Perhaps the most recognized cultural export from Lewis Carroll’s 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, the poem “Jabberwocky” first appears in a book Alice discovers during her initial encounter with the Red Queen and King in the looking-glass room. At first glance, “Jabberwocky” is complete nonsense, with about a quarter of its verbiage entirely products of Carroll’s mind (known as nonce words); Alice herself can hardly make sense of the poem, only able to deduce that “somebody killed something” (Carroll). However, she additionally notes that the poem “[fills her] head with ideas,” though she cannot fully articulate them (Carroll). It seems that “Jabberwocky” may be more familiar than it appears.
In short, “Jabberwocky” details the defeat of the monstrous Jabberwock at the hands of an unnamed protagonist and his heroic reception with the prize of the monster’s head. Carroll structures the tale of the Jabberwock as a ballad, consisting of seven quatrains. In a traditional ballad, the first and third lines of each quatrain would be written in iambic tetrameter, and the second and fourth lines would be written in iambic trimeter. With the exception of one line, Carroll follows iambic rhythms, but he alters the traditional ballad meter by placing only the fourth line in trimeter:
’Twas bri-llig, and the sli-thy toves
Did gyre and gim-ble in the wabe:
All mim-sy were the bor-o-goves,
And the mome raths out-grabe.
Even without knowledge of technical terminology for meters, a Victorian reader who might be familiar with more traditional ballads would subconsciously (if not consciously) pick up on this auditory resemblance. This similarity in form, coupled with the poem’s narrative structure—the hero’s journey, made more clear by Humpty Dumpty’s later clarification of some “nonsense terms”—establishes that Carroll is directly referencing and twisting the traditional form of the ballad poem.
Each stanza of “Jabberwocky” serves a distinct narrative purpose, allowing it to be easily unpacked and analyzed. Humpty Dumpty explains several of these nonce words to Alice within the first quatrain, allowing it to be somewhat translated: it was four o’clock in the afternoon, and the lithe toves were ambling about the grass near a sundial. The birds were miserable, and the lost pigs were bellowing. Carroll establishes the known, which allows the protagonist to journey away from it once they hear their call to action. This call materializes in the second quatrain, in which the protagonist’s father warns him of the dangers that lurk. He seems hesitant to face this threat in the third, ultimately loitering until the Jabberwock appears in the fourth. He slays the beast in the fifth, and returns home with his spoils in the sixth. The seventh quatrian fully repeats the first, confirming to the reader that normalcy has been restored.
Carroll closely follows the structure of the hero’s journey, a narrative that Alice would certainly be familiar with even as a child. Ultimately, though “Jabberwocky” speaks of creatures and locations unfamiliar, Carroll bridges the gap between Wonderland and our world with just enough difference to warp the familiar past recognition.
After Alice becomes a queen, she tries to enter through a doorway, but stops when she cannot figure out which door to enter based on her position. She remarks, “…and then I’ll ring the –the-which bell must I ring?’ she went on, very much puzzled by names. I’m not a visitor, and I’m not a servant. There ought to be one marked ‘Queen,’ you know-” (Carroll 207). This reminded me of the discussions of sign, signifier, and signified that we had in class. The words above of the door, “servant” and “visitor,” carry no real meaning and do not modify the door in any significant way; the door still opens and closes the same way no matter what it is labelled as. Much like Humpty Dumpty’s explanation of the Jabberwocky poem’s words, this scene enforces the subjective nature of words. For example, even though no part of the definition of “visitor” signifies that Alice should not be able to open the door, Alice assigns her own additional meaning to the word that prevents her entering.
On the flip side, however, Alice is creating new definitions of words in order to maintain a balance in the upside-down world. Alice’s roles as pawn and queen were well defined, the change from one to the other being defined by a physical signifier (the crown). Now that she has progressed from a pawn to the Queen, she does not want to be associated with a lower hierarchical level. In the quotation, “ought” is italicized, drawing attention to the importance of traditionally practiced social standards.
