Alice’s Adventures in

Wonderland
Lewis Carroll’s book Alice’s Adventures in Won-
derland was not originally written for the general
Lewis Carroll
public but for a single child: Alice Pleasance Lid-
dell, second daughter of the Dean of Christ Church 1865
College, Oxford. The story of its composition, as
Carroll recorded it in the prefatory verses to Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland, goes something like
this: On a warm summer afternoon (July 4, 1862,
according to Carroll’s diary) the author, his friend
Reverend Robinson Duckworth, and the three
young Liddell sisters (Lorina Charlotte, age thir-
teen, Alice Pleasance, age ten, and Edith, age
eight), daughters of the Dean of Christ Church Col-
lege, Oxford, made a short trip up the Thames River
in a rowboat. “The trip,” explains Martin Gardner
in his The Annotated Alice, “was about three miles,
beginning at Folly Bridge, near Oxford, and end-
ing at the village of Godstow. ‘We had tea on the
bank there,’ Carroll recorded in his diary, ‘and did
not reach Christ Church again till quarter past
eight….’” “Seven months later,” Gardner contin-
ues, “he added to this entry the following note: ‘On
which occasion I told them the fairy-tale of Alice’s
adventures underground.’”
According to an account written many years
later by Alice Liddell, she pestered Carroll—the
pseudonym for mathematician and dean Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson—to write the story down for
her. “She ‘kept going on, going on’ at him,” ex-
plains Morton N. Cohen in his critical biography
Lewis Carroll, “until he promised to oblige her. For
one reason or another, however, it took him two

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and a half years to deliver the completed manu-

script, illustrated with his own drawings.” Between
the time that Carroll began work on the manuscript
and the time that he completed it, he had lost the
friendship of the Liddells. He had also shown the
manuscript to his friends Mr. and Mrs. George
MacDonald, who read it to their children and urged
Carroll to publish the story. Working through
friends, Carroll found a publisher—Macmillan of
London—and an illustrator, noted cartoonist John
Tenniel. The first edition of Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland was published in June of 1865. How-
ever, Tenniel objected to some sloppy reproduction
work of his illustrations in the printing, and Car-
roll agreed to cancel the entire press run of two
thousand copies and to print a new press run of an-
other two thousand copies at his own expense. This
early, flawed edition of the novel is now consid-
ered one of the rarest books in the world and com-
mands huge prices among collectors.
“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” writes
Cohen, “was widely reviewed and earned almost
unconditional praise. Charles’s diary lists nineteen Lewis Carroll
notices.” Sales were high and many foreign edi-
tions were quickly authorized. Inspired by the
book’s success, Carroll began work on a sequel,
Dodgson was born in Daresbury, Cheshire,
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found
England, in 1832. He was the eldest son and third
There, published in 1872. The two Alice books re-
child of Reverend Charles Dodgson, a clergyman in
main in print today, over a century after their pub-
the Church of England, and his wife Francis Jane
lication. They remain, next to the Bible and the
Lutwidge. He came from a large family, number-
works of Shakespeare, among the world’s most
ing eleven children, and was often charged with the
widely translated works of literature. Translations
task of amusing his younger sisters—which may
are available in over seventy languages, including
help explain how he developed his love of games
Yiddish and Swahili.
and his devotion to little girls. His father educated
him at home and at Richmond Grammar School,
thus he received a thorough background in litera-
Author Biography ture and mathematics. In 1846, he entered Rugby
School, which at the time was not a healthy place
Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who for a sensitive young man to be. Dodgson was hazed
wrote under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, was one and bullied unmercifully—perhaps another factor in
of the most creative writers of children’s fantasy in his adult preference for the company of little girls—
the history of literature. His two most famous but he maintained very high academic standards. In
books, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and 1851 he entered Christ Church College of Oxford
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found University, and in 1854 he received his undergrad-
There (1872), are listed among the greatest and uate degree. The honors he received there earned
most influential books ever written in English. him a lifetime fellowship and a residency at Christ
Dodgson is praised as a genius who fused his own Church, provided he became a clergyman of the
love of word-games and logic puzzles with a gen- Church of England and take a vow not to marry.
uine love of and sympathy for children. His two
Alice books remain popular with both adults and Up to two years before his death in 1898,
children, and they have been interpreted by critics Dodgson lived and worked at Oxford University.
as guides to a Victorian childhood, as well as so- By 1857, he had begun publishing both mathemat-
phisticated treatises on philosophy, logic, and ical treatises and essays on logic, but even these
mathematics. dry academic writings were marked by his quirky

