Lewis Carrolls Wonderland is a queer little universe where a not so ordinary girlis faced with the contradicting nature of the fantastic creatures who live there. AlicesAdventures in Wonderland is a childs struggle to survive in the condescending world ofadults. The conflict between child and adult gives direction to Alices adventures andcontrols all the outstanding features of the work- Alices character, her relationship withother characters, and the dialogue. Alice in Wonderland is on one hand so nonsensicalthat children sometimes feel ashamed to have been interested in anything so silly (Masslich107). The underlying message of Alices Adventures in Wonderland is a rejection ofadult authority. The character of Alice is not at all like what you would find in a typical childrensbook. The character of Alice herself is a bit puzzling, even to the modern child, becauseit does not fit a stereotype. How much more unusual she must have seemed to Victorianchildren, used to girl angels fated for death (in Dickens, Stowe, and others), or toimpossibly virtuous little ladies, or to naughty girls who eventually reform in response toheavy adult pressure... But Alice is neither naughty nor overly nice. Her curiosity leadsher into her initial adventure and most of the latter ones in the book... (Leach 119). AsAlice makes her way through Wonderland , she is faced with many pompous personalities that have their own ways of thinking and do not understand why Alice does not agree withtheir views. Alice takes into consideration what each character says. After becomingquite confused and disgruntled she learns that everyone in Wonderland is in fact mad. Once she has learned this she politely rejects all offers made by characters and tells themhow things are in her mind. More often than not, she is chastised for her opinions, but Howard 3soon learns to take the characters criticisms with stride. Likewise, a child tends to seeadults in the same light. The child know the way that things are in their own mind, butwhen they share their ideas with their parents or other adults they are often told that theirideas are childish and wrong just as Alice was. The reader can see that Alice understandsthat all of the creatures in Wonderland are wrong. Nevertheless there is in her world theunderlying joyful certainty that they are incompetent, absurd, and only a pack of cardsafter all (Hubbell 109). In Alices Adventures in Wonderland Carroll shows the ridiculous nature of adultsthrough his extraordinary characters. The amiable Cheshire Cat is the only character tohelp Alice in her struggle through Wonderland and admit that he is mad. Oh you canthelp that, were all mad here. Im mad. Youre mad (Carroll ). All other charactersare pointlessly didactic and feel the need to constantly snap at her, preach to her, confuseher, or ignore her. The Duchess, for instance, is inconsistent, unpleasant, pointless, and isof no help to Alice in her predicament. flamingoes and mustard both bite. And the moralof that is Birds of a feather flock together (Carroll ). Many children see adults,especially those that are of authority, as having the same nature as the Duchess. Thearbitrary , bloody Queen of Hearts is an ineffective, abysmally stupid person. ...sentencefirst - verdict afterwards (Carroll ). The bustling, spruce, worried Rabbit is at heart apoor, foolish, timid creature. Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late (Carroll )! Nomatter how hard Alice tries to talk to the Rabbit he always ignores her. Children oftenfeel as though the adults around them simply ignore them also. Throughout the bookCarroll sympathetically describes the childs feelings of frustration at the illogical way ofthe characters (adults). ...she had quite a long argument with the Lory, who at last turnedsulky, and would only say, `I am older than you, and must know better`... (Carroll ). Plain and simple the characters in Alices Adventures in Wonderland are not consistentand they are not fair, but they are in a word Dynamic: Howard 3creatures not merely of the authors imagination, but a permanent stimulus to imaginationin others (Boas 114). Carroll shows Alices frustration with the characters puzzling use oflanguage. This is a heightening of the effect which an adult life must have on a child likeAlice. And the moral of that is- `Be what you would seem to be` - or if you would like toput it more simply- ` Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appearto others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you hadbeen would have appeared to them to be otherwise (Carroll ). As a typical rule, adultstend to speak in a fancy language all their own not only to impress their colleagues butalso to inspire their