Thus, Alice’s apprehension at entering into through the door is based in paradox. She makes up new definitions of the words above the door in order to reinforce the very real hierarchies she lives in. Perhaps Carroll was attempting to poke fun at how rank and social status tied people to certain groups, professions, and neighborhoods in the real world. Although these distinctions are arbitrary, they still reflect the power of words and labels to limit people’s movement.
As an artist paints personhood and life into a painting, viewers, too, observe the life of the subject. Though, how do concerns of consent to view these figures given personhood place shape Victorian visual culture? Victorian obsession with wanting the power to look and observe at what cannot look back at them reveals a disconnect between the control of the artist and the lack thereof of the woman in The Fair Dreamer Illman Brothers painting.
The woman’s lack of power in the ability to look at her viewers relates to her physical positioning on the tree as her pose is passive with her sleeping, yet potentially sexually suggestive, inviting a dangerous unwanted gaze in her direction. The arm’s resting across the forehead, her clinging to an emerging branch from above, and the dangling of her dainty feet suggest the absurdity and staging of the painting as she is hanging onto a tree’s form that does not seem to want to hold onto her. The open posture resting on a tree alluding to resting on a bed warrants her form to a scrutinizing gaze riddled with sexual desires. The painting’s layout of a posed woman in an untamed natural world gives agency to the male viewers’ gaze as the woman cannot advocate for her own desires but instead fulfills the needs of the people she was painted for—audiences viewing her framed canvas existence. Her powerlessness in an unconscious state becomes over-romanticized with the woman’s beauty and title, The Fair Dreamer, as her Victorian lace, silk dress, hat, perfect side profile, and fair skin embed themselves into her dreamy, awe inspiring aesthetic Victorian appeal and distract from the problematic dynamic of watching an unconscious woman.
At first glance, the summer’s day depicting a woman’s restful moment from her boat ride placed in the lower right-hand corner is overwhelmingly beautiful. The curve of the large trunk, the wispy leaves, long weeds, water, and mountains set the pastoral landscape, though the woman’s materialism with her extravagant way of dress contrasts her relationship to nature. Her passive and sexually suggestive body rests against the tree as if it has melted into its curves and yet, her fabric juxtaposes those natural curves, making her body unnatural. Her way of dress and access to a secluded spot transported by a boat suggests her high social standing with wealth and female mobility. She is the epitome of Victorian consumption with her fabrics unnaturally set against a dark trunk, taking up space on the print. Her displacement in a natural world as an unnatural, consuming and materialist being is exoticized. Exiting an era of Victorian art that was once “placid, sexless, emphatically un-mystical domesticity that dominated British art” and instead entering a “…mixture of mysticism and ‘fleshliness’ (i.e., sensuousness”), especially in connection with female subjects,” understanding women as sexual entities in fantasy worlds proliferated this exoticism (Victorian People and Ideas, Altick 1973, 290). Just as viewers overpower the woman’s experience, the aestheticism of this fantasy overpowers the reality of women’s changing roles with the New Woman movement. This print begs the absurd question, why resist the social ills of a patriarchy when you can daydream in fantasy land?
Altick, Richard D. “The Nature of Art and Its Place in Society.” Victorian People and Ideas: A Companion for the Modern Reader of Victorian Literature, W.W. Norton, 1973.
In Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, critic Rosemary Jackson offers a generic analysis to help better understand fantasy. To Jackson, “[t]he fantastic exists in the hinterland between ‘real’ and ‘imaginary,’ shifting the relations between them through its indeterminacy” (35). As a genre of subversion, fantasy tests the bounds of reality. By “[p]resenting that which cannot be, but is, fantasy exposes a culture’s definitions of that which can be” (23). Fantasy primarily accomplishes its subversive goals by using motifs of invisibility, transformation, and, notably, non-signification. Frequently, fantasy foregrounds “the impossibility of naming [an] unnameable presence, [a] ‘thing’ which can be registered in the text only as absence and shadow” (39). This emphasis on non-signification easily applies to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871). According to Jackson, “Carroll’s Alice books…reveal his reliance upon portmanteau words and nonsense utterances as a shift towards language as signifying nothing, and the fantastic itself as such a language” (Jackson 40). Alice enters a world of “semiotic chaos, and her acquired language systems cease to be of any help” (141). In Wonderland and the Looking-Glass, “[t]he signifier is not secured by the weight of the signified: it begins to float free” (40). Though Jackson provides a thoughtful and thorough analysis of the novels, I would argue that she fails to account for a fundamental aspect of Carroll’s texts: John Tenniel’s illustrations.
