The first encounter that Alice has in Wonderland is with a table, a key, and some doors. She first tries all of the doors but to her dismay, only the smallest of the doors opens, one that she could never fit through. Turning back to the table she finds a bottle of some strange substance that was not there before with the little label, “DRINK ME”. Now whereas you or I would not trust a mysterious bottle that has appeared out of nowhere and has god knows what in it, Alice trusts it for a particularly peculiar reason.
“around the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words “DRINK ME,” beautifully printed on it in large letters.
It was all very well to say “Drink me,” but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. “No, I’ll look first,” she said, “and see whether it’s marked ‘poison’ or not”; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked “poison,” it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.” (Carrol PG)
The first thing to notice here is that the hand in which the words “DRINK ME” are written in is described as beautiful and in large letters. This relates to the debunked study of “graphology” which claimed that from a person’s writing, you could surmise their character. This is untrue. What you can tell from a person’s handwriting is their level of instruction and education, which correlates with their class. Alice has already been taught the classist morality of graphology, even if she doesn’t understand it herself.
The second important thing is the way that the stories that Alice has read influence her. All of the examples shown are good lessons: “don’t touch pokers,” “be careful with knives,” and “if something says poison on it, then don’t drink it.” The problem is how they’re framed: “They didn’t follow the rules that their friends told them, so they got hurt.” This creates a foundation for a Panopticonian self policing of actions. What happens when a slightly older Alice’s friends say that queer people go to hell? She has been primed to believe, and it doesn’t even keep her safe. She lacks the critical thinking skills that save you from drinking weird fluids.
This is not to say that you should run to touch a fire poker, but rather that we must recognize that the system of British indoctrination starts young and that it can leave people with bigoted and wrong beliefs.
Clawing at the Yellow Wallpaper,
Gev, the Scaled Scorch