{"id":657,"date":"2020-11-13T02:02:39","date_gmt":"2020-11-13T02:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/?p=657"},"modified":"2020-11-13T02:02:39","modified_gmt":"2020-11-13T02:02:39","slug":"were-all-mad-here-wonderland-as-adulthood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/2020\/11\/13\/were-all-mad-here-wonderland-as-adulthood\/","title":{"rendered":"We’re All Mad Here: Wonderland as Adulthood"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the preface to his book <\/span>Reading for the Plot<\/span><\/i>, Peter Brooks defines plot as \u201cthe design and intention of narrative, what shapes a story and gives it a certain direction or intent of meaning\u201d (Brooks xi). Applying this definition of plot to <\/span>Alice in Wonderland<\/span><\/i> leads to questions such as, what is the intention of this text, where does the plot go, and what specifically drives the story to go in a particular direction? A psychoanalytic approach could be taken as well, especially given the text\u2019s suggestion that all of Alice\u2019s adventures were a dream (Carroll 102). If Wonderland is simply a dream, what does that reveal about Alice\u2019s \u201cinternal energies and tensions, compulsions, resistances, and desires\u201d (Brooks xiv)?<\/span><\/p>\n

Brooks also claims that for nineteenth-century texts, \u201cplots were a viable and necessary way of organizing and interpreting the world, and that in working out and working through plots, as writers and readers, they were engaged in a prime, irreducible act of understanding how human life acquires meaning\u201d (Brooks xii). The plot of <\/span>Alice in Wonderland<\/span><\/i> is episodic, with each chapter consisting of a short, fairly self-contained story; this episodic nature helps the story move in a dreamlike way, as Alice moves from one adventure to another rather than tracing a complex plot from the beginning of the text to the end. The plot follows Alice as she wanders around Wonderland, trying to \u201corganize and interpret\u201d this confusing world, and the readers see her attempts to make sense of the confusion through her eyes. To take a psychoanalytic approach, the novel\u2019s plot seems to focus on Alice\u2019s place as a child trying to fit into and understand the adult world, which manifests itself as Wonderland in her dream. The text, and Alice\u2019s subconscious, are focused on trying to understand this world where the rules (if there are any) don\u2019t make sense. The conversation between Alice and the Cheshire Cat offers an insight into the way Alice might consider the adult world:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018But I don\u2019t want to go among mad people,\u2019 Alice remarked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Oh, you can\u2019t help that,\u2019 said the Cat: \u2018we\u2019re all mad here. I\u2019m mad. You\u2019re mad.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018How do you know I\u2019m mad?\u2019 said Alice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018You must be,\u2019 said the Cat, \u2018or you wouldn\u2019t have come here.\u2019\u201d (Carroll 50)<\/span><\/p>\n

This bit of dialogue reveals both what Alice thinks of adults and her own anxieties about growing up. She doesn\u2019t want to \u201cgo among mad people,\u201d but nevertheless she finds herself among them, and therefore she must be mad too. Alice\u2019s anxieties about her age and size can be found all throughout the text; another place where they\u2019re particularly evident is when she finds herself stuck inside the White Rabbit\u2019s house, and debates with herself whether childhood or adulthood is better:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018But then,\u2019 thought Alice, \u2018shall I <\/span>never<\/span><\/i> get any older than I am now? That\u2019ll be a comfort, one way – never to be an old woman – but then – always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn\u2019t like <\/span>that<\/span><\/i>!\u2019\u201d (Carroll 26)<\/span><\/p>\n

In this passage, Alice conflates \u201cgrowing up\u201d with \u201cgrowing older\u201d and \u201cgrowing in size.\u201d I would argue that the growing and shrinking she experiences throughout the text can be read as her struggling to balance between adulthood and childhood; this struggle is emphasized time and time again in the novel, through the way she tries to make sense of Wonderland\/the adult world and its inhabitants. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Carroll, Lewis.\u00a0Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass.<\/em> Bantam Dell, 2006.<\/p>\n

Brooks, Peter.\u00a0Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative.<\/em> Harvard University Press, 1984.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the preface to his book Reading for the Plot, Peter Brooks defines plot as \u201cthe design and intention of narrative, what shapes a story and gives it a certain direction or intent of meaning\u201d (Brooks xi). Applying this definition of plot to Alice in Wonderland leads to questions such as, what is the intention … Continue reading We’re All Mad Here: Wonderland as Adulthood<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4300,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138877],"tags":[111412,111413,138888,138887],"class_list":["post-657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2020","tag-alice-in-wonderland","tag-lewis-carroll","tag-peter-brooks","tag-plot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4300"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}