As Jackson points out, fantasy highlights “problems of vision” (45). “In a culture which equates the ‘real’ with the ‘visible’ and gives the eye dominance over other sense organs,” she writes, “the un-real is that which is in-visible” (45). Yet in the Alice books, Carroll makes the unreal visible and the unspeakable seeable through John Tenniel’s illustrations. Carroll and Tenniel worked in close collaboration when designing the Alice illustrations. In fact, Tenniel might have even based his drawings on original sketches created by Carroll himself (Hancher 39). Historian Michael Hancher rightly argues that Tenniel’s illustrations “make up the other half of the text, and readers are wise to accept no substitutes” (5). Without both halves, the Alice books do not work. The illustrations do not serve as mere adornments to the plot; they actively contextualize and shape it.
At multiple points in the text, Carroll does not even attempt to describe the fantastical creatures he creates. Instead, he defers to Tenniel’s illustrations. When Alice encounters “a Gryphon lying fast asleep in the sun,” the narrator directly addresses the reader in a parenthetical aside: “If you don’t know what a Gryphon is, look at the picture” (80). Similarly, when Alice encounters the King of Hearts at a trial, she notices he wears “his crown over [his] wig” (94). Again, instead of describing this unusual attire, the narrator instructs the reader to “look at the frontispiece if you want to see how he did it” (94). The unspeakable—or at least the hard to explain—is made knowable through illustrations.
At other points in the text, Tenniel’s illustrations ground Carroll’s nonsense words by attaching them to concrete, visible objects. When Alice reads “Jabberwocky,” for instance, she remarks that the poem is “rather hard to understand” (132). As readers, we know that this is because the poem is nothing but nonsense; Carroll explicitly tells the reader in the preface that the terms in “Jabberwocky” are “new words” of his invention (115). Still, Tenniel provides the nonsensical word “Jabberwocky” a signified object to cling to. Before looking at Tenniel’s illustration, the reader only knows that the evil Jabberwocky has “jaws that bite,” “claws that catch,” “eyes of flame,” and some sort of “head” (130). After looking at Tenniel’s illustration, though, they can completely fill in the blanks left by Carroll’s sparse description. Tenniel takes significant artistic liberties, creating a monstrous creature with wings, antennae, whiskers, scales, and a long, twisting tail (131). The miniature warrior at the creature’s feet is undoubtedly the “beamish boy” of the poem, poised to strike the creature’s head off with his “vorpal sword” (130). Since the sword of Tenniel’s illustration looks like a typical knight’s weapon, the reader can assume that the nonsensical adjective “vorpal” means something along the lines of “sharp” or “dangerous” rather than “curved” or “tiny” (131). Similarly, the average trees in the background of the illustration indicate that a “Tumtum tree” is not a particularly remarkable plant (130). As far as the viewer can see, the Tumtum trees in the forest do not grow candy or sprout upside-down. According to Tenniel’s illustration, a Tumtum forest looks just like any other. Jackson argues that Carroll’s nonsense words “float free” without signified objects (40). However, she fails to recognize that Tenniel’s illustrations pull them back to the ground, limiting their potential meanings.
