At the conclusion of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland we are given a glimpse into the mind of Alice’s older sister. In the final paragraph, she imagines Alice as an adult who maintains, “the simple and loving heart of her childhood”, and who “would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago”.
Upon first reading, I found this sentiment from Alice’s sister to be rather odd. During our extensive study of The Woman in White, the two female characters attributed with childish characteristics, Laura and Anne, were seen and treated as mentally ill persons. In their case, maintaining “the simple and loving hearts” of their childhoods was a sign of something being wrong with them, and not a trait to be commended. However, I soon realized that there is a large difference in the medium through which childishness is interpreted in The Woman in White and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
In The Woman in White it was very rare for a female character to be relaying the story to us. Even with Laura’s sister, Marian, acting as narrator it is difficult to claim a truly feminine viewpoint there, as much of the story features descriptions of her as a masculine character. The narrator in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, however, was always close to either Alice or her sister. Taking these disparate viewpoints into consideration, it begins to seem as though it is a masculine view that women who display childish tendencies have something wrong with them, whereas the feminine view is that maintaining this childishness is a good thing.
Childishness is often associated with innocence and naiveté. The loss of innocence, then, can be seen as the loss of childishness. Indeed, in The Woman in White, both Marian and Laura (before she is described as mentally ill) tried to shield one another from the realities of adulthood. Before Laura’s marriage to Sir Percival, Marian lamented the need to explain to Laura what marriage would entail, and after her marriage, Laura refused to tell Marian what her marriage was like. In both cases, the sisters are protecting the other from this information so they can maintain the other’s innocence and naiveté on the matter; they are seeking to prevent the loss of innocence to keep some of their sibling’s childishness in tact.
In her conclusion of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice’s sister is able to imagine and envision the characters from Wonderland. She acknowledges reality, and yet delights in her ability to access these childish fantasies, wishing for her sister to be able to do the same when she is an adult.
What all of this suggests is that women view childishness as something to protect and hold on to. But, because men see it as a sign of mental illness, that childishness must be exposed only to other women (like in the case of Marian and Laura), or other children.
I find it interesting that Alice’s sister imagines her maintaining this childishness alone. In the final scene of “Goblin Market,” Lizzie and Laura together tell their children about the dangers of goblin men. Likewise, at the end of The Woman in White, Marian and Laura plan to raise Laura’s children together. However, at the end of Wonderland, Alice’s sister images Alice giving this advice to children without a sisterly companion. I wonder if, although the married life is supposedly ideal, this is an attempt on the part of Alice’s sister to distance the prospect of her own adulthood and maternity?