{"id":553,"date":"2015-03-23T13:12:41","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T13:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=553"},"modified":"2016-08-24T15:50:37","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T15:50:37","slug":"colonial-imagery-in-alices-adventures-in-wonderland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2015\/03\/23\/colonial-imagery-in-alices-adventures-in-wonderland\/","title":{"rendered":"Colonial imagery in Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em> by Lewis Carroll is a story about a girl who dreams about a fantastic world full of nonsense and adventures. However, a deeper analysis of this timeless children\u2019s book may reveal several implicit references to colonialism. Alice<\/em> was in fact first published in 1865 and the 19th<\/sup> century was characterized by the colonial expansion of the British Empire especially towards unexplored and exotic places such as Africa and Asia.<\/p>\n

Since the beginning of the novel, Alice is depicted as an invasive intruder who seems not to accept and adapt to this new and foreign world, but who, on the contrary, tries to change and dominate it. The passage when Alice kicks the lizard out of the chimney exemplifies her imperious attitude, and it can be seen as an obvious metaphor of the British conquerors trying to acquire a foreign land by either remove or subjugate its native people.\u00a0However, the passage that most exemplifies this colonial attitude is the tea party. The fact that Alice, despite not being invited, decides anyway to join the unusual party is a clear reference to the domineering attitude of British people who decided to conquer foreign lands in Africa and India with no regard to the interests of the people who inhabited them. The unwillingness of local people to have foreigners and colonizers on their territory is therefore expressed through the words of the March Hare\u2019s that states \u201cit wasn\u2019t very civil of you to sit down without being invited\u201d (53), also conveying Carroll\u2019s opinion who seems to find imperialism uncivil.<\/p>\n

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This cruel attitude of British colonizers towards local people is also explicitly evoked in Alexander L. Dick\u2019s painting A scene in India<\/em>. The tiger, a wild and exotic animal, that the conquerors are trying to kill symbolizes here the native people that should be civilized, subdued and deprived of their land. As in Alice<\/em>, there is no attempt here to understand or adapt to the new world, but just a strong thirst of conquest. Alice is therefore similarly seen as a colonizer rather than a visitor in Wonderland, as during her journey she acts like she owns the place and seems not to care about the people who live in it : \u201cWho cares for you<\/em>?… You\u2019re nothing but a pack of cards!\u201d (102).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is a story about a girl who dreams about a fantastic world full of nonsense and adventures. However, a deeper analysis of this timeless children\u2019s book may reveal several implicit references to colonialism. Alice was in fact first published in 1865 and the 19th century was characterized by … Continue reading Colonial imagery in Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2618,"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-553","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\/553","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\/2618"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}