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sense of humor, whimsy, and fun. He also devel- not so fast that she is in any danger of being in-
oped a passion for photography, which at that time jured when she lands.
was a very new and very complex process. In 1856, She catches sight of the rabbit after she lands,
a combination of his interest in photographing lit- but soon loses it again, and finds herself in a dark
tle girls and his job at Christ Church brought him hallway. All of the doors in the hallway, she dis-
into the company of Dean Henry George Liddell, covers, are locked; she then comes upon a small
Dean of Christ Church. The Dean’s second daugh- table with a tiny key on it, which enables her to
ter, Alice Pleasance, was four years old at the time. open a small door she hadn’t seen before, which
Dodgson quickly made friends with Alice’s sisters leads into a garden. She goes back to the table, and
Lorina (three years older) and Edith (two years this time finds there a bottle labeled “DRINK ME.”
younger). On July 4, 1862, the four of them, in She does just that, and shrinks to a size where she
company with Reverend Robinson Duckworth, can fit through the small door. However, she has
took a boat trip up the Thames River. As they trav- left the key on the table, and is now too short to
eled upstream, Dodgson told the story that would reach it. Reduced to tears, she soon collects her-
become Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Al- self, then sees a small box under the table with a
ice Liddell. She later recorded that she was so en- small cake in it labeled “EAT ME.” Again, she fol-
chanted with the story that she demanded he write lows instructions, and is soon nine feet tall. She be-
it down for her. He did so, and on November 26, gins crying again, filling the hallway with a pool
1864, he presented a handwritten and self- of tears several inches deep. The White Rabbit
illustrated copy of the story to her, under the title comes and goes again, dropping a fan and pair of
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. gloves. Clutching the fan, Alice eventually shrinks
Dodgson published Alice’s Adventures in Won- again, but is unable to go into the garden as the
derland, an expanded version of the original tale door has closed and locked, and the key is once
with illustrations by cartoonist John Tenniel, in again on the table.
1865. It sold so well that in 1872 he published a se- Alice then slips and falls into the pool of tears.
quel, Through the Looking-Glass and What She sees the Mouse swimming by, begins talking
Alice Found There. These two works, along with to it, offends it a couple of times, but manages to
his long poem The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony coax it back, and soon they swim to the bank of the
in Eight Fits (1876), established his reputation as a pool (the hallway having vanished). Joined there by
writer of nonsense verse and children’s fiction. So several other creatures, they eventually engage in a
successful were the sales of the books that Dodg- “caucus-race” (that is, they simply run around for a
son was able to use the money from them to fund while) in order to dry off. Some conversation fol-
his later publications, including Sylvie and Bruno lows, but it ends abruptly when Alice mentions her
(1889) and Symbolic Logic (1895). By the time of cat, and frightens the other creatures away.
his death in 1898, the two Alice books had sold over
180,000 copies in England alone, and by 1911 about Chapters 4–7: Learning the Ropes in
700,000 copies were in print worldwide. Wonderland
The White Rabbit then appears again, and mis-
taking Alice for his servant, orders her to go fetch
him another fan and pair of gloves. Alice obeys,
Plot Summary soon finds the rabbit’s house, enters it, and going
upstairs finds what she is looking for. She also finds
Chapters 1–3: Down the Rabbit Hole a small bottle, drinks half of its contents, and grows
After a short verse prologue, in which he com- until she fills the room. The rabbit returns, and
memorates the day on which he first told his tale, eventually a lizard named Bill is sent down the
Lewis Carroll begins Alice’s Adventures in Won- chimney of the house, presumably to drive Alice
derland with a familiar episode: Alice is sitting by out. Alice manages to thrust her foot into the fire-
the bank of a stream, bored, when she notices the place and kick Bill back up the chimney. The rab-
White Rabbit dressed in a waistcoat scurrying bit then determines that the house must be burned
along. The rabbit stops to pull a pocket watch out down. Alice finds some cakes on the floor of the
of its waistcoat pocket, mutters to itself that it will room, eats enough to shrink herself to the point
be late for something, then scurries off and disap- that she can get out of the house, and then escapes
pears down a hole. Alice follows the rabbit down from the white rabbit and the other animals into a
the hole, and suddenly finds herself falling, though forest.

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After an encounter with a giant puppy (Alice The Cat soon disappears, and Alice comes
again being far smaller than her “normal” size), she upon the mad tea party scene from Alice’s Adven-
comes upon the Caterpillar sitting on a large mush- tures in Wonderland. After offending some of the
room smoking a hookah (water pipe). The Cater- creatures she encounters there, it is now her turn to
pillar asks her several questions about her identity be offended: she receives no tea during her stay
that reduce her to confusion; then, as it is leaving, there, and eventually receives one insult too many,
it tells her that by eating opposite sides of the mush- and leaves in a huff. She then comes again into the
room it was sitting on, she will either grow or hallway she had been in when she first arrived in
shrink. She experiments with pieces from both Wonderland, and from there manages to get into
sides, and soon has more or less mastered the the “beautiful garden.”
process.
Chapters 8–10: Alice in the Garden
Determined to find the garden again, she in-
stead comes upon a small house. After a confusing Alice first encounters a curious spectacle:
conversation with a frog-footman, she enters the some playing cards are painting some white roses
house and encounters a chaotic scene: a Duchess red. They are doing so, she learns, because red roses
is nursing a baby boy, who is crying, and a cook were supposed to have been planted there, and if
is making soup, and occasionally throwing pots and the Queen of Hearts were to discover the mistake,
dishes across the room. Because the cook has put they would have their heads cut off. Just then the
far too much pepper into the soup, the air in the Queen and King of Hearts come by, and the Queen
room is full of it, causing Alice and the others to does indeed sentence them to be beheaded, though
sneeze frequently. The Cheshire Cat makes its first Alice hides them, so that the sentence is never car-
appearance here. Eventually the Duchess gives ried out.
Alice the baby to nurse, as she has to get ready to The Queen then invites Alice to play croquet.
play croquet with the Queen. Alice takes the baby The match is played with flamingos for mallets and
out of the house, only to watch it turn into a pig. hedgehogs for balls, and is predictably chaotic. The
She then sees the Cheshire Cat perched on the limb Cheshire Cat appears and creates some further con-
of a tree, and goes up to it to ask its advice. fusion. Alice has a brief conversation with the

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Duchess whose baby she had watched turn into a dreamers know; and lastly, curious—wildly curi-
pig earlier, then after some more croquet, the Queen ous, and with the eager enjoyment of Life that
recommends to Alice that she meet the Mock Tur- comes only in the happy hours of childhood, when
tle. Alice goes off to meet him in the company of all is new and fair, and when Sin and Sorrow are
a Gryphon. They talk first about education, then but names—empty words signifying nothing!”
Alice hears the “Lobster Quadrille,” and is asked Carroll’s Alice is all of these things and more.
to repeat certain poems she knows, which come out She is an ordinary person trying to make sense of
quite differently from the way she expects them to. a senseless situation and to understand the curious
Soon they hear the cry, “The trial’s beginning!” and realm into which she has wandered. In Wonder-
the Gryphon hurries Alice away. land, Alice is caught in a predicament where none
of the rules or logic she has learned does her any
Chapters 11–12: The Trial and the good. The creatures of Wonderland behave to her
Return like the Victorian adults of her outside world: they
When they arrive at the courtroom, the trial of ignore conventional rules in favor of rules of their
the Knave (i.e., Jack) of Hearts, accused of having own that make no sense to anyone but themselves.
stolen some tarts made by the Queen, is just be- Alice tries to deal with them logically and fails; the
ginning. (The episode is based on a familiar nurs- dream only ends for her when she rejects their
ery rhyme.) The participants in the trial include world in favor of the outside world.
many of the creatures Alice has already encoun-
tered. As with the croquet match, it progresses in Alice is also a reflection of her own society:
a chaotic, absurd fashion. Over the course of the in the early chapters of the book she is sometimes
trial, Alice begins to grow again, and with her in- arrogant and careless of the feelings of others. Mor-
creased size she grows increasingly bold, and ton N. Cohen writes in his critical biography Lewis
points out more and more frequently the absurdity Carroll that Alice is the means through which Car-
of the proceedings. Eventually the Queen of Hearts roll criticizes and compliments Victorian society.
orders that her head be cut off, to which Alice “He wove fear, condescension, rejection, and vio-
replies that as they are nothing but playing cards, lence into the tales, and the children who read them
she is not afraid of them. At that point, all the cards feel their hearts beat faster and their skin tingle, not
fly at her, and she wakes up—her adventures in so much with excitement as with an uncanny recog-
Wonderland have been a dream. nition of themselves, of the hurdles they have con-
fronted and had to overcome. Repelled by Alice’s
Alice tells her older sister about her dream, and encounters, they are also drawn to them because
her sister reflects on how Alice herself will soon they recognize them as their own. These painful
grow up. She expresses to herself the wish that and damaging experiences are the price children
Alice might “keep, through all her riper years, the pay in all societies in all times when passing
simple and loving heart of her childhood.” through the dark corridors of their young lives.”
However, in the end, Cohen concludes, Alice over-
comes the problems that face her and emerges a
Characters stronger person.
Alice
Alice’s Sister
Alice is in some ways the most complex and
the simplest of Carroll’s characters. Her character Alice’s sister is unnamed throughout the
was modeled on that of his young friend Alice course of the story. She appears briefly at the be-
Pleasance Liddell, middle daughter of the classics ginning—the book she is reading launches Alice
professor and dean of Christ Church College, Ox- on her dream voyage—and in a more lengthy pas-
ford. Although John Tenniel’s illustrations of sage at the end of the book, in which she herself
Alice look nothing like Alice Liddell—she had dreams about the adventures Alice has just had. Al-
short, dark hair cut into bangs, while Tenniel’s lit- ice’s sister offers an adult perspective to the entire
tle girl has long blonde hair—some of the charac- Wonderland adventure, interpreting Alice’s dream
teristics of Miss Liddell remain in the character of in her own way and then going on to dream about
Carroll’s Alice. Carroll described his dream-Alice Alice’s own future.
in an article entitled “Alice on the Stage” as lov- Alice Pleasance Liddell, Carroll’s model for
ing, courteous, “trustful, ready to accept the wildest the character Alice, had in fact two sisters: Lorina
impossibilities with all that utter trust that only Charlotte, three years older than herself, and Edith,