children. It comes off, in the eyes of a child, as useless babbling thatshould be cut out all together. Alice simply chooses to put up with all the commotion puton by the characters around her so that she can get out of Wonderland. Alices Adventures in Wonderland is a parallel of a child lost in the confusingworld of adults. Alices dilemmas are the same as what most children go through eachday. Each character in Alices Adventures in Wonderland illistrates a diffrentcharactristic of an adult and his or her life. It is hard to really criticize Carrolls workbecause of the world that it is supposed to portray. There seems to be a feeling that realcriticism would involve psychoanalysis, and that the results would be so improper as todestroy the atmosphere of the book altogether (Empson 112). Bibliography Works Cited 1. Boas, Guy Alice Blackwoods Magazine (1937) 740-46. Rpt. in Nineteenth-CenturyLiterature Criticisms. Ed. Laurie Harris. Detroit: Gale Research, 1982. 2: 114. 2. Carroll, Lewis Alices Adventures in Wonderland London: J. M. Dent & Sons LTD,1865. 3. Empson, William Alice in Wonderland Some Versions of Pastoral (1974). 812-14 Rpt. in Nineteenth- Century Literature Criticisms. Ed. Laurie Harris. Detroit: GaleResearch, 1982. 2: 112- 14. 4. Harris, Laurie, ed. Nineteenth- Century Literature Criticisms. Detroit: Gale Research, 1982. 76 vols. 5. Hubbell, George Shelton The Sanity of Wonderland The Sewanee Review (1927) 387-98. Rpt. in Nineteenth- Century Literature Criticisms. Ed. Laurie Harris. Detroit: Gale Research, 1982. 2: 109. 6. Leach, Elsie Alice in Wonderland The Victorian Newsletter (1964) Rpt. in Nineteenth- Century Literature Criticisms. Ed. Laurie Harris. Detroit: GaleResearch, 1982. 2: 119. 7. Masslich, George B. A Book Within a Book The English Journal (1921) 119-29. Rpt. in Nineteenth- Century Literature Criticisms. Ed. Laurie Harris. Detroit: Gale Research, 1982. 2: 107. Free essays
Slonimsky, Alexandr. Title Unknown. 1922. Nineteenth Century Literature Criticism Volume Three. Ed. Laurie Lanzen Harris. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1983.
Throughout Alice in Wonderland, Alice interacts with things that are commonly seen in her Victorian world. Throught out the majority of both novel the inhabitants of Wonderland , who all have distinct personalities and the ability to communicate, dictate Alice's behavior. However, in the final scene of Wonderland Alice turns the table on the citizens of Wonderland. Rather than continuing to accept and comply with their behavior, she recognizes that they do not behave as they should in Victorian society. When she shouts to the army of cards that they are in fact nothing more than a mere pack of cards Alice immediately wakes up to find that she has returned from Wonderland. Once she treats the cards as she should in her own society, simply as objects, then Alice is allowed to return to her own world . She has learned the lesson that a girl in Victorian England must control the objects around her, rather than be controlled by them.
Barterian, Gerald R., and Denise Evans, eds. Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Vol. 62. Gale Research: Detroit, 1998. (original source: Gose, Elliot B. Jr. "The Monk" Imagination Indulged: The Irrational in the Nineteenth-Century Novel. McGill-Queen's University Press, 1972, pp. 27- 40.)
...Chrie, D., (ed.), Nineteenth Century Literature Criticism. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Company, 1986. Vo. 13, pp. 53-111.
Moulton, Charles Wells. Moulton's Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors through the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: Volume 1. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966. Print.
21 Jan. 2011. http://muse.jhu.edu/> http://muse.jh Lovell-Smith, Rose. " The Animals of Wonderland: Tenniel as Carroll's Reader." Criticism 45.4 (2003): 383-415. Project MUSE.
In addition to the Tweedles, the actions of the Cheshire Cat also misrepresented in the animated film. Alice first encounters the Cheshire Cat in the house of the Duchess, and later has a pleasant conversation with the cat in the forest as he directs her to the Mad Hatter’s tea party and says he will see her later if she attends the Queen’s Croquet Match (Carroll, 68, 72-74). The animated version of the Cheshire Cat is an extremely confusing and frustrating character to Alice, and later manipulates the Queen’s croquet match that gets Alice into a great deal of trouble. His actions and side are unpredictable, he gives no warning about his future decisions and gives misleading advice, whereas the few times after that Alice encounters the Cheshire Cat in the novel she greets him like an old friend (Disney; Carroll, 93).
Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland message to us is that there’s nothing wrong with living free with your own imagination or bend the rules. In my opinion, I believe imagination is important but using it too much can leave you detached from reality Alice in Wonderland is a departure from this. Literature is the province of imagination, and stories, in whatever disguise, are meditations on life. Nowadays stories that were made to instruct children on how to acquire happiness have now been replaced with stories that teach children how to be in control of their life by including diseases, physical anomalies, and death to assure them that there’s nothing to be afraid of.
...reenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams. The Norton anthology of English literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,Inc., 2006. 160.
Kermode, Frank, and Hollander, John. The Oxford Anthology of English Literature: 1800 to the Present. Oxford University Press: London, 1973.
Sigler, Carolyn. "Introduction." Alternative Alices: Visions and Revisions of Lewis Carroll's Alice Books: An Anthology. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997. xi-xxiii. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Marie C. Toft and Russel Whitaker. Vol. 139. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 10 Jan. 2014.
Written as a satire, Carroll’s portrayal of the Victorian Age would have fallen flat without the careful use of diction and tone, but it also would not have been effective without conflict, crisis, and resolution. Alice is first confronted with conflict when she sees the White Rabbit and must decide whether to follow him. Soon after she lands at the bottom of the rabbit hole, she must face the crisis of getting into the garden. A mini-resolution is achieved when she discovers she can changer her size, but, ultimately, this leads her to more conflict and more crisis. The actual resolution to the initial conflict does not happen until she wakes from her nap at the end of the
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland follows the story of young Alice trapped in the world of Wonderland after falling down through a rabbit-hole. The rabbit-hole which is filled with bookshelves, maps, and other objects foreshadows the set of rules, the ones Alice is normally accustomed to, will be defied in Wonderland. This conflict between her world and Wonderland becomes evident shortly after her arrival as evinced by chaos in “Pool of Tears” and Alice brings up the main theme of the book “was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I am not the same, the next question is who am I?” (Carroll 18). After Alice fails to resolve her identity crisis using her friends, Alice says “Who am I, then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I’ll come up: if not, I’ll stay down here til I’m somebody else” (Carroll 19). Hence in the beginning, Alice is showing her dependency on others to define her identity. Nevertheless when her name is called as a witness in chapter 12, Alice replies “HERE!” without any signs of hesitation (Carroll 103). Close examination of the plot in Alice in Wonderland reveals that experiential learning involving sizes leads Alice to think logically and rationally. Alice then attempts to explore Wonderland analytically and becomes more independent as the outcome. With these qualities, Alice resolves her identity crisis by recognizing Wonderland is nothing but a dream created by her mind.
Lewis Carroll’s works Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There are by many people considered nonsense books for children. Of course, they are, but they are also much more. Lewis Carroll had a great talent of intertwining nonsense and logic, and therefore creating sense within nonsense. If you look past the nonsense you can find a new meaning other than the one you found completing your third grade book report. You find that the books are full of references and parallel aspects of Victorian Society such as topics of etiquette, education, and prejudice, and through these topic’s is shown a child’s ability to survive in a hostile world. By this last statement I am referring to Cohen’s comment that “Wonderland” (published in1865) captures “the disappointments, fears, and bewilderment that all children encounter in their dealings with authoritarian, pompous and mystifying adults” which Wonderland seems to have no deficiency of.
Although the novel is notorious for its satire and parodies, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland main theme is the transition between childhood and adulthood. Moreover, Alice’s adventures illustrate the perplexing struggle between child and adult mentalities as she explores the curious world of development know as Wonderland. From the beginning in the hallway of doors, Alice stands at an awkward disposition. The hallway contains dozens of doors that are all locked. Alice’s pre-adolescent stage parallels with her position in the hallway. Alice’s position in the hallway represents that she is at a stage stuck between being a child and a young woman. She posses a small golden key to ...