{"id":622,"date":"2015-04-09T21:04:37","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T21:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=622"},"modified":"2016-08-24T15:50:36","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T15:50:36","slug":"the-white-mans-depiction-of-the-exotic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2015\/04\/09\/the-white-mans-depiction-of-the-exotic\/","title":{"rendered":"The White Man’s Depiction of the Exotic"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As I read Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em>, I was strongly reminded of many early travel narratives that I have previously studied. Texts such as Joseph Conrad\u2019s Heart of Darkness<\/em> and Aphra Behn\u2019s Oroonoko<\/em> strongly parallel with Carroll\u2019s narrative on a multitude of facets. Alice, similar to the two other protagonists, is exploring a land unknown to her but more importantly, she represents the colonizing invasion in this wonderland just as Behn and Conrad\u2019s characters do in Africa. Alice, though, definitely reflects the na\u00efve mindset of a child in addition to the ignorance of the Victorian British upper class in regards to the colonized nations and peoples. This ignorance of foreign customs is actually directly addressed in the very beginning of the narrative when Alice says as she falls down the rabbit hole, \u201cAnd what an ignorant little girl she’ll think me for asking! No, it’ll never do to ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere.\u201d More interesting in Alice\u2019s speculations about where she is falling to, something that continues throughout the narrative is the manifestation of this ignorance and where it is directed. As she falls, she thinks aloud: \u201cI wonder if I shall fall right through<\/em> the earth! How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward!\u201d Characterizing these \u201cpeople\u201d implies their otherness in Alice\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n

This idea of foreignness can also be seen in Alice\u2019s interpretation of the landscape. Similar to Conrad and Behn\u2019s narratives, not only are the people exoticized dramatically but so are the settings in which every protagonist is placed. Alice\u2019s ignorance reveals itself in these encounters where she believes the land to be at her disposal, despite her complete lack of knowledge with it. This speaks to the colonizer\u2019s mindset and the instinctive entitlement that a majority of this population demonstrated with the \u201cconquered\u201d lands around the world. Carroll depicts this exotic fictional world for the British people to conceptualize, just as Conrad and Behn do with the African landscape.<\/p>\n

The artistic parallel with these representations can be seen in both the piece named \u201cDelhi\u201d as well as \u201cTaj Mahal-Agra\u201d by Robert Wallis. These images both depict India in a very grand, exotic manner. I think it is truly interesting to think about the reception of all of these works amongst the British public. Just as the authors recount a \u201csavage\u201d world that is not yet developed, these pictures display almost a similar idea, except for the inclusion of the grand Taj Mahal. Through these pieces, British society, it seems, thought themselves to be all knowledgeable considering these exotic, foreign places. This speaks directly to Alice\u2019s mindset in her travels through Wonderland. How influential, then, can we perceive literature and art depicting foreign places to be in the British colonial mindset?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  As I read Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland, I was strongly reminded of many early travel narratives that I have previously studied. Texts such as Joseph Conrad\u2019s Heart of Darkness and Aphra Behn\u2019s Oroonoko strongly parallel with Carroll\u2019s narrative on a multitude of facets. Alice, similar to the two other protagonists, is exploring a land … Continue reading The White Man’s Depiction of the Exotic<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1493,"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-622","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\/622","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\/1493"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}