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Media
Adaptations
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland came to the and Peter Sellers as the March Hare (available
stage quite early in its history. Carroll himself from Vestron Video); and Alice, a disturbingly
wrote about an early stage version of his story, surrealistic view of Carroll’s universe directed
written by Henry Savile Clarke and produced in by Jan Svankmajer and released by Film Four
London in November, 1886, in a late article en- in 1988 (available from First Run/Icarus Films).
titled “Alice on the Stage.” Later dramatizations • Among the numerous recordings featuring
produced under the title Alice in Wonderland, Alice and produced under the title Alice in Won-
but usually based on both Alice’s Adventures in derland include one from the 1950s narrated by
Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass Cyril Ritchard, Wonderland; one narrated by
and What Alice Found There, include adapta- Christopher Casson, Spoken Arts, 1969; one
tions by Eva Le Gallienne and Florida Friebus, from the 1970s, narrated by Stanley Holloway
Samuel French, 1932; by Madge Miller, Chil- with Joan Greenwood as the voice of Alice,
dren’s Theatre Press, 1953; and by Anne Coul- Caedmon, 1992; one narrated by Flo Gibson,
ter Martens, Dramatic Publishing, 1965. Recorded Books, 1980; one read by William
• But Never Jam Today, an African American Rushton, Listen for Pleasure, 1981; one read by
adaptation for the stage, was written in 1969. Christopher Plummer, Caedmon, 1985; an au-
Other dramatic adaptations include Alice and dio CD read by Sir John Gielgud, Nimbus, 1989;
Through the Looking Glass by Stephen Moore, a four-cassette unabridged performance by Cy-
1980; Alice, by Michael Lancy, 1983; Alice, bill Shepherd and Lynn Redgrave, Dove Audio,
a Wonderland Book, by R. Surrette, 1983; and 1995; and a BBC Radio version with Alan Ben-
Alice (a ballet) by Glen Tetley, 1986. nett as narrator, Bantam Books Audio, 1997. A
• The first movie featuring Alice was Alice in recording of Eva Le Galienne’s stage adaptation
Wonderland, produced by Maienthau, 1914, fea- Alice in Wonderland, featuring Bambi Linn as
turing Alice Savoy. Another was produced the Alice, was released by RCA Victor in the 1940s.
following year by Nonpareil. Other versions Several other records were also released in con-
were released by Pathe Studios in 1927 and by nection with the Disney film.
Macmillan Audio Brandon Films. The most fa- • A number of television adaptations of the
mous film versions of Alice include: the 1933 “Alice” books have also been made. In 1955,
Paramount version, featuring Charlotte Henry as NBC television broadcast the Eva Le Gallienne
Alice and a variety of contemporary Paramount and Florida Friebus stage play on “The Hallmark
stars (including Gary Cooper as the White Hall of Fame.” The television version featured
Knight, Cary Grant as the Mock Turtle, W. C. Gillian Barber as Alice, Martyn Green as the
Fields as Humpty Dumpty, and Edna May White Rabbit, puppeteer Burr Tillstrum as the
Oliver as the Red Queen); a 1950 satirical ver- Cheshire Cat, Elsa Lancaster as the Red Queen,
sion by the French company Souvaine; Walt and coauthor Le Gallienne as the White Queen.
Disney Production’s 1951 animated feature film A television special entitled “Alice through the
featuring the voice of Kathryn Beaumont as Looking Glass” was broadcast on NBC in 1966;
Alice (available from Walt Disney Home it was a musical and featured Jimmy Durante as
Video); another animated feature by Hanna Bar- Humpty Dumpty, and Tom and Dick Smothers
bera in 1965, featuring many of their cartoon as Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Another all-
stars (including Fred Flintstone and Barney star television adaptation featured Red Buttons,
Rubble) in leading roles; Alice’s Adventures in Ringo Starr, Sammy Davis Jr., Steve Allen, An-
Wonderland, released by American National in thony Newley, Steve Lawrence, and Eydie
1972 and featuring Michael Crawford as the Gorme. It aired in 1985 and is available on video
White Rabbit, Dudley Moore as the Dormouse, from Facets Multimedia.

