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An analysis of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland The following text is a small
part of a project from: Jerry Maatta, HII, Katedralskolan, Uppsala, Sweden
Written in March 1997 Interpretations and opinions It is important to bear in
mind that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, however special it may seem and
however many different interpretations one thinks one can find, is, after all,
but a story written to entertain Charles Dodgson's favourite child-friends. It
is very obvious in the story that it was written for the three Liddell girls, of
whom Alice was the closest to Dodgson. In the introductory poem to the tale,
there are clear indications to the three, there named Prima, Secunda and Tertia
— Latin for first, second and third respectively in feminized forms. The part
considering rowing on happy summer days was derived directly from reality. It is
said that he used to row out on picnics with the Liddell girls and tell them
stories. On one of these excursions it started raining heavily and they all
became soaked.
This, it is said, was the inspiration to the second chapter of
the book, The Pool of Tears. The ever-occurring number of three points out Dodgson always having in mind the three girls he tells the story to. It could,
of course, having in mind the fact that he was a cleric, be the Christian
Trinity or something completely different. 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. From the looks of it, the story about Alice falling through
a rabbit-hole and finding herself in a silly and nonsense world, is fairly
guileless as a tale. The underlying story, the one about a girl maturing away
from home in what seems to be a world ruled by chaos and nonsense, is quite a
frightening one.
All the time, Alice finds herself confronted in different
situations involving various different and curious animals being all alone. She
hasn't got any help at all from home or the world outside of Wonderland. Lewis
Carroll describes the fall into the rabbit-hole as very long and he mentions
bookshelves on the sides of the hole. Perhaps it is an escape into literature he
hints at. Carroll is an expert at puns and irony. The part with the mad
tea-party is one of the best examples of this. There's a lot of humour in the
first Alice book, but in the second the mood gets a bit darker and more
melancholic. The theme with Alice growing and shrinking into different sizes
could reflect the ups and downs of adolescence with young people sometimes
feeling adult and sometimes quite the opposite. The hesitation so typical of
adolescent girls is reflected in Alice's thoughts: She generally gave herself
good advice (though she very seldom followed it).
Many short comments point to
teenage recklessness, restlessness and anxiety in all its different forms. One
other example of maturing is Alice getting used to the new sizes she grows. She
talks to her feet and learns some of the new ways her body works in. Her
feelings are very shaken from her adventures and she cries quite often when it's
impossible to obey the rules of the Wonderland — or is it adulthood? Everything
is so out-of-the-way down here, as Alice often repeats to herself. Alice doesn't
like the animals in Wonderland who treat her as a child, but sometimes she gets
daunted by the responsibility she has to take. The quote Everyone in Wonderland
is mad, otherwise they wouldn't be down here told by the Cheshire Cat can be
given an existential meaning. Is it that everyone alive is mad being alive, or
everyone dreaming him- or herself away is mad due to the escape from reality?
Time is a very central theme in the story. The Hatter's watch shows days because
it's always six o' clock and tea-time.
Time matters in growing up, I guess, but
further interpretations are left unsaid. The poem in chapter 12 hints at
forbidden love, and it is entirely possible that it is about his platonic love
for children, or Mrs. Liddell, for that matter. Considering the fact, that the
first manuscript was called Alice's Adventures Underground, and that some — at
least the Swedish — translation of the title is a bit ambiguous, it becomes more
apparent, that the world Alice enters isn't just any childrens' playground, but
a somewhat frightening and dangerous place for maturing. The underground part of
the old title undeniably suggests drawing parallells to the direction of Dante
or the Holy Bible. Continuing in this direction, the wonderful garden, into
which Alice wants to get, can be a symbol of the Garden of Eden. It can be
assumed that Dodgson, being a cleric and a strictly religious man, had read and
was very familiar with the biblical myths aswell as Milton's Paradise Lost. It
becomes more interesting when Alice finally gets into the garden and finds a
pack of cards ruling it, with a very evil queen at its head.
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