Mature and Dark Subjects in a Children’s Book?

I have heard the question why there are such dark/harmful subjects in Alice.

There is one article that talks about the caterpillar smoking a hookah and how this sends the wrong impression on children. That is because people back in Carroll’s time did not the dangers of smoking and that smoking was a common pastime. Also in the eighteen hundreds, opium was thought to be a medicine.

There is also the Queens constant need for beheading people for random actions. This might be because death was a common thing in the eighteen hundreds and that there was a rise in crime. This would also explain chapter 11 with the Knave’s trial about if he stole the tarts.

Then there is the death jokes, where Alice thinks of different ways that she could be killed. This would have been common because of the increase in dangerous chemicals and materials that followed the Industrial Revolution and that parents would want their children to be aware.

But there is also when she is falling down the Rabbit-hole and she says that she would tell nobody about her falling, even if she fell off the top of the house, on which she thinks that this is probably true. Alice also has a habit of talking about how great her cat(Dinah) is good at killing animals. Why would Alice continue in bring Dinah into a conversations with the creatures of Wonderland if she knew that they feared and hated cats? Dinah is Alice’s several connections to the real world in Wonderland and that killing of animals was a sport during these time before animal rights becomes a reality.

So in the time period that Carroll writes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and his other works would have no effect on children during his lifetime because of the life style of people in England. Put the complaints come from people who lived during the times of new knowledge and ethics. Therefore, Carroll’s book is not inappropriate for children, but was written for children of a different time.