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Cary Grant as the Mock Turtle in the 1933 film Alice in Wonderland.

two years younger. Alice’s sister apparently is Robert Southey’s poem “The Old Man’s Comforts
based on neither of the two other Liddells. If there and How He Gained Them.” Although he is ini-
is a historical character that Alice’s sister is sup- tially very rude to Alice, the Caterpillar finally tells
posed to represent, it is probably Carroll himself. her that the mushroom will help her control her
height.
Baby
See Pig Baby Cheshire Cat
The Cheshire Cat first appears in the kitchen
Bill the Lizard with the Duchess, the Cook, and the Baby. It has
Bill is a lizard, one of the White Rabbit’s an unusual grin, as well as the strange ability to fade
helpers. He is sent down the chimney of the White into invisibility—sometimes one part at a time. The
Rabbit’s house to get Alice out of the place. Cheshire Cat is one of the few animals in Wonder-
land that apparently has some sympathy with Alice.
Canary He guides her on the next step of her journey (the
Canary is one of the birds that flee Alice’s Mad Tea Party) and is the subject of what may be
company after she begins to talk about her cat Di- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’s most quoted
nah. The Canary “called out in a trembling voice, line: “‘Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,’
to its children, ‘Come away, my dears! It’s high thought Alice; ‘but a grin without a cat! It’s the most
time you were all in bed!’” curious thing I ever saw in all my life!’” The Cat
reappears and provokes an argument between the
Caterpillar executioner and The King of Hearts about whether
Alice meets the Caterpillar and spends most of one can decapitate a bodiless character.
Chapter 5 trying to understand his twisted logic. The Cheshire Cat’s grin is one of the most de-
When she first encounters him, the Caterpillar is bated questions about Alice’s Adventures in Won-
sitting on a mushroom and smoking a hookah, a derland. Why does the Cheshire Cat grin? There
type of water pipe from the Middle East. It is at the was a common phrase in Carroll’s time, “to grin
Caterpillar’s insistence that Alice recites Carroll’s like a Cheshire Cat,” but no one really knows how
“You Are Old, Father William”—a parody of the phrase originated. One theory holds that the grin

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is based on pictures of grinning lions that a local touring Wonderland during the day, the Dormouse
painter used to paint on the signboards of inns. An- is very sleepy. Nevertheless, it is able to participate
other states that Cheshire cheeses were sometimes in the tea party and even begins a nonsense tale be-
molded into the shape of grinning cats. Carroll, who fore falling to sleep again. Martin Gardner reports
was born in the county of Cheshire, could have in The Annotated Alice that the Dormouse may
known both theories. Although he is one of the have been inspired by the pet wombat of Dante
most popular characters in the Alice stories, the Gabriel Rossetti, a noted literary figure of Carroll’s
Cheshire Cat does not appear in the original man- time. Rossetti’s wombat “had a habit of sleeping
uscript version, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. on the table,” Gardner writes. “Carroll knew all the
Rossettis and occasionally visited them.” The Dor-
Cook mouse does not appear at all in Carroll’s original
The Cook serves in the Duchess’s kitchen. She manuscript story, Alice’s Adventures Under
is primarily noted for two qualities: she throws Ground.
things (mostly kitchen utensils) at the Duchess and
the Baby, and she cooks with an excessive amount Duchess
of pepper, which causes the Baby and the Duchess When Alice first encounters the Duchess, she
to sneeze. She appears again as a witness against is sitting in the kitchen with the Cook and the
the Knave of Hearts. Cheshire Cat, and she holds the Baby who will later
turn into a Pig. She also sings the Carrollian poem
Crab “Speak Roughly to Your Little Boy,” a parody of
See Old Crab a Victorian verse about manners. She also abuses
the Baby by shaking it and tossing it up into the
Dinah air, and at the end of the poem she throws it at
Dinah is Alice’s cat. She does not appear in Alice.
person. It is Alice’s thoughtless talking about her John Tenniel’s famous big-mouthed illustra-
cat that finally alienates the animals and birds. “Di- tion of the Duchess from the original edition of the
nah” was also the name of a cat owned by the Lid- novel is probably based on a portrait of Margaretha
dell girls. Maultasch, a duchess of Carinthia and Tyrol dur-
ing the fourteenth century. Martin Gardner, in his
Dodo The Annotated Alice, reports that “‘Maultasch,’
The Dodo appears in the drying-off sequence. meaning ‘pocket-mouth,’ was a name given to her
He suggests the Caucus-Race as a means of drying because of the shape of her mouth.” He also ex-
off and later calls on Alice to provide the prizes for plains that Margaretha “had the reputation of be-
the winners. In the original manuscript, the Dodo ing the ugliest woman in history.” Carroll’s
makes the suggestion to move the party to a nearby Duchess appears again, and is now very friendly to
house to dry off. Alice. Then it is revealed that the Queen had sen-
Like the Mouse and the Duck, the Dodo rep- tenced her to death, and she leaves quickly.
resents another of the characters who traveled on
the “golden afternoon” on which the Alice story Duck
was first composed. According to a note in Martin The Duck is one of the birds that gets caught
Gardner’s The Annotated Alice, the Dodo was Car- in the pool of Alice’s tears. The Duck gets into an
roll himself. “When Carroll stammered he pro- argument with the Mouse over the interpretation of
nounced his name ‘Do-Do-Dodgson,’ and it is a pronoun in the “dry” passage of English history
amusing to note that when his biography entered that the Mouse reads. The Duck originally repre-
the Encyclopaedia Britannica it was inserted just sented Reverend Robinson Duckworth, a compan-
before the entry on the Dodo.” ion of Carroll and the Liddell sisters on the “golden
afternoon” on which Carroll told Alice Liddell the
Dormouse story that became Alice’s Adventures in Wonder-
Dormouse is the third character at the Mad Tea land.
Party. The name is actually derived from the Latin
verb dormire, which means “to sleep.” It looks Eaglet
more like a small squirrel than a mouse. It hiber- The Eaglet is one of the animals caught in the
nates during the winter and sleeps during the day, pool of tears. She demands that the Dodo “speak
so the name is quite appropriate. Since Alice is English” and adds, “I don’t know the meaning of

