangled Tale. Some of these games appeared in print first in ladies' or girls' periodicals, as set exercises for readers to solve. Readers' answers were printed in subsequent weeks' issues and prizes were awarded. Respondents often became correspondents of Dodgson's, and in fact that is how he made some of his fastest friends. The books that resulted when Dodgson assembled these periodical exercises between hard covers were usually dedicated to one or another of his child friends.

The third way that Dodgson taught young girls was in a more formal school setting. He often took the opportunity, when he met schoolteachers or head mistresses socially to inquire whether they would like to have him come and give logic lessons to any of the girls at their schools. The result was that classes were especially arranged for girls and even mistresses who wanted to take logic lessons. One of Dodgson's most interesting triumphs took place at the distinguished Oxford High School for Girls where over a number of years he gave what amounted to “mini-courses” in logic. The school “adopted” him as a special friend, and the girls wrote about him affectionately both in memoirs they left behind and in the school magazine they published regularly during the years while he was there. Dodgson also gave logic lectures at Oxford colleges for women, notably at Lady Margaret's Hall and at St. Hugh's.

By all accounts, Dodgson was a great success at these lectures, in spite of the notorious and troublesome stammer that kept him from taking up regular parish preaching. And his special gift seemed to lie in his allowing Lewis Carroll to take over from Charles Dodgson. New claims have been made recently for Dodgson as an innovator in the history of mathematics and logic.⁴ I am not equipped to judge how valid these claims are, but I know that Dodgson brought to his works in mathematics and logic, as to his classroom teaching of these subjects, an imagination and inventiveness that we do not normally associate with such “dry” subjects. The exercises he invented, the paradoxes he posed, the examples he supplied are all couched in drama and suspense and infused with an intrinsic laughter and sense of fun, a quality of real life. In all, he made mathematics and logic live for his students as they never lived before. No wonder that professional mathematicians and logicians the world over readily smile as they recognize Dodgson's “Barber-Shop Paradox” or his “Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise.” These problems and many more bear the genius of humor and creativity characteristic of the Alice books.

So it was in those classrooms when Charles Dodgson drilled his female students in the strict exercises and arguments of higher mathematics: he drew them into interesting situations, he inspired them to use their own imaginations, he aroused their interest and made them laugh at his examples. Of course he adored the rows of young females hanging on his every word; no doubt, the very nature of his audience sparked him on to new creative heights. But, all the same, he never lost his sense of proportion about the relationships, nor did he ever think that what he was doing was at all ordinary. Writing to a friend in his early days of lecturing at the Oxford High School for Girls, he reported: “Every afternoon, oddly enough, I have an engagement, as I have taken to giving lectures, on my Game of Logic, to young people. … Girls are very nice pupils to lecture to, they are so bright and eager.”⁵ In turn, the students appreciated him. “When Mr. Dodgson stood at the desk in the sixth-form room and prepared to address the class,” one of his pupils wrote in later years, “I thought he looked very tall and seemed very serious and rather formidable … [but] as he proceeded I think the facts became rather more and more fanciful and the fancies more fantastic.”⁶ Another student remembered that “the girls adored him; he entertained them with written games on the blackboard. He was perfect with children,” she added, “and there were always tribes of little girls attached to him. He made everyone laugh.”⁷ And yet one more girl's testimony must be given. Enid Stevens, one of his all-time favorites, was an Oxford High School student. “I never realized,” she wrote after Dodgson's death, “—as I do now—what jewels were being poured out for my entertainment. I know now that my friendship with him was probably the most valuable experience in a long life, and that it influenced my outlook more than anything that has happened since; and wholly for good.”⁸

Charles Dodgson may not have done much to advance women's entrance to the sacred halls of Oxford University, to secure them degrees there, but he influenced many a female's own education in his time, and who can doubt that he has had an enormous influence in shaping women's minds in general and, incidentally, men's. The two great English classics he wrote have, indeed, made Alices of us all. He wrote many other books for the instruction and amusement of girls, and he devoted his entire life to instructing and entertaining young females. “And so you have found out that secret,” he once wrote to his friend Ellen Terry, “one of the deep secrets of Life—that all, that is really worth the doing, is what we do for others?”⁹ Dodgson profoundly believed that maxim, and he did more for young girls than for any other group.

Dodgson's name will not enter scholarly tomes devoted to the struggle for women's rights. But many women in the world have benefitted from his having trod the face of the earth and inhabited those rooms at Christ Church. But perhaps, for our purpose today, we ought to recognize one thing about Dodgson that was not true of most Victorian males. Over and over again, he shows a deep respect for female intelligence, and nowhere does he make any distinction whatsoever between a good “male mind” and a good “female mind.” For Charles Dodgson, a good mind was a good mind. In that one regard if in no other, he was ahead of his time and transcended its prejudices.

In 1920 Oxford University got round to giving women degrees. This past summer, I sat at High Table at Christ Church with women dons noticeably present. And one day, the Porter said as he handed me my mail, “Yes, the last bastion has crumbled. We are to have thirteen ladies here in October.” For the first time in history, last month women were admitted to study in that masculine holy of holies, Christ Church.

Charles Dodgson has been dead for eighty-two years now, but I like to think of his spirit still hovering over Tom Quad, and I believe that, in his wisdom and with his whimsicality, he is concocting some special rhymes to celebrate the first thirteen women to become full members of Christ Church. I don't think that, now, he would disapprove.¹⁰

Notes

1. Dodgson's manuscript diaries are in the British Library.

2. It is reprinted in The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (London, 1939), pp. 1068-70.

3. For a record of this correspondence, see Lewis Carroll, Symbolic Logic, ed. William Warren Bartley III (New York and London, 1977).

4. See the editor's introduction in ibid.

5. Morton N. Cohen, ed., The Letters of Lewis Carroll, 2 vols. (New York and London, 1979), p. 680.

6. E. M. Rowell, “To Me He Was Mr. Dodgson,” Harper's Magazine, CLXXXVI (February, 1943), 319-23.

7. Ethel Sidgwick, Oxford High School, 1875-1960, ed. V. E. Stack (Abingdon, Berkshire, 1963), pp. 56-57.

8. “Mrs. Shawyer's Reminiscences,” The Diaries of Lewis Carroll, 2 vols., ed. Roger Lancelyn Green. (New York and London, 1954), pp. xxiv-xxvi.

9. The Letters of Lewis Carroll, p. 813.

10. For background material for this essay, I have also drawn on the following works: Vera Brittain, The Women at Oxford (London, 1960); Walter E. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830-1870 (New Haven and London, 1957); and Josephine Kamm, Hope Deferred (London, 1965).