I almost hate myself for this title, but it’s too relevant to this topic. Just look up the definition of “Daddy” on Urban Dictionary, and prepare to be grossed out (Depending on your kinks, I guess, but incest terminology is not one of mine.)
One of the most fascinating things about our culture today is the idea that older men are the gatekeepers of female sexuality. In our country today, our sex education system is totally screwed/skewed towards teaching “abstinence” and reinforced with things like “purity pledges” or “purity balls”. Similar to debutante balls in that girls are making their debut as women, instead of age-appropriate dates, their fathers sign a pledge to keep their daughters pure. If you look at the pictures, these girls look like child brides wedding their fathers. Their fathers are ultimately guiding them into the realm of ~womanhood~, and get to choose when they do this.
In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice explores concepts of womanhood in a safe, dream world of Lewis Carroll’s making. He allows her to test the waters of femininity, so to speak, by caring for pig-babies, having tea parties, and changing sizes quickly. In the sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, Alice’s concept of the home is literally flipped, and she makes her way across a chessboard with the hope of becoming a “queen” at the end. Along the way, she learns about the backward nature of adulthood, and as a pawn, she can’t see the rest of the chessboard. It’s a metaphor, perhaps, that children cannot see the “big picture” of life – maybe a euphemism? Children don’t know the “birds and the bees” – or the way adults procreate? They don’t quite have knowledge of mortality or puberty, perhaps.
So just as Alice gets close to the end of the chessboard, she is rescued by a white knight. An older man, with kind eyes who helps/allows Alice to cross the river (menstruation reference?) to become a queen (an arguably less veiled metaphor for womanhood). He tells her that she will transform when she crosses the river. He believes that she’s sad, and therefore tries to cheer her up with a rhyme before saying goodbye. Is this chapter, this description about the White Knight seems like Lewis Carroll’s way of saying goodbye to Alice as she enters womanhood. It seems like he’s giving her permission to become an adult and to leave him (and possibly his affection, as he might not be as attracted to adult Alice as curious, childlike-Alice). In this way, he’s the gatekeeper of her sexuality. Only after he gives her permission and guidance can she leave him to “cross the river”.
And at the end of the next chapter, Alice is growing and shaking and yelling at the people around her until she wakes up two chapters later. A metaphor for sexual release perhaps, now that she’s received permission from her father figure?? It sure has another context when thinking about Lewis Carroll’s fascination with her.
I completely agree with the creepiness of this entire story line, especially the scene with the knight that you point out. Even leaving out Carroll’s real life relationships to children, the idea that a man must introduce a woman to her sexuality and allow her to explore it is troubling. The fact that Carroll, a man, creates the framework for Alice to explore her identity seems like an affirmation of male domination, rather than a statement of support for women’s empowerment.
The idea throughout the work of owning dreams, and whether this story is Alice’s or the king’s, relates to this point, and I would be interested in exploring whether women can be empowered in narratives created by men.
Image from The Atlantic. (http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/hua_hsu/rothman_mansplain_post.png)
Okay, I just have to say that as someone who came from a high school with excellent sex ed, your video was totally mind blowing and I could probably just write an entire comment about how perfect it was. I really like a lot of the points you made in regards to the Through the Looking Glass. I think that they could have added a lot of depth to my own post. I think the connection you made between the White Knight and the “purity balls”. I think you were really smart in how you connected the books to modern day.
Not going to lie, I clicked on this article because the title seemed interesting and, like Alice, my curiosity got the best of me. I loved how you compared Alice’s being sent off by the white knight as his sending her off into womanhood/sexual fertility. I also think it’s interesting to point out how this interaction with the knight was a sort of sexual awakening for Alice, whom afterward claims that “of all the strange things that [she] saw in her journey Through The Looking-Glass, [the knight] was the one that she always remembered most clearly”(Carroll 205). The fact that it was, indeed, an older man who sparked this sexual awakening in Alice is without a doubt, pretty creepy and possibly ties into Carroll’s own obsession with the real-life Alice.