John Tenniel’s “Jabberwocky”
Tenniel’s illustrations also modify Carroll’s overall plot. When Alice meets the White King in Through the Looking-Glass, she encounters his two messengers, Haigha and Hatta. Nothing in the text indicates that either of these characters is familiar to Alice; she speaks to both of them as if she has never met them before. Tenniel’s illustrations might raise some alarms, however. Haigha is depicted as a rabbit, though nowhere in the text is he described as having any leporine features (196). Meanwhile, Hatta is depicted wearing an oversized hat with a price tag fastened to the side (198). For readers of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the illustrations would be immediately recognizable as the Hatter and the March Hare. Hatta looks identical to the Hatter, while Haigha shares obvious physical similarities to the March Hare—namely two large ears. There are some slight differences between Haigha and the March Hare. In the first novel, the March Hare seems to have a darker fur color and darker eyes than Haigha (59). Still, a rabbit near the Hatter unmistakably calls to mind the March Hare. Without Tenniel’s illustrations, it would never be clear that residents of Wonderland can pass into the Looking-Glass alongside Alice. Of course, Carroll’s text implies this crossover. The name “Hatta” clearly echoes the name “Hatter,” while the name “Haigha,” according to the White King, is meant to rhyme with “mayor,” meaning it would be pronounced “hare” (195). Still, Carroll never draws any connections explicitly. Tenniel’s illustrations, on the other hand, leave little room for doubt: the Hatter is certainly one of the White King’s messengers, while the March Hare is likely his other. Once again, Tenniel reduces the ambiguity of Carroll’s text with visual cues for the reader.
At the beginning of the first novel, Alice asks herself a salient question: “[W]hat is the use of a book…without pictures or conversations?” (7) Carroll’s fanciful tales and Tenniel’s beautiful illustrations seem to answer Alice directly, asserting that a book is nothing without its pictures. The marriage between Carroll’s words and Tenniel’s drawings simultaneously complements and complicates Jackson’s definition of fantasy. On the one hand, their partnership emphasizes “that which cannot be said, that which evades articulation [and] that which is represented as ‘untrue’ and ‘unreal’” (Jackson 40). When words fail, Carroll is forced to defer to Tenniel to fill in the blanks with images. As in Lovecraftian horror, some creatures and settings simply defy language. On the other hand, Carroll and Tenniel’s collaboration challenges the notion that fantasy must create a complete “disjunction between word and object” (38). Tenniel provides the reader some ground to stand on, even as it shifts and shakes beneath their feet. New words and new creatures are given life through seeing them. Tenniel clarifies that smoking caterpillars have hands (38), Mock Turtles have bovine heads (83), and talking flowers have tiny faces (134). Carroll’s nonsense is made less nonsensical through Tenniel’s refashioning of his text.
One could hypothetically read the Alice books without Tenniel’s illustrations, but they would miss a fundamental aspect of the text: vision. Throughout her journeys, “Alice learns by looking, as does the reader, the other eye-witness of both her books” (Hancher 246). Carroll’s text suggests that a mere gaze can refigure, refine, and redefine language as we know it. To put it more plainly, to see is to mean, and to mean is to see.
Works Cited
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Penguin Classics, 2015.
Hancher, Michael. The Tenniel Illustrations to the “Alice” Books, 2nd Edition. Ohio State University Press, 2019. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv30m1f0f. Accessed 7 Apr. 2025.
Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. Routledge, 2003. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=3d1a59e5-395f-3130-b732-52a5d20930b1. Accessed 3 Apr. 2025.
