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The Fantastical Inversions of Alice in Wonderland. Once Alice falls through the rabbit-hole into Wonderland, the reality that surrounds her undergoes profound change while her strategies for dealing with that reality do not.
- Theme and Subject
"Alice — Mutton: Mutton — Alice": Parodies of Protocol in...
- Genre and Style
Fantasy in the Alice Books; Fantasy or Reality? Ground Rules...
- Lewis Carroll
What is the Victorian Web? What countries does the Victorian...
- Theme and Subject
May 26, 2023 · Alice is a parable of eating disorders; a cautionary tale about the then new-fangled symbolic algebra; a satire of the Wars of the Roses.
Many people have seen Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a prime example of the limit-breaking book from the old tradition illuminating the new one. They also consider it being a tale of the “variations on the debate of gender” and that it’s “continually astonishing us with its modernity”.
- Introduction
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Media Adaptations
- Themes
- Topics For Further Study
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
Lewis Carroll's book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was not originally written for the general public but for a single child: Alice Pleasance Lid-dell, second daughter of the Dean of Christ Church College, Oxford. The story of its composition, as Carroll recorded it in the prefatory verses to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, goes something like ...
Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, was one of the most creative writers of children's fantasy in the history of literature. His two most famous books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1872), are listed among the greatest and most influential books...
Chapters 1-3: Down the Rabbit Hole
After a short verse prologue, in which he commemorates the day on which he first told his tale, Lewis Carroll begins Alice's Adventures in Wonderlandwith a familiar episode: Alice is sitting by the bank of a stream, bored, when she notices the White Rabbit dressed in a waistcoat scurrying along. The rabbit stops to pull a pocket watch out of its waistcoat pocket, mutters to itself that it will be late for something, then scurries off and disappears down a hole. Alice follows the rabbit down t...
Chapters 4-7: Learning the Ropes in Wonderland
The White Rabbit then appears again, and mistaking Alice for his servant, orders her to go fetch him another fan and pair of gloves. Alice obeys, soon finds the rabbit's house, enters it, and going upstairs finds what she is looking for. She also finds a small bottle, drinks half of its contents, and grows until she fills the room. The rabbit returns, and eventually a lizard named Bill is sent down the chimney of the house, presumably to drive Alice out. Alice manages to thrust her foot into...
Chapters 8-10: Alice in the Garden
Alice first encounters a curious spectacle: some playing cardsare painting some white roses red. They are doing so, she learns, because red roses were supposed to have been planted there, and if the Queen of Hearts were to discover the mistake, they would have their heads cut off. Just then the Queen and King of Hearts come by, and the Queen does indeed sentence them to be beheaded, though Alice hides them, so that the sentence is never carried out. The Queen then invites Alice to play croque...
Alice
Alice is in some ways the most complex and the simplest of Carroll's characters. Her character was modeled on that of his young friend Alice Pleasance Liddell, middle daughter of the classics professor and dean of Christ Church College, Oxford. Although John Tenniel's illustrations of Alice look nothing like Alice Liddell—she had short, dark hair cut into bangs, while Tenniel's little girl has long blonde hair—some of the characteristics of Miss Liddell remain in the character of Carroll's Al...
Alice's Sister
Alice's sister is unnamed throughout the course of the story. She appears briefly at the beginning—the book she is reading launches Alice on her dream voyage—and in a more lengthy passage at the end of the book, in which she herself dreams about the adventures Alice has just had. Alice's sister offers an adult perspective to the entire Wonderland adventure, interpreting Alice's dream in her own way and then going on to dream about Alice's own future. Alice Pleasance Liddell, Carroll's model f...
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland came to the stage quite early in its history. Carroll himself wrote about an early stage version of his story, written by Henry Savile Clarke and produced in London...But Never Jam Today, an African American adaptation for the stage, was written in 1969. Other dramatic adaptations include Alice and Through the Looking Glass by Stephen Moore, 1980; Alice, by Mich...The first movie featuring Alice was Alice in Wonderland, produced by Maienthau, 1914, featuring Alice Savoy. Another was produced the following year by Nonpareil. Other versions were released by Pa...Among the numerous recordings featuring Alice and produced under the title Alice in Wonderland include one from the 1950s narrated by Cyril Ritchard, Wonderland; one narrated by Christopher Casson,...Identity
Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderlandhas been one of the most analyzed books of all time. Critics have viewed it as a work of philosophy, as a criticism of the Church of England, as full of psychological symbolism, and as an expression of the drug culture of the 1960s. Readers all differ in their interpretations of the book, but there are a few themes that have won general acceptance. One of the clearly identifiable subjects of the story is the identity question. One of the first t...
