Queering Time in a Queer World: Deconstructing Chrononormativity in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”

     In Time Binds, Elizabeth Freeman emphasizes the effects of “chrononormativity, or the use of time to organize individual human bodies toward maximum productivity” (3). By and large, society operates upon the assumption that everyone follows the same timeline; “marriage, accumulation of health and wealth for the future, reproduction, childrearing, and death and its attendant rituals” all occur in roughly chronological order (4). If an individual’s life does not follow this “sequence of socioeconomically ‘productive’ moments,” they are deemed a societal outcast (5). But what happens when no one’s life follows a rigid timeline? What happens when time stands still, folds in upon itself, or collapses? What happens when the chrononormative individual steps into a strange, unfamiliar world where queer time is the norm? Such is the case in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Though Alice attempts to impose chrononormativity upon the unusual inhabitants of Wonderland, they resist her inflexibility and seriousness. In a world where everyone is mad, time goes mad, too.

     Alice’s story begins on the shore of a lake when she notices a peculiar White Rabbit with pink eyes. When the Rabbit begins talking to itself, Alice does not find it “so very remarkable” or “so very much out of the way” (Carroll 7-8). It is only after the Rabbit takes “a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket” that “Alice start[s] to her feet” (8). As critic Gillian Beer points out, “[i]t’s the watch that startles Alice;” she does not find “an animal that speaks” all that remarkable, but she is roused by “the accoutrements of adult business, busy-ness” (xxviii). Alice’s violent reaction to the watch implicitly suggests that she has already become aware of the ticking clock of chrononormativity. By the mid-nineteenth century, the watch had become a “token of human respectability and worth” (xxix). Parents, teachers, and bosses all gave watches as gifts to the young to help usher them from immaturity to adulthood. Becoming an adult meant regulating yourself within a “state-sanctioned” timeline that served “the nation’s economic interests” (Freeman 4-5). When Alice hears the Rabbit fret that it will be “late,” she undoubtedly recognizes the fears of a society determined to regulate time (8). As a child inching toward adolescence, she understands that she must soon regulate herself in the same way. However, she soon finds that Wonderland is not as chrononormative as the Rabbit would suggest. 

     As Alice falls down the rabbit-hole to Wonderland, she finds that she has “plenty of time…to look about her, and to wonder what [is] going to happen next” (8). When time operates on a nonindustrial clock, individuals have more time to reflect on their surroundings, contemplate their situation, and enjoy the peculiarities of life. Still, Alice cannot discard the ideas she internalized growing up in a chrononormative world. When in Wonderland, she attempts to impose chrononormativity upon the residents. At the Mad Hatter’s tea-party, for instance, Alice tells the Hatter that he has “a funny watch” (60). After the March Hare fiddles with the mechanisms of the Hatter’s timepiece, it only “tells the day of the month” rather than “what o’clock it is” (60). Alice cannot fathom such a queer way of telling time. “‘I don’t quite understand you,’” Alice, feeling “utterly puzzled,” says to the Hatter (60). In response, the Hatter tells Alice that she does not know “Time” as well as he does (61). Outside of the confines of an industrial society, the Hatter can recognize time as a construct. “‘For instance,” the Hatter says, “‘suppose it were nine o’clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you’d only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!” (61) As the Queen of Hearts realizes, the Hatter is capable of “murdering the time” (62). When one steps out of a chrononormative timeline, one can see time for what it is: something to be manipulated, rearranged, and disregarded at will. The Hatter can throw a tea-party whenever he wants because he moves to his own rhythm. Not regulated by an industrial or reproductive clock, the Hatter makes what he wants out of life. He represents the positive potentialities of queering time. He represents an alternative “to the sped-up and hyperregulated time of industry” (Freeman 7). He represents freedom masquerading as madness.

     Unfortunately for Alice, she must leave Wonderland and step back into the world of chrononormativity. As her sister realizes, Alice will one day become a “grown woman” surrounded by “little children” (109). Once she leaves childhood, Alice will be expected to adhere to a chrononormative, state-sanctioned timeline. First, she will marry and then have children to share her stories with. Her childhood fantasies will become nothing more than entertainment for the next generation. In Wonderland, however, these rules do not apply, and these destinies are not prewritten. Time moves according to the residents’ whims. The Dormouse sleeps when it wants. The Queen of Hearts lets her croquet match last indefinitely. The Duchess even rewrites astronomy so it agrees with her peculiar perspectives: “‘If everyone minded their own business…the world would go round a great deal faster than it does’” (52). Alice initially recoils at such an idea, explaining that “the earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis” (52). Any alteration to this clock would surely be fatal. However, after spending so much time in Wonderland, Alice is not so sure of herself anymore. “Twenty-four hours, I think; or is it twelve?” she asks herself (52). She, too, realizes that time can bend without breaking, shift without shattering, and queer without quibbling. The clock is merely a tool, and often a faulty one at that. The earth moves to its own rhythm, regardless of human measurements. By keeping its own time, it always maintains the right time. Perhaps humans can (and should) do the very same.

Works Cited

Beer, Gillian. “Alice in Time.” The Modern Language Review, vol. 106, no. 4, 2011, pp. xxvii–xxxviii. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5699/modelangrevi.106.4.xxvii. Accessed 2 Apr. 2025.

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Penguin Classics, 2015.

Freeman, Elizabeth. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Duke University Press, 2010.