Our first day in the Trout Gallery, there was an engraving called Fannie’s Pets with a girl in the middle surrounded by birds, rabbits, frogs and fish. It made me think of theillustration in Alice‘s Adventures in Wonderland after the scene where Alice and all the animals do the caucus race(Carroll 19).I think this illustrationis showing Alice handing “round as prizes” the comfits she found in her pocket (Carroll 19); Fannie is also feeding the birds around her which is maybe why it made me think of Alice.Besides Fannie and the animals, there is also a creepy guy watching Fannie from the shadows behind her and a house in the background. Both these made me think of the idea of surveillance in Alice. I think there are two different levels of surveillance; the first is the Queen, and the second is some higher power (maybe the narrator?). The Queen is so quick to behead people that everyone is wary of her seeing/hearing them doing something “wrong”. The cards painting the roses red, for example (Carroll 63) or the scene where the Cheshire Cat asks Alice if she likes the Queen: “‘Not at all,’ said Alice: ‘she’s so extremely–‘ Just then she noticed that the Queen was close behind her, listening: so she went on ‘–likely to win…'” (Carroll 68). There also seems to be some magical god-like presence. At the beginning, when Alice is trying to get through the little door, but she’s too big, and then she leaves the key on the table when she shrinks if feels like something is trying to help her get through the door. She finds the “drink me” bottle “(‘which certainly was not here before,’ said Alice)” (Carroll 5).At some points, it feels like the narrator is the all-powerful being; they know what Alice is thinking at times, but it’s not exactly in third person, because sometimes the narrator addresses the audience, and sometimes they refer to themselves with “I” (“…fancy curtseying as you’re falling through the air! Do you think you could manage it?” [Carroll 3]). It’s hard to tell though if this second surveilling force exists or if it is just dream logic.
Fannie’s Pets (Illman Brothers)/Alice in Wonderland (p19)
“In the human colour-specturm, she took the place of the yellow ray” (Caird 105).
In The Yellow Drawing-Room, Mona Caird uses the color yellow to symbolize Vanora’s identity as the “New Woman” or a woman who is “intelligent, educated, emancipated, independent, and self-supporting,” directly opposite of the traditional expectations of the Victorian woman (Diniejko 2). Vanora’s choice of yellow as the paint color for the drawing room is significant for not only her character, but as a theme for the story as a whole, as reflected in the title. The color yellow is loud, bright, and radiant. I typically associate yellow with the sun, happiness, and light, but in this story, the color also transforms into a symbol of rebellion.
When the narrator first sees the drawing room, he describes it as “radiant, bold, unapologetic, unabashed” (Caird 104). These attributes quickly change from describing the room to describing Vanora herself. The narrator is deeply uncomfortable seeing a woman refuse to conform to his ideal of the “indistinguishable” woman. He claims that, “Women ought to take the place of the blue or violet rays” (Caird 105). Vanora is the most complete opposite of this. Her identity fuses with the color yellow. So much so that Caird writes, “…she took the place of the yellow ray,” directly opposing the narrators desires (Caird 105).
Yellow becomes more than a color, it’s a way for Vanora to define her identity as the New Woman and reject anyone trying to dim her light. This includes her own family, specifically her aunt Miss Thorne. But, most importantly, her decision to reject the narrator’s romantic advances, despite her reciprocated feelings for him, further proves this idea of her self-worth. Vanora says, “When you describe your doctrines, I seem to see the doors of a dark prison opening out of the sunshine; and strange to say, I feel no divine unerring instinct prompting me to walk in” (Caird 109). She refuses to let him tie her down or confine her. Instead, she takes control and embraces her sunshine and bold yellow rays. Through Vanora, the color yellow not only symbolizes joy and warmth, but also rebellion and freedom.
Caird, Mona. “The Yellow Drawing-Room.” Dreams, Visions and Realities: An Anthology of Short Stories by Turn-of-the-Century Women Writers, Continuum International Publishing, 2003.
Diniejko, Andrzej. “The New Woman Fiction.” The Victorian Web, 17 Dec. 2011, victorianweb.org/gender/diniejko1.html.
The Illman brothers distributed many images of ideal femininity to the reading public, such as “Health and Beauty.” A glowing, conventionalized woman pauses as she descends a veranda staircase. She is surrounded by classicized architectural elements like the doric column and classical male busts receding into trees and a dark skyline. Nonetheless, both she and her dress reflect light, if not seem to be the source of light (there seems to be some suggestion of an antithetical back lighting as well). Her dress style is closer to an earlier Regency fashion, indicating idealization of past femininity. Though she is supposed to be moving, the only movement in this engraving is the suggested wind moving her ribbons – her dress folds are perfectly arranged behind her, and she is balanced on her left toe with a perpetually bent knee. The image gives the illusion of her choice to leave the structure, but she does not seem compelled to continue walking – trancelike, she remains safe in the illuminated territory. She is a time-transcendent stand in for the title’s allegory – contained, suspended and submissive. She communicates that there is only one way to embody such desirable traits: a surrender of identity.
