It will certainly go down in the history of children's literature as the fantasy that opened the gate for a barrage of other great children's classics. There is a gaping hole in the fabric of the fictional literary arena of the seventeenth century, in that there was no fiction available specifically intended for children to read.
Three influential personas that reinvented formal education principles
Essentially, children's literature was focused on learning and was, as author Jack Zipes wrote, "rooted in the conditions and demands of the adult world and seen primarily as a tool for shaping the young according to the needs of that world" (Egof£: Stubbs, Ashley and Sutton, 1996, p.327) Jean-Jacques Rousseau was another extremely influential educator and British writers seized upon his educational theories and incorporated them into the framework of their texts.
An introduction of imaeinative texts
In the early nineteenth century, the emphasis of children's literature was still didactic and educational. Derek Hudson elaborates on how Carroll's Alice books deviate from the Newberry genre of stories in that "there is nothing good in the treatment of her adventures, which, it is important to remember, were primarily intended to be told to and to give joy.to children p7).
A Split Personality?
The document I am referring to is 'Alice's Memoirs of Carrollian Days'. In both Donald Gray's (1992) and Lennon's (1947) editions, one can see how Alice Liddell's "memories" were selected to pose for Dodgson. It is true that Dodgson's nude photography of little girls was unprecedented, but biographers' skeptical treatment of his hobby can easily be traced back to the early Victorian times in which he lived.
Wonderland and the guest for identity
A Child Amongst adults
The Mock Tortoise and the Mosquito represent the cynics of this world, and characteristically of their nature they exhibit the voice of doom. When we examine their names, we see that they are labeled with very impersonal labels (such as White Rabbit and Gnat), as opposed to more common and recognizable (dare I suggest 'human') names.
The Quest for a Garden: A Framework to Alice's Adventures
I think the text confirms this idea, because Alice is horrified to discover that the peace and grandeur of the garden is not to be enjoyed. Little argues that Alice is a symbol of beauty and innocence that contrasts with the 'moral' ugliness of this country. The Red Queen informs her fairly early in the text that when she reaches eighth place, she will be Queen.
If life is a game, as Looking -Glass suggests, then Alice is a winner only in the sense that she finished the game. In the garden, she is confronted by the royal entourage, which is a thoroughly uncomfortable and intimidating introduction to the royal family (the queens of hearts bully and bully the three gardeners). She is treated in the same way as before, and her title is just that, an empty name.
Thus, Alice is still a pawn, at least in the eyes of her queens, and she has no authority over events.
Undermining received patterns of identity
So it is when Alice realizes that she cannot rationalize nonsensical worlds into easily explainable phenomena that she is free to return to her real world. She is in control of her emotions and asserts her will over the Wonderland creatures. She is no longer a passive but active participant in the events, even going so far as to verbally challenge the Queen.
The Cheshire cat makes Alice's low self-esteem worse when he insists she is angry. She is faced with the idea that she might disappear (perhaps forever) if he wakes up. In the first book, Alice's driving motivation is to explore her inner self, and she keeps thinking about who she is.
Her label defines who she is and outlines her role in the narrative (as the 'other') and in society - a child with little power.
Metamorphosis and Extinction: the Fate of Being Alice
In Looking-Glass-land, Alice does not undergo an introspective search for herself: in the sense that the story does not contain the question 'who am I?' The overbearing creatures she encounters tell her who she is. Alice is naive about her changing identity and also about the way she thinks about death. First there is the falling into the tunnel, quickly followed by the discovery of the bottle labeled 'drink me'. She convinces herself that it's okay to drink and that it shouldn't have serious consequences because if it's poisonous, it should be on the label.
The penultimate example of a near-death experience for Alice is when the cards in the courtroom attack her. We see in the excerpt that the Queen tries to comfort Alice as she tells her that she is lonely. In Wonderland, Alice does have 'moments' to think about such things, for example when she is trapped in the White Rabbit's house and ponders whether there is a connection between size and age.
Not only does she "survive" the hardships and uncertainties of Looking-Glass, but she emerges victorious because she is able to maintain a kind of distance from the "fatalistic" happenings in this world.