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half those long words, and, what’s more, I don’t Griffin

believe you do either!” The Eaglet represents The Gryphon is assigned by the Queen of
Alice Liddell’s younger sister Edith Liddell. Hearts to be Alice’s guide and takes her to see the
Mock Turtle. He is one of the more sympathetic
Father William characters in the novel, and he treats Alice better
than most of his fellow Wonderland creatures.
Father William is the title character of Car-
roll’s parody poem “You Are Old, Father William,”
Gryphon
a takeoff of Robert Southey’s didactic poem “The
See Griffin
Old Man’s Comforts and How He Gained Them.”
Carroll’s poem inverts the didactic purpose of
Southey’s original. While the Old Man in
Guinea Pigs
Guinea Pigs appear in several different roles
Southey’s poem won his comforts through thrifti-
in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. A couple of
ness, conservative behavior, and religious devo-
them serve as the White Rabbit’s servants and help
tion, Carroll’s Father William moves through his
revive Bill the Lizard after Alice kicks him up the
old age by refusing to conform to Victorian norms.
chimney in Chapter IV. Another couple—or per-
While Southey’s young man seeks to understand
haps the same ones—serve as jurors in the trial of
his father’s good health and good humor, Carroll’s
the Knave of Hearts in Chapters XI and XII.
young man seeks information only to satisfy his cu-
riosity. Carroll’s poem ends with Father William’s
threat to kick his son downstairs.
King of Hearts
The King of Hearts first makes his appearance
at the Queen’s croquet party, but his most impor-
Father William’s Son tant role is as the conductor of the Knave of Heart’s
Father William’s Son is the other character in trial. He objects to the Cheshire Cat’s rudeness and
Carroll’s parody poem “You Are Old, Father sentences the animal to lose its head. He is not as
William,” a take-off of Robert Southey’s didactic forceful as his wife, the Queen of Hearts, but he
poem “The Old Man’s Comforts and How He shares with her and the other Wonderland charac-
Gained Them.” While Southey’s young man seeks ters a form of logic that first confuses Alice, then
to understand his father’s good health and good hu- irritates her.
mor, Carroll’s young man seeks information only
to satisfy his curiosity. Carroll’s poem ends with Knave of Hearts
Father William’s threat to kick his son downstairs. Made of cardboard, the Knave (or Jack) of
Hearts makes a brief appearance in Chapter 8. He
Fish-Footman is later arrested and held for trial on the charge of
stealing the Queen’s tarts.
The Fish-Footman brings an invitation to the
Duchess from the Queen to play croquet. Lory
Lory is a type of Australian parrot who gets
Five of Spades into an argument with Alice, and “at last turned
Five of Spades is one of the gardeners Alice sulky, and would only say, ‘I’m older than you, and
discovers in the Queen’s garden who are painting must know better.’” Critics agree that the Lory rep-
the white roses red. resents Lorinda Liddell, Alice’s older sister, who
was also a participant on the “golden afternoon” on
which the concept of Alice’s Adventures in Won-
Frog-Footman derland was composed.
The doorman at the house of the Duchess, the
Frog-Footman goes outside to accept the invitation Mad Hatter
from the Queen for the Duchess to play croquet that The Mad Hatter, like his friend the March
afternoon. He then poses a logical conundrum for Hare, is stuck in an endless tea time. In Carroll’s
Alice: since he can only answer the door from in- time, hat makers regularly used mercury to treat
side the house, how is she to get in? Alice discusses their hats, and mercury vapor is poisonous. It can
the problem with him for some time before she fi- cause hallucinations as well. The depiction of the
nally gives up, opens the door to the Duchess’s Hatter in the original illustrations by John Tenniel
house herself, and goes in. may be based in part on an Oxford furniture dealer

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named Theophilus Carter. “Carter,” says Martin Mouse

Gardner in his The Annotated Alice, “was known Mouse is the first creature Alice meets after
in the area as the Mad Hatter, partly because he al- she falls into the pool of her own tears she had cried
ways wore a top hat and partly because of his ec- while she was nine feet tall. Alice inadvertently of-
centric ideas.” Carter invented a bed that tossed the fends the Mouse by talking about her cat Dinah,
sleeper out on the floor when the alarm went off, but the Mouse forgives her and tries to help her dry
which “may explain why Carroll’s Hatter is so con- off by reciting a passage from a very dry—in the
cerned with time as well as with arousing a sleepy sense of boring—book of English history. Later the
dormouse.” His poem “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Mouse tells her and the other assembled animals
Bat” parodies Jane Taylor’s song “The Star,” and “The Mouse’s Tale,” perhaps the most famous ex-
he proposes the famous riddle “Why is a raven like ample in English of “figured” verse, poetry in
a writing-desk?” He appears again as a witness in which the shape of the poem reflects something of
the trial of the Knave of Hearts. He does not ap- the poem’s subject matter.
pear at all in Carroll’s original manuscript story,
In the original manuscript, the Mouse was held
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground.
to represent Alice Liddell’s governess Miss Prick-
ett. The book with the very dry passage that the
Magpie Mouse quotes was an actual book of English his-
See Old Magpie tory that Miss Prickett used to teach the Liddell
children.
March Hare
The March Hare hosts the Mad Tea Party. He Old Crab
is called the March Hare because he is mad. In Eng- The Old Crab gives a moral lesson to her
land March is the breeding season for hares, and daughter: “Let this be a lesson to you never to lose
they often act strangely during the month. With his your temper!”
friends the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse, he is
stuck in a perpetual tea party, in which time never Old Magpie
progresses and tea never ends. He is very argu- The Old Magpie is one of the “curious crea-
mentative and challenges almost all of Alice’s re- tures” from the pool of tears. When Alice begins
marks by challenging the meanings of specific to talk about her cat Dinah, the Old Magpie de-
words. When Alice leaves the tea party, she looks clares, “I really must be getting home: the night-
back to see the Hatter and the Hare trying to drown air doesn’t suit my throat!” and leaves.
the Dormouse in a teapot. He later appears as a wit-
ness in the trial of the Knave of Hearts. He does Pat
not appear at all in Carroll’s original manuscript Pat is the White Rabbit’s manservant. He
story, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. speaks with an Irish brogue and tries to get Alice
out of the White Rabbit’s house.
Mary Ann
Mary Ann is the White Rabbit’s servant. He Pig Baby
mistakes Alice for her in Chapter IV, but she never The Baby first appears in Chapter 6, where he
actually appears in the book. is alternately wailing at the Duchess and sneezing
from the Cook’s pepper. After Alice rescues him
Mock Turtle from the Duchess’s abuse and the Cook’s thrown
The Mock Turtle is a character who has the dishes, he changes into a Pig. Martin Gardner, in
front limbs and shell of a turtle and the head and his The Annotated Alice, suggests that Carroll made
hind limbs of a calf, because “mock turtle soup” is the Baby change into a Pig because of his low opin-
made from veal. In Chapters 9 and 10 he entertains ion of little boys.
Alice with the story of his education (liberally
sprinkled with puns) and the song known as “The Pigeon
Lobster Quadrille“—a parody of a poem by Mary Alice encounters the Pigeon after the Cater-
Howitt called “The Spider and the Fly.” He also pillar’s mushroom has made her grow up over the
performs “Beautiful Soup,” a Carrollian parody of surrounding trees. The Pigeon mistakes her for a
a popular song, “Star of the Evening,” that Carroll serpent because Alice’s neck has grown very long.
had heard the Liddell sisters sing on occasion. The Pigeon cannot conceive of anything that long