Though she is the paragon of classicized femininity, there is also the joint suggestion there is also a temptation to keep looking when women exercise individuality. In Mona Caird’s “The Yellow Drawing Room” the unnamed narrator toggles between viewing Clara and Vanora:
“My ideal woman would consider it almost indelicate to play with words in this fantastic fashion. I glanced at my grey-blue goddess. How comfortably certain one felt with her of enjoying conversational repose! Dear Clara! With what admirable good taste she carried out one’s cherished ideas: she fitted them like a glove. I completely, ardently approved of Clara. To her I rather ostentatiously devoted myself for the rest of the afternoon, but I was furtively watching her sister” (Caird 105).
The narrator condemns Vanora’s linguistic “play” by using the word as a diminutive, then claps back with the precise alliterative phrase “fantastic fashion” to show his outward disdain for the action. But it is also important to note that he calls it, “almost indelicate” – there is a certain amount of personality that is negotiable here. “My ideal woman” is also “my blue-grey goddess,” a possessive phrase which allows him to express “one’s” (his) “cherished ideas.” But then, in the next sentence, the narrator uses an Austenian anticlimax to describe his feelings toward this ideal woman: “I completely, ardently approved of Clara.” She is the textbook woman, she makes one “comfortably certain” (in which we can see man and wife in the dual consonant but different “c” sounds), she fits the model perfectly “like a glove.” And yet, she is only worthy of a “glance,” and a patronizing, “Dear Clara!” – his “blue-grey goddess,” like the color, bores him. Even when “devoted” to her, the narrator can gather all this information in that same “glance,” while he is “furtively watching” the more interesting subject: Vanora.
In both the print and story, there is a dissonance between performed and fugitive identity: the external identity is policed, accepted and honored, and there is no attempt to understand the personality behind the performance, and when a genuine personality is presented, it is shown back into the idealized box. Like the Illman Brother’s woman’s ribbons, a woman is supposed to be moved, not move for herself.
Works Cited:
Caird, Mona. “The Yellow Drawing Room.” Dreams, Visions and Realities: An Anthology of Short Stories by Turn-of-the-Century Women Writers, London, International Publishing, 2003, pp. 104-110.
Illman Brothers. “Health and Beauty.” The Trout Gallery Archives, https://collections.troutgallery.org/objects-1/infoquery=mfs%20all%20%22illman%22&sort=0&page=13.
“Vanora herself was simply radiant. She had a mass of glistening, golden hair, a colour full, varying, emotional, eyes like the sea (I lose my temper when people ask me to describe their colour). In figure she was robust, erect, pliant, firmly knit (Caird 104).
In this passage, the male narrator introduces Verona as the subject of his affections. The emphasis placed on her appearance through a continuous list of description and the interjection of narrator’s thoughts mid-sentence demonstrates how the narrator views Verona as something to project his opinion onto despite her strong sense of self and personality. His description’s alignment with the stereotypical victorian portrayal of the femme fatale allows the poem to display how insistent and overbearing the narrator’s sense of importance is along with how he undercuts himself in his actions.
First, his continuous use of commas through the list of “glistening, golden hair, a colour full,varying, emotional, eyes like the sea” gives the sentence many dramatic pauses. These pauses draw the reader’s attention and signal his perceived importance of what he is saying. Secondly, the emphasis on the words used give an abstract sense of her appearance through vague ideas signaling that Verona’s importance is defined by how she can serve the narrator. Through the images of “glistening, golden hair” and “eyes like the sea”, Verona becomes a beautiful object or sensation to chase after and there is little description of her as a person.
