{"id":670,"date":"2020-11-14T20:35:10","date_gmt":"2020-11-14T20:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/?p=670"},"modified":"2020-11-14T20:35:10","modified_gmt":"2020-11-14T20:35:10","slug":"alice-in-wonderland-post-moonstone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/2020\/11\/14\/alice-in-wonderland-post-moonstone\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice in Wonderland post-Moonstone"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Moonstone<\/span><\/i> is the most explicitly colonial text that we\u2019ve read this semester\u2014the colonization of India permeates the text from beginning to end, involving international places and people who exist before <\/span>as well as during the novel.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0The intergenerational efforts of English colo<\/span>nialization set up the plot of the novel, and racialized appearances and objects move and circle around the characters.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Alice in Wonderland<\/span><\/i>\u00a0is also engaged with themes of colonialism, and (like\u00a0<\/span>The Moonstone<\/span><\/i>) leaves us with questions about where the text stands.\u00a0<\/span>The Moonstone le<\/span>ads to\u00a0<\/span>deception and chaos, but it also brings to the fore a series of declarations and relationships that would otherwise have been lost under the smothering influence of Victorian propriety. Once the\u00a0<\/span>restoration of Englishness has been achieved\u00a0<\/span>(<\/span>with the addition of constructive\u00a0<\/span>consequences<\/span>)\u00a0<\/span>the Moonstone and all it brought with it can be restored to the Indian temple\u00a0<\/span>Herncastle<\/span>\u00a0stole it from.\u00a0<\/span>In<\/span>\u00a0Alice in Wonderland<\/span><\/i>, once the experience of the Other has been sufficiently infiltrated by English (linguistic<\/span>ally<\/span>\u00a0and national<\/span>ly<\/span>)\u00a0<\/span>order<\/span>, it falls apart and Alice can return home.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I<\/span>n<\/span>\u00a0Alice in Wonderland<\/span><\/i>, Alice is lost in her own pseudo-colonialist explorations of a strange land, introducing the elements of the land into herself by the continuing process of eating, imbibing the\u00a0<\/span>impossibility of a Wonderland that she would never have encountered sitting \u201con the bank\u201d of England (Carroll\u00a0<\/span>1). Once she leaves the bank (in a colonialist sense, sailing off) she attempts to enforce English rules, social codes, and insti<\/span>tutions on the inhabitants of Wonderland; interestingly, she is unsuccessful in her attempts. Herein lies the ambiguity\u2014having a young child act out the format of a colonizing mission, finding pieces of a foreign land to keep for herself while also introducing it to the \u2018civilizing\u2019 influence of\u00a0<\/span>England seems to set us up for a<\/span>n\u00a0<\/span>endorsement of a colonial tradition<\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0However, in the final moments of the text that solidity is upended by the return to England (Alice) or to India (the Moonstone).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The presence of a previous generation<\/span>\u00a0(the older sister who knows Wonderland but has retired to the\u00a0<\/span>roots of the English tree<\/span>) that knows but is now relatively distant from \u2018Wonderland\u2019<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>mirrors the presences we were introduced to in\u00a0<\/span>The Moonstone<\/span><\/i>. There we knew<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>of a generation\u2014John\u00a0<\/span>Herncastle<\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>the unnamed cousin<\/span>\u2014simultaneously\u00a0<\/span>involved with colonization\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0<\/span>removed from it, their story having taken place before the narrative of the present.\u00a0<\/span>The Moonstone<\/span><\/i>\u00a0explains why it\u2019s necessary to have the sister present in\u00a0<\/span>Alice in Wonderland<\/span><\/i>\u2014she is the stand-in for an English tradition that Ali<\/span>ce (the present generation) will have to engage.<\/span>\u00a0By bringing Alice to the bank, she fulfills the same role that\u00a0<\/span>Herncastle<\/span>\u00a0does in\u00a0<\/span>The Moonstone<\/span><\/i>: facilitating the events of the novel by providing the means of the primary characters\u00a0<\/span>engag<\/span>ment<\/span>\u00a0with colonialism.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Without this understanding, the sister\u2019s presence, particularly at the end of the novel, feels sudden and unnecessary. With it, we can see<\/span>\u00a0the same complexity that\u00a0<\/span>The Moonstone<\/span><\/i>\u00a0captured.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Follow this link to watch Disney’s opening scene of Alice in Wonderland: in the first 30 seconds, note the emphasis of the open water and boat waiting on the bank and Alice’s sister physically sitting on the roots of the tree while she reads an English history textbook.<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Q_7huA0kcg8<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Moonstone is the most explicitly colonial text that we\u2019ve read this semester\u2014the colonization of India permeates the text from beginning to end, involving international places and people who exist before as well as during the novel.\u00a0\u00a0The intergenerational efforts of English colonialization set up the plot of the novel, and racialized appearances and objects move … Continue reading Alice in Wonderland post-Moonstone<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3323,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138877],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2020"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670","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\/3323"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}