{"id":550,"date":"2015-03-23T06:21:35","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T06:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=550"},"modified":"2016-08-24T15:50:37","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T15:50:37","slug":"alices-adventures-in-puberty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2015\/03\/23\/alices-adventures-in-puberty\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice’s Adventures in Puberty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alice\u2019s journey in Lewis Carroll\u2019s Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em> can be interpreted as a metaphor for her transition from child to adult. This would then suggest that Wonderland becomes a place for Alice to go through puberty, and the sister\u2019s narrative at the end of the novel suggests that she has become an adult.<\/p>\n

Alice\u2019s realization that Wonderland is \u201cnonsense\u201d suggests that she has grown out of its wonders: \u2018\u201dNo, No!\u201d said the Queen. \u201cSentence first \u2013 verdict afterwards.\u201d \u201cStuff and nonsense!\u201d said Alice loudly. \u201cThe idea of having the sentence first!\u201d (102). In comparison to many earlier events in the novel, when Alice for the most part seemed perplexed or fascinated by Wonderland\u2019s creatures and events, Alice here takes a firm stance on her beliefs of what is right and wrong. This suggests that she no longer is susceptible to possibly accept the \u201cnonsense\u201d of Wonderland, and goes by real life\u2019s \u201crules\u201d that she sentence should follow the verdict.<\/p>\n

Alice also feels superior to the cards at the end of the novel: \u2018\u201cWho cares for you<\/em>?\u201d said Alice (she had grown to her full size by this time). \u201cYou\u2019re nothing but a pack of cards!\u201d\u2019 (102). Her realization that they are \u201cnothing but\u2026cards\u201d further suggests that she has lost Wonderland\u2019s sense of fantasy as reality, and is \u201csuperior\u201d to childhood\u2019s ideas. Additionally, the note that she has grown to her full size after multiple changes to her body in the novel, and her waking up right after growing to her right size (102), further suggests that Wonderland is a place for childhood, which she no longer belongs to. The multiple changes to her body in the novel can symbolize her transition through puberty, as she does not understand all the changes that she experiences, and the end of those changes implies that she has now grown to become an adult.<\/p>\n

The sister\u2019s narrative about how Alice will one day tell her children of Wonderland further implies that Wonderland is only accessible to children: \u201c\u2026she pictured to herself how this same little sisters of hers would\u2026be herself a grown woman\u2026 and\u2026gather 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 long ago\u201d (104). The sister\u2019s idea of how Alice will one day gather her children is reminiscent of how Alice already told her sister her dream, which implies that she already is \u201ca grown woman.\u201d Alice\u2019s leaving Wonderland, telling her sister her tale, and then running off thinking \u201cwhat a wonderful dream it had been,\u201d seems then to symbolize her leaving behind her childhood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alice\u2019s journey in Lewis Carroll\u2019s Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland can be interpreted as a metaphor for her transition from child to adult. This would then suggest that Wonderland becomes a place for Alice to go through puberty, and the sister\u2019s narrative at the end of the novel suggests that she has become an adult. Alice\u2019s … Continue reading Alice’s Adventures in Puberty<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2593,"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-550","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\/550","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\/2593"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}