The narrator’s interjection of “(I lose my temper when people ask me to describe their colour)” despite later in the passage describing Verona as a yellow compared to the purple colour of other women signifies how much she stands out to him and “how she is not like other women” . It also gives the reader a sense that he believes he is bestowing a gift upon her that he does not do for many. The Verona from being defined as different from other women aligns with the femme fatale concept as she is placed into competition with other women on the basis of appearance against her will. This distinction is apparent in the line “In figure she was robust, erect, pliant, firmly knit” as the commas emphasize the importance of each word. The “strength” of her body differs from the conventional ideal woman as they are often described as dainty. Even though other women are adhering to the beauty standards set by the men, it is still not enough for the narrator as her lack of adherence becomes an alluring trait. This demonstrates the double standards as even if women match up to the standards forced upon them, this adherence can be used against them. They become “plain and boring” in the eyes of men even though they placed those impossible standards onto them.
The breakage in flow shows how destructive and hypocritical the contradiction is as the sentence itself can not mask the illogical claim in a seamless flow. The narrator claims to hate being asked to describe someone’s colour, but yet has no reservations doing it for someone who never asked him to. The construction of the passage shows how exactly the nameless male narrator’s claims contradict and interrupt themselves. With unnatural abrupt flow and excessive use of abstract adjectives, Caird demonstrates the contradiction of gender expectations enforced by men. By using a nameless male narrator, Caird demonstrates the impossible nature of these expectations and how prevalent they are. The narrator could be anybody and therefore present themselves in any area of daily life.
We can generally agree that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has some questionable scenes and even more mind-boggling dialogue. The characters are mad, Alice is lost, and Wonderland is one big psychedelic fever dream. But don’t let the oddness get to you. I’d like to propose that to an extent, there is form beneath the surface craziness. To be specific, I want to examine how we make sense of time through the setting, Alice’s internal thoughts, and the chapter titles.
One of these key scenes takes place at the beginning of the book where Lewis Carroll wastes no time (haha) giving the audience a taste of what’s to come later on. The chapter title “Down the rabbit-hole” already gives away the “where” of the setting yet readers don’t know “what” to expect. Our “what” ends up coming from Alice as she falls “Down, down, down.” (which is repeated twice in this chapter) and “very slowly” (Carroll 2). She has thoughts like “ ‘I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down’ ” and “ ‘I wonder if I shall right through the earth!’ “ (Carroll 3). So we get direction, speed, and an exaggerated sense of distance.
Something else I noticed that I thought was interesting was Alice’s thoughts. Yes, she’s a child and that much is clear through the inaccuracy and imagination of the centre of the earth, but there is rationality. Since readers are experiencing Wonderland through Alice, we also have to think how we would react if this was real life. If I fell down what was supposed to be a rabbit hole that somehow fit me with plenty of space to spare and I was falling for that long among other objects that shouldn’t be found in a rabbit hole, I would start to question where it was going too. And then it wouldn’t be crazy to entertain the possibility that it could go near the centre of the earth. Having said that, that’s another beauty of Alice’s thoughts. They’re entertaining and so provoking of the readers’ own thoughts that they make time fly by as suddenly as it does for Alice.
It is pretty much the point of Alice in Wonderland that Wonderland itself is a strange place with strange beings and strange rules. But what does that make Alice? Is she a regular human child as we see her, or is that only because of the perspective readers hold based on her introduction?