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and serpent-like being anything but a serpent and like any other white rabbit, with a white coat and
refuses to accept the idea that Alice does not want pink eyes, but he wears a waistcoat (vest) and car-
to eat her eggs. ries a large gold watch. John Tenniel’s illustration
from the first edition of the novel shows him wear-
Puppy ing a jacket and carrying an umbrella. He also
Alice encounters the Puppy toward the end of speaks English, but to Alice his clothes and watch
Chapter 4, after she shrinks to a height of three are his most amazing characteristics. In the second
inches. Because of her smallness the playful puppy chapter he drops his white kid gloves and a fan,
poses a serious threat to Alice, and she is forced to which Alice picks up; it is the fan that causes her
run away from it. She compares playing with the to shrink to below her normal size. (In the original
Puppy to “having a game of play with a cart-horse, manuscript, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, the
and expecting every moment to be trampled under fan was replaced by a nosegay, a small bouquet of
its feet.” flowers.) Later he mistakes Alice for his maidser-
vant Mary Ann.
Queen of Hearts The White Rabbit, with his preoccupation with
The Queen of Hearts is the driving force be- time and clothing, is in many ways a representa-
hind Wonderland. She constantly orders the exe- tive Victorian adult. Carroll wrote about him in the
cution of her subjects, but her command “off with article “Alice on the Stage”: “For her ‘youth,’ ‘au-
his head!” is never carried out. It is fear of her anger dacity,’ ‘vigour,’ and ‘swift directness of purpose,’
that motivates the White Rabbit at the beginning of read ‘elderly,’ ‘timid,’ ‘feeble,’ and ‘nervously
the book, and it is fear of the queen that suppresses shilly-shallying,’ and you will get something of
the Duchess’s behavior. Alice’s own anger at the what I meant him to be.” “I think the White Rab-
Queen’s illogical, reckless behavior makes her bit should wear spectacles,” the author continued.
overturn the conventions of Wonderland and break “I am sure his voice should quaver, and his knees
out of her dream at the end of the book. In “Alice quiver, and his whole air suggest a total inability
on the Stage,” Carroll wrote, “I pictured to myself to say ‘Boo’ to a goose!”
the Queen of Hearts as a sort of embodiment of un-
governable passion—a blind and aimless Fury.”
“Her constant orders for beheadings,” explains
Martin Gardner in his The Annotated Alice, “are
Themes
shocking to those modern critics of children’s lit-
erature who feel that juvenile fiction should be free Identity
of all violence and especially violence with Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Won-
Freudian overtones.” derland has been one of the most analyzed books
of all time. Critics have viewed it as a work of phi-
Seven of Spades losophy, as a criticism of the Church of England,
The Seven of Spades is one of the gardeners as full of psychological symbolism, and as an ex-
Alice discovers in the Queen’s garden who are pression of the drug culture of the 1960s. Readers
painting the white roses red. all differ in their interpretations of the book, but
there are a few themes that have won general ac-
Sister ceptance. One of the clearly identifiable subjects of
See Alice’s Sister the story is the identity question. One of the first
things that the narrator says about Alice after her
Two of Spades arrival in the antechamber to Wonderland is that
The Two of Spades is one of the gardeners “this curious child was very fond of pretending to
Alice discovers in the Queen’s garden who are be two people.” The physical sign of her loss of
painting the white roses red. identity is the changes in size that take place when
she eats or drinks. After she drinks the cordial and
William eats the cake in Chapter 1, for instance, she loses
See Father William even more of her sense of self, until at the begin-
ning of Chapter 2 she is reduced to saying, “I won-
White Rabbit der if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think:
White Rabbit is the first character that Alice was I the same when I got up this morning? I al-
meets in her dream wonderland. He looks much most think I can remember feeling a little differ-

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Chapter 5, she tells the hostile Pigeon who calls her

a serpent that she is a little girl; but she says it
“rather doubtfully, as she remembered the number
Topics for of changes she had gone through that day.” As late
as Chapter 10, she says to the Gryphon, “I could
Further tell you my adventures—beginning from this morn-
Study ing … but it’s no use going back to yesterday, be-
cause I was a different person then.” As she pro-
gresses through Wonderland, however, Alice
• Make a chart of the sequence of events in
slowly gains a greater sense of herself and eventu-
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Many critics
ally overthrows the Queen of Hearts’ cruel court.
find a definite pattern to Alice’s adventures. Do
you agree with them? Explain why or why not,
and give examples from the text to support your
Coming of Age
The question of why Alice is so confused about
argument.
her identity has to do with her developing sense of
• One of the chief characteristics of Wonderland the difference between childhood and adulthood.
is its twisted logic. Read Carroll’s books on She is surrounded by adult figures and figures of au-
Symbolic Logic and The Game of Logic and thority: the Duchess, the Queen, the King. Even the
compare Carroll’s concept of logic in these animals she encounters treat her as a Victorian adult
books to that in Alice’s Adventures in Wonder- might treat a small child. The White Rabbit and the
land. Caterpillar order her about. They also break the rules
of politeness that adults have drilled into Alice. The
• Compare Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to
Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and (to a lesser extent)
other Victorian works of fantasy, including John
the Dormouse are all rude to her in various degrees.
Ruskin’s The King of the Golden River and Jean
They also break the rules of logic that Alice has been
Ingelow’s Mopsa the Fairy. How does Alice
taught to follow. It is not until Alice stops trying to
compare to these books?
understand the Wonderland residents logically and
• Research the roles of women and children in rejects their world that she “comes of age”—she
Victorian England during the period when takes responsibility for her own actions and breaks
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was written. powerfully out of her dream world.
Write a diary of what daily life might have been Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is, on this
like for the real Alice, and include what her ex- level, a very affirming book for children. It offers
pectations for the future might have been. them a path by which they can find their own way
into the power of adulthood. “By a magical com-
bination of memory and intuition,” writes Morton
N. Cohen in his critical biography Lewis Carroll,
ent. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, “Charles keenly appreciated what it was like to be
Who in the world am I?” She begins to cry and to a child in a grown-up society, what it meant to be
fan herself with the White Rabbit’s fan, which scolded, rejected, ordered about. The Alice books
causes her to shrink down to almost nothing. After are antidotes to the child’s degradation…. Charles
she shrinks, she falls into a pool of her own tears, champions the child in the child’s confrontation
in which she almost drowns. For Alice, the ques- with the adult world, and in that, too, his book dif-
tion of identity is a vital one. fers from most others. He treats children … as
equals. He has a way of seeing into their minds and
Alice continues to question her identity until hears, and he knows how to train their minds pain-
the final chapters of the book. When the White Rab- lessly and move their hearts constructively.”
bit mistakes her for his servant Mary Ann, she goes
along willingly to his house to find his gloves. At Absurdity
the beginning of her encounter with the Caterpillar Carroll communicates Alice’s confusion about
in Chapter 5, she answers his question “Who are her own identity and her position between child-
you?” with the response “I—I hardly know, Sir, hood and adulthood by contrasting her logical, rea-
just at present—at least I know who I was when I soned behavior with that of the inhabitants of Won-
got up this morning, but I think I must have been derland. Everything about Wonderland is absurd by
changed several times since then.” At the end of Alice’s standards. From the moment that she spots