Coming of Age
The question of whyAlice is so confused about her identity has to do with her developing sense of the difference between childhood and adulthood. She is surrounded by adult figures and figures of authority: the Duchess, the Queen, the King. Even the animals she encounters treat her as a Victorian adult might treat a small child. The White Rabbit and the Caterpillar order her about. They also break the rules of politeness that adults have drilled into Alice. The Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and...
Make a chart of the sequence of events in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Many critics find a definite pattern to Alice's adventures. Do you agree with them? Explain why or why not, and give exam...One of the chief characteristics of Wonderland is its twisted logic. Read Carroll's books on Symbolic Logic and The Game of Logic and compare Carroll's concept of logic in these books to that in Al...Compare Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to other Victorian works of fantasy, including John Ruskin's The King of the Golden River and Jean Ingelow's Mopsa the Fairy. How does Alice compare to thes...Research the roles of women and children in Victorian England during the period when Alice's Adventures in Wonderlandwas written. Write a diary of what daily life might have been like for the real...Parody
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was originally told to entertain a little girl. One of the devices Lewis Carroll uses to communicate with Alice Liddell is parody, which adopts the style of the serious literary work and applies it to an inappropriate subject for humorous effect. Most of the songs and poems that appear in the book are parodies of well-known Victorian poems, such as Robert Southey's "The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them" ("You Are Old, Father William"), Isaac Watts's "...
Narrator
Alice's Adventures in Wonderlandopens with Alice's complaint, "For what is the use of a book … without pictures or conversations?" So most of the story is told through pictures and dialogue. However, there is another voice besides those of Alice and the characters she encounters. The third-person ("he/she/it") narrator of the story maintains a point of view that is very different from that of the heroine. The narrator steps in to explain Alice's thoughts to the reader. The narrator explains w...
Point of View
Although the narrator has an impartial voice, the point of view is very strongly connected with Alice. Events are related as they happen to her and are explained as they affect her. As a result, some critics believe that the narrator is not in fact a separate voice, but is a part of Alice's own thought process. They base this interpretation on the statement in Chapter 1 that Alice "was very fond of pretending to be two people." Alice, they suggest, con-sists of the thoughtless child who carel...
The Victorian Age in England
According to his own account, Lewis Carroll composed the story that became Alice's Adventures in Wonderland on a sunny July day in 1862. He created it for the Liddell sisters while on a boating trip up the Thames River. Although the book and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found Therehave since become timeless classics, they nonetheless clearly reflect their Victorian origins in their language, their class-consciousness, and their attitude toward children. The Victorian ag...
Victorian Views of Childhood
Many upper-middle-class Victorians had a double view of childhood. Childhood was regarded as the happiest period of a person's life, a simple and uncomplicated time. At the same time, children were also thought to be "best seen and not heard." Some Victorians also neglected their children, giving them wholly over into the care of nurses, nannies and other child-care professionals. Boys often went away to boarding school, while girls were usually taught at home by a governess. The emphasis for...
The Early Development of Children's Literature
"Children's literature" first emerged as a genre of its own in the mid-1700s, when English bookseller John Newbery created some of the first books designed specifically to entertain children. (He is honored today in the United States by the American Library Association, who awards the annual John Newbery Medal to the best children's work of the year.) Prior to that time, works published for children were strictly educational, using stories merely to impart a moral message. If children wished...
In part because of its popularity with children and in part because of the fascination it has for adults, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has become one of the most widely interpreted pieces of literature ever produced. Victorians praised Lewis Carroll's wordplay and brilliant use of language. Critics after his death found psychological clues to C...
The novel begins with a young girl named Alice, who is bored with a book she is reading outside, following a smartly-dressed rabbit down a rabbit hole. She falls a long way until she finds herself in a room full of locked doors. However, she finds a key, but it’s for a door that’s too small for her.
Nov 25, 2023 · The book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, has been part of many children’s lives. It seems like a simple fairy tale, but it goes much deeper than that. The events in the story correlate with the steps in a child's growth and progression through childhood and adolescence.
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At the end of the innocuous caucus-race, the Mouse tells Alice his "tale"; it is about Fury and it prefigures the terrifying dissolution of the Wonderland dream itself.