The Alice books: a socio-cultural commentary
Class issues
In her first adventure, Alice repeatedly demonstrates the privileged existence and expectations of the middle-class child. In Through the Looking-Glass, Carroll again picks up the 'snobbery of the middle class' as a theme, and he introduces this concept in the Garden of Living Flowers. More than that, we find the age-old idea that it is the moral responsibility of the upper class to lead the working masses, to set a good example of the 'moral' life.
The Duchess, who traditionally belongs to the nobility, also contradicts this idea of the 'morally superior upper class'. Being part of the nobility does not mean any form of moral superiority, as Carroll describes with his special kind of 'nobility'. Furthermore, through the example of the White Knight, Carroll raises the question of what a gentleman is.
Carroll imitates the speech patterns of Irish and working-class citizens to highlight them as an important sector of society.
Destabilizing the 'ordered' world
The trial of the Knave of Hearts is a circus, in which justice is irrelevant and facts count for nothing. It's not a letter after all: it's a set of verses.' "Are they in the prisoner's tape?" asked another of the jurors. No, they're not," said the White Rabbit, "and that's the strangest thing about it." (The jury all looked surprised.) "He must have imitated someone else's hand," said the King. The jury all cleared up again.) "Please, your Majesty," said the Knael, "I did not write it, and they cannot prove that I did: there is no name signed at the end." "If you didn't sign," said the King, that only made matters worse.
You must have meant something wicked, or you would have signed as an honest man.” There was a general clapping of hands at this: it was the first really clever thing the king had said that day. Carroll takes the structural elements of a trial and renders them meaningless, undermining formality and strict adherence to legal rules. The reason that this 'doesn't matter' is that the king has already decided that Podlovec is guilty.
Carroll shows the arbitrariness of the formal dinner and shows how the rituals are both pretentious and merely customary gesticulation that has no real meaning.
Regression and 'Progress'
They are able to stop whenever they want, and some drop out of the race. 'Race' almost suggests that life itself is a constant turning in circles and there is the idea of 'from dust to dust'. Dodo has to guess who won the race, because the race is not limited by the rules of competition. It's definitely putting a hierarchical system in play, as Alice is placed at the top of the chain as a benefactor.
Just as it was the God-given duty of parents and adults to shape children into mature adults, so England's taming of the 'savage' of the empire was also seen in the same light. Is this an attempt to link the idea of the origin of man of the first book to the prophetic cry of the White Queen that something is about to happen. Rail transport marked a transition from the pastoral lifestyle to the industrial, and was embraced as the way of the future.
Another aspect of this episode that interests me is that the other passengers are non-humans, with the exception of the 'gentleman' who is interestingly dressed in white paper.
Explicating Alice's 'curious' dreams
Thus, the primary world is the author's and the secondary world is that of his or her characters. There is no gradual phasing out of the dream and absorption of the story into her secondary world. When she is called to testify (about something she knows nothing about), she forcefully informs the court of her disdain and as such incurs the wrath of the Queen of Hearts.
The fact that Alice moves between the realms of 'real' and 'unreal' during her adventures certainly confirms Little's ideas about being able to categorize three 'imaginary spaces'. Alice is blissfully unaware of the future consequences for her and the inevitability of womanhood. He wakes up to a new dream when he lands at the bottom of the twmeI (Little, 1984).
In her interaction with the Tweedle brothers, we learn that Alice may be a figment of Red K.i.JJg's imagination.
Playing with conventional time
There are other hints in the first Alice book that lead one to conclude that lunar time is the modus operandi. He also argues that the illustration, in which the Cheshire Cat peers at Alice from its perch in the branches of a tree, is not random at all. In our country,' she notes, 'there is only one day at a time.' The Red Queen said, 'This is a poor way of doing things.
34;Carroll's portmanteaux are words and not gibberish, because they operate on the rule that all the coins in the poem will grow from the collapse of two familiar words into a new one. The purpose of the speakers is to exchange information; there must be fair play in the exchange (one takes one's designated turn, refrains from interrupting, etc.); there must be one. You have to learn not to make personal comments,” AJice said with some seriousness, “it's very rude.” The Hatter opened his eyes wide when he heard this; but he just said, 'Why does a raven look like a desk?' (1982, p. 55).
In the second stanza, she describes how an owl and a panther share a pie together, and the suggestion is that the owl becomes the next companion of its companion.
Bibliography
Primary Source
Secondary Sources
The Idea of the Gentleman in the Victorian NoveL London: George AIlen & Unwin Publishers Ltd.