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the White Rabbit taking his watch from his waist- were ones that Carroll had heard the Liddell sisters
coat pocket, Alice tries to understand the twisted sing, so he knew that Alice, for whom the story
Wonderland logic. None of the rules she has been was written, would appreciate them. There are also
taught seem to work here. The inhabitants meet her a number of “inside jokes” that might make sense
politeness with rudeness and respond to her ques- only to the Liddells or Carroll’s closest associates.
tions with answers that make no sense. The Mad The Mad Hatter’s song, for instance, (“Twinkle,
Hatter’s question “Why is a raven like a writing- Twinkle, Little Bat”) is a parody of Jane Taylor’s
desk?” is an example. Alice believes that he is pos- poem “The Star,” but it also contains a reference
ing a riddle and tries to answer it, believing (logi- to the Oxford community. “Bartholomew Price,”
cally) that the Hatter would not ask a riddle without writes Martin Gardner in his The Annotated Alice,
knowing the answer. When she is unable to answer “a distinguished professor of mathematics at Ox-
the question, the Hatter explains that there is no an- ford and a good friend of Carroll’s, was known
swer. He does not explain his reasons for asking among his student by the nickname ‘The Bat.’ His
the riddle; he simply says that he hasn’t “the slight- lectures no doubt had a way of soaring high above
est idea” of the answer. When Alice protests that the heads of his listeners.”
asking riddles with no answers wastes time, the What makes Carroll’s parodies so special that
Hatter responds with a lecture on the nature of they have outlived the originals they mock is the
Time, which he depicts as a person. The connec- fact that they are excellent humorous verses in their
tions between the two subjects make no logical own right. They also serve a purpose within the
sense to Alice. book: they emphasize the underlying senselessness
Alice’s encounter with the Gryphon and the of Wonderland and highlight Alice’s own sense of
Mock Turtle are as equally absurd, although less displacement. Many of them Alice recites herself
grating, as the Mad Tea Party. When the two of under pressure from another character. “’Tis the
them call on her to recite, Alice begins another of Voice of the Lobster” is a parody of the didactic
Carroll’s nonsense verses, “’Tis the Voice of the poem “The Sluggard” by Isaac Watts. It is notable
Lobster.” At the end, she “sat down with her face that most often Alice is cut off by the same char-
in her hands, wondering if anything would ever acters that require her to recite in the first place.
happen in a natural way again.” Alice finally rebels
during the trial scene when the King requires All Narrator
persons more than a mile high to leave the court. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland opens with
She objects to the absurd nature of the trial, saying Alice’s complaint, “For what is the use of a book
finally “Stuff and nonsense!” and “Who cares for … without pictures or conversations?” So most of
you?” “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” Her the story is told through pictures and dialogue.
final break precipitates the end of her dream, and However, there is another voice besides those of
she wakes up with her head in her sister’s lap. 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
Style the heroine. The narrator steps in to explain Alice’s
thoughts to the reader. The narrator explains who
Parody Dinah is, for instance, and also highlights Alice’s
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was origi- own state of mind. He frequently refers to Alice as
nally told to entertain a little girl. One of the de- “poor Alice” or “the poor little thing” whenever she
vices Lewis Carroll uses to communicate with is in a difficult situation.
Alice Liddell is parody, which adopts the style of
the serious literary work and applies it to an inap- Point of View
propriate subject for humorous effect. Most of the Although the narrator has an impartial voice,
songs and poems that appear in the book are paro- the point of view is very strongly connected with
dies of well-known Victorian poems, such as Alice. Events are related as they happen to her and
Robert Southey’s “The Old Man’s Comforts and are explained as they affect her. As a result, some
How He Gained Them” (“You Are Old, Father critics believe that the narrator is not in fact a sep-
William”), Isaac Watts’s “How Doth the Little arate voice, but is a part of Alice’s own thought
Busy Bee” (“How Doth the Little Crocodile”), and process. They base this interpretation on the state-
Mary Howett’s “The Spider and the Fly” (“Will ment in Chapter 1 that Alice “was very fond of pre-
You Walk a Little Faster”). Several of the songs tending to be two people.” Alice, they suggest, con-

