{"id":506,"date":"2015-03-22T20:06:11","date_gmt":"2015-03-22T20:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=506"},"modified":"2016-08-24T15:50:37","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T15:50:37","slug":"alices-sisters-odd-conclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2015\/03\/22\/alices-sisters-odd-conclusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice’s Sister’s Odd Conclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the conclusion of\u00a0Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em> we are given a glimpse into the mind of Alice’s\u00a0older sister. \u00a0In 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<\/em> eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago”.<\/p>\n

Upon first reading, I found this sentiment from Alice’s sister to be rather odd. \u00a0During our extensive study of\u00a0The Woman in White<\/em>, the two female characters attributed with childish characteristics, Laura and Anne, were seen and treated as mentally ill persons. \u00a0In their case, maintaining \u00a0“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\u00a0The Woman in White <\/em>and\u00a0Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. <\/em><\/p>\n

In\u00a0The Woman in White<\/em> it was very rare for a female character to be relaying the story to us. \u00a0Even with\u00a0Laura’s sister, Marian, acting as narrator it is difficult to\u00a0claim a truly feminine viewpoint there, as much of the story features descriptions of her as a masculine character. \u00a0The narrator in\u00a0Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, <\/em>however,\u00a0was always close to either Alice or her sister. \u00a0Taking these disparate viewpoints into consideration, it begins to seem as though\u00a0it is a masculine view that women who display childish tendencies\u00a0have something wrong with them, whereas the feminine view is that maintaining this childishness is a good thing.<\/p>\n

Childishness is often associated with innocence and naivet\u00e9. \u00a0The loss of innocence, then, can be seen as the loss of childishness.\u00a0 Indeed, in\u00a0The Woman in White,\u00a0<\/em>both Marian and Laura (before she is described as mentally ill) tried to shield one another from the realities\u00a0of adulthood. \u00a0Before Laura’s\u00a0marriage 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. \u00a0In both cases, the sisters are protecting the other from this\u00a0information so they can maintain the other’s\u00a0innocence and naivet\u00e9 on the matter; they are seeking to prevent the loss of innocence to keep some of their sibling’s\u00a0childishness in tact.<\/p>\n

In her conclusion of\u00a0Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em>, Alice’s sister is able to imagine and envision the characters from\u00a0Wonderland. \u00a0She acknowledges\u00a0reality, 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.<\/p>\n

What all of this suggests is that\u00a0women view childishness as something to protect and hold on to. \u00a0But, because men see it as a sign of mental illness, that childishness\u00a0must be exposed only\u00a0to other women (like in the case of Marian and Laura), or other children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the conclusion of\u00a0Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland we are given a glimpse into the mind of Alice’s\u00a0older sister. \u00a0In 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 … Continue reading Alice’s Sister’s Odd Conclusion<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2620,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111380,108029],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-360-victorian-sexualities","category-spring-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2620"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}