{"id":552,"date":"2015-03-23T12:52:21","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T12:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=552"},"modified":"2016-08-24T15:50:37","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T15:50:37","slug":"expectations-and-the-other-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2015\/03\/23\/expectations-and-the-other-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Expectations and the Other Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Alice in Wonderland<\/i>, Lewis Carroll brilliantly defies all expectations. The form alone is very different from the standard Victorian novel and its content is even more foreign.\u00a0 In fact, to Alice and her readers, everything is foreign in Wonderland.\u00a0 Language is contorted, reason and logic appear senseless, and no previously learned schemas or scripts can be applied to aid our understanding of Wonderland and its inner-workings.\u00a0 This is demonstrated repeatedly throughout the book.<\/p>\n

For one, animals do not talk or wear clothing in reality.\u00a0 But in Wonderland\u2019s reality, they do.\u00a0 When Alice first unfurls this nuance in meeting the Rabbit, \u201cit all seem[s] quite natural\u201d that the Rabbit runs around talking to itself, but when she thinks about it afterwards \u201cit occur[s] to her that she ought to have wondered at this\u201d (2).\u00a0 Here the lines of expectations and reality are blurred.\u00a0 Alice is a smart girl who has a strong sense of how the world works, but at this particular moment she allows a foreign reality (this Other reality in which animals audibly talk to themselves) to supersede any expectations or preconceived notions of the facts of her existence.<\/p>\n

Once Alice is deeper into Wonderland, she defines her expectations and reality much more clearly. For example, when Alice enters the Duchess\u2019s house she is appalled that the cook would throw pots and pans at the Duchess and her baby, but \u201cthe Duchess took no notice of them even when they hit her\u201d\u00a0 (48).\u00a0 In Alice\u2019s preconceived schema for what a home should look like, throwing pots and pans certainly does not jive.\u00a0 But the scene does not phase the Duchess\u2014 she does not flinch or consider herself a victim of domestic violence as Alice assumes.\u00a0 There is an obvious tension between Alice\u2019s expectations of reality and the Other reality within the Duchess\u2019s home.<\/p>\n

I call Wonderland the Other reality because it exists in the book as a reality that exists alongside Alice\u2019s perception of reality while also opposing it.\u00a0 The Other reality is an unexpected reality whose credibility Alice chooses to accept or deny.<\/p>\n

We can explore another example of the Other reality in examining Jean-Paul Jamin’s engraving, “Tragedy of the Stone Age.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Upon first glance, this painting seems not unordinary, much like how the Rabbit did not appear unordinary to Alice. \u00a0After some time though, the Other reality reveals itself more clearly. \u00a0The first thing I see when I look at this painting is that the lion has killed a woman– not a terribly common situation, but it is not surprising either– which would explain the man’s anguish and grief. \u00a0But then I notice that the man is a hunter, too– a predator of does. \u00a0Knowing this, the man’s expression shifts from one of grief to one of aggression. And now a parallel reality is unveiled; \u00a0the Other reality here is the reality in which man and lion are peers of lust, power, and strength and the woman and the doe are their victims. \u00a0But it is up to the viewers to consider their own expectations and realities, like Alice, in order to actively accept or deny this Other reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll brilliantly defies all expectations. The form alone is very different from the standard Victorian novel and its content is even more foreign.\u00a0 In fact, to Alice and her readers, everything is foreign in Wonderland.\u00a0 Language is contorted, reason and logic appear senseless, and no previously learned schemas or scripts … Continue reading Expectations and the Other Reality<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2035,"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-552","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\/552","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\/2035"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}