Readers are first introduced to our protagonist, Alice, in the “real world,” after all. Her real-world is something that is familiar to us: she is a child who is still in the process of undergoing education, who goes on walks, and has an older sister. Alice also thinks of herself in this way, by the rules of the real-world, consistently referring to herself as a “little girl.” The consistent establishment of Alice as a young girl, a child, are important in dictating how readers might treat her, or how they might react to Wonderland. A large part of why is that childhood carries a number of close associations, a notable one being innocence: the idea that children are purely innocent beings began to become quite popular among the Victorians, to the point where Lewis Carroll himself was fascinated by it. In fact, modern readers are still affected by this social idea that children are impressionable and innocent. Readers of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are sure to draw upon not only the association of childhood with imagination, but of childhood with innocence, characterizing Alice as an innocent. There are many parts of the book in which Alice demonstrates that trait of innocence. For instance, she often steps back to think about her beloved cat, Dinah, who she misses during her time in Wonderland. “ ‘I hope they’ll remember her saucer of milk at tea-time’ “, she reminisces as she falls down the rabbit-hole, concerned not for her own falling, but her cat (4). She even mentions Dinah to the company of birds and mice she stumbles upon, not thinking ahead to realize that this particular set of creatures might not want to hear about her cat, who might hunt them. When asked about her, Alice replies “eagerly, for she was always ready to talk about her pet” (22). This eagerness and purehearted love for Dinah is a prime example of Alice demonstrating a trait of innocence, where her care for her pet might end up overshadowing her logic.
Another fascination of the Victorians was with double-ness, manifesting in lookalikes or the duality of one mind (think, for example, of Jekyll and Hyde). My classmates actually have pointed out that some of this double-ness exists within Alice, naming one part of her her “child self,” and the other, her “adult self.” Her “child self” is curious and emotional, connected to that trait of innocence I outlined above. Her “child self” often cries when afraid or hurt: for instance, when she bumps her head against the roof of the rabbit-hole hall, she lays on her side and is brought to tears (9). However, my classmates have also noticed that Alice demonstrates some awareness of how adults might react to her childlike actions, and reminds herself of it in times where she breaks down. Upon crying, she lectures herself: “ ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ said Alice, ‘a great girl like you,’ (she might as well say this), ‘to go on crying in this way! ‘“ (9). Interestingly, Alice at this time is a lot taller than she typically would be in the real-world after magically growing in size, hence why she calls herself a “great girl” instead of a “little girl.” She attempts to correlate her height with adulthood and maturity in order to get her “child self” to stop crying.
These two aspects of Alice, her innocence and her double-ness, have led me to consider why the characters in Wonderland might react the way they do to her. One of the strangest traits of Wonderland, I’ve concluded, is that it has very little concept of adulthood or childhood, save for rare cases. There are a few characters, such as the baby that becomes a pig, who are determined solely by their age, but most others are ambiguous, assumed to be adults. Even so, the baby that becomes a pig is not treated with the assumed innocence of the child, and is beaten consistently for the misconception that he is purposefully disruptive. If Wonderland does have a consistent concept of maturity, it doesn’t apply presumed innocence of mind to children like the real-world might. This lack of difference in treatment applies to Alice, as well. Characters are often quite harsh to her, and make no effort to understand her, such as in the case of the caterpillar, who continuously interrogates her while she attempts to explain herself to the best of her ability. Still, the caterpillar denies her every word, always replying “contemptuously” (14). Readers such as myself might find this odd, considering we have the context that Alice is only a young girl in a stressful situation. We may even cite her trait of innocence as evidence of why she should be afforded pity or understanding. The characters in Wonderland, however, don’t seem to think this way about children, much like the caterpillar.
Another reason why Alice may be treated strangely in Wonderland, however, is her double-ness that I described earlier. Her “adult self” does not only appear when she scolds herself for crying, for instance. It also appears in scenes like the one with the baby pig, who she temporarily takes from its parent in order to save it from further beating, thus parentifying herself instead (47). Could it be that because of this duality, characters treat her as if she were an adult, or they ignore that she is a child? In fact, could this duality be a sort of “madness”? In a scene where the Cheshire Cat appears in a tree, he states that Alice “must be” mad, or she “wouldn’t have come here” (50). The cat might be referring to the fact that her “madness” is actually her childish curiosity, the very innocence spoken of earlier that led to her jumping down a deep and dangerous rabbit-hole. Or, possibly, the cat might be referring to something more complicated, such as this complication of character that Alice also possesses. Either way, Alice’s childhood as well as her complexity blatantly affect her navigation of Wonderland.
Works Cited:
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass. Bantam Books, 2006.
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