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sists of the thoughtless child who carelessly jumps middle-class population came a spread of so-
down the rabbit-hole after the White Rabbit, and called “family values”: polite society avoided men-
the well-brought-up, responsible young girl who re- tioning sex, sexual passions, bodily functions, and
members her manners even when confronted by in extreme cases, body parts. They also followed
rude people and animals. an elaborate code of manners meant to distinguish
one class from another. By the 1860s, the result,
Language for most people, was a kind of stiff and gloomy
Part of the way Carroll shows Wonderland to be prudery marked by a feeling that freedom and
a strange place is the way the inhabitants twist the enjoyment of life were sinful and only to be in-
meaning of words. Carroll plays with language by dulged in at the risk of immorality. Modern crit-
including many puns and other forms of word play. ics have mostly condemned the Victorians for these
In Chapter 3, for instance, the Mouse says he can dry repressive attitudes.
everyone who was caught in the pool of tears. He The tone for the late Victorian age was set by
proceeds to recite a bit of history—“the driest thing Queen Victoria herself. She had always been a very
I know.” Here, of course, the Mouse means “dry” as serious and self-important person from the time she
in dull; the Mouse’s words have no ability to ease took the throne at the age of eighteen; it is reported
the dampness of the creatures. When Alice meets the that when she became queen, her first resolution
Mad Hatter and the March Hare, they play with syn- was, “I will be good.” After the death of her hus-
tax—the order of words—to confuse Alice. When band Albert in 1861, however, Victoria became
she says “I say what I mean” is the same thing as “I more and more withdrawn, retreating from public
mean what I say,” the others immediately contradict life and entering what became a lifelong period of
her by bringing up totally unrelated examples: “‘Not mourning. Many middle-class Englishmen and
the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter. ‘You might just women followed her example, seeking to find
as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing morally uplifting and mentally stimulating thoughts
as “I eat what I see”!’” The power of language is in their reading and other entertainments.
also evident in the way Alice continually offends the
inhabitants of Wonderland, often quite unintention- Victorian Views of Childhood
ally. For instance, she drives away the creatures at Many upper-middle-class Victorians had a
the pool of tears just by mentioning the word “cat.” double view of childhood. Childhood was regarded
Eventually Alice learns to be careful of what she says, as the happiest period of a person’s life, a simple
as in Chapter 8 when she changes how she is about and uncomplicated time. At the same time, chil-
to describe the Queen after noticing the woman be- dren were also thought to be “best seen and not
hind her shoulder. heard.” Some Victorians also neglected their chil-
dren, giving them wholly over into the care of
nurses, nannies and other child-care professionals.
Historical Context Boys often went away to boarding school, while
girls were usually taught at home by a governess.
The Victorian Age in England The emphasis for all children, but particularly girls,
According to his own account, Lewis Carroll was on learning manners and how to fit into soci-
composed the story that became Alice’s Adventures ety. “Children learned their catechism, learned to
in Wonderland on a sunny July day in 1862. He pray, learned to fear sin—and their books were
created it for the Liddell sisters while on a boating meant to aid and abet the process,” states Morton
trip up the Thames River. Although the book and N. Cohen in his critical biography Lewis Carroll.
its sequel Through the Looking-Glass and What “They were often frightened by warnings and
Alice Found There have since become timeless threats, their waking hours burdened with homilies.
classics, they nonetheless clearly reflect their Vic- Much of the children’s literature … were purpose-
torian origins in their language, their class- ful and dour. They instilled discipline and compli-
consciousness, and their attitude toward children. ance.” Although the end of the century saw a trend
The Victorian age, named for the long rule of toward educating women in subjects taught to men,
Britain’s Queen Victoria, spanned the years 1837 such as Latin and mathematics, this change affected
to 1901. only a small portion of the population, specifically
The early Victorian era marked the emergence the upper classes.
of a large middle-class society for the first time This emphasis on manners and good breeding
in the history of the Western world. With this is reflected in Alice’s adventures. She is always

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Alice Pleasance Liddell, inspiration for the title character of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,
pictured with her sister, Lorina Charlotte Liddell.

apologetic when she discovers she has offended honored today in the United States by the Ameri-
someone, and she scolds the March Hare for his can Library Association, who awards the annual
rude behavior. Nevertheless, Carroll seems to share John Newbery Medal to the best children’s work
the view that childhood was a golden period in a of the year.) Prior to that time, works published for
person’s life. He refers in his verse preface to the children were strictly educational, using stories
novel to the “golden afternoon” that he shared with merely to impart a moral message. If children
the three Miss Liddells. He also concludes the book wished to read for entertainment, they had to turn
with the prediction that Alice will someday repeat to “adult” works, such as Daniel Defoe’s 1719 clas-
her dream of Wonderland to her own children and sic Robinson Crusoe. Despite Newbery’s ground-
“feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a plea- breaking work, few works of entertainment for chil-
sure in all their simple joys, remembering her own dren appeared over the hundred years.
child-life, and the happy summer days.” On the Most early Victorian fairy-stories and other
other hand, Alice’s own experiences suggest that works for children were intended to promote what
Carroll felt that children’s feelings and emotions contemporaries believed was “good” and “moral”
were fully as complex as any adult emotions. By behavior on the part of children. Carroll’s “Alice”
the end of the novel, she is directly contradicting books take a swipe at this Victorian morality, in
adults; when she tells the Queen “Stuff and non- part through their uninhibited use of nonsense and
sense!” she is acting contrary to Victorian dictates wordplay (a favorite Victorian pastime) and in part
of proper children’s behavior. through direct parody. Alice recalls in Chapter 1 of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that “she had
The Early Development of Children’s read several nice little histories about children who
Literature had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other
“Children’s literature” first emerged as a genre unpleasant things, all because they would not re-
of its own in the mid-1700s, when English book- member the simple rules their friends had taught
seller John Newbery created some of the first books them.” Most of the verses and poems Carroll in-
designed specifically to entertain children. (He is cluded in the story are parodies of popular Victo-

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rian (i.e., morally uplifting) songs and ballads, that I could not stop reading … till I had finished
twisted so that their didactic points are lost in the it. The fancy of the whole thing is delicious….
pleasure of wordplay. Your versification is a gift I envy you very much.”
Carroll’s “Alice” books were part of a flour- “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was
ishing movement throughout the world to write en- widely reviewed,” notes Cohen, “and earned almost
tertaining books for children. English translations unconditional praise.” Important newspapers and
of the fairy tale collections of the German brothers magazines, including the Reader and the Press
Grimm first appeared in the mid-1820s. The tales commended the story’s humor and its style. “The
of Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen appeared Publisher’s Circular,” asserts Cohen, “ … selected
in English in 1846. The United States saw Louisa it as ‘the most original and the most charming’ of
May Alcott’s Little Women in 1868–69, part of a the two hundred books for children sent them that
movement to publish realistic stories for children. year; the Bookseller … was ‘delighted…. A more
In England, many noted authors for adults pub- original fairy tale … it has not lately been our good
lished works for children, including Charles Dick- fortune to read’; and the Guardian … judged the
ens and Robert Louis Stevenson, whose 1883 work ‘nonsense so graceful and so full of humour that
Treasure Island is considered a classic children’s one can hardly help reading it through.’” An anony-
adventure story. The ground broken by Carroll and mous review in the “ Children’s Books” section of
other children’s authors of the nineteenth century The Athenaeum magazine (reprinted in Robert
led the way for today’s huge market for children’s Phillips’s Aspects of Alice) was an exception to the
books, which have their own publishers, critical general praise the work received. The reviewer de-
scholars and journals, and librarians. clared that “Mr. Carroll has labored hard to heap
together strange adventures and heterogeneous
combinations, and we acknowledge the hard la-
Critical Overview bor….. We fancy that any real child might be more
puzzled than enchanted by this stiff, overwrought
In part because of its popularity with children story.”
and in part because of the fascination it has for After Carroll’s death in 1898, critics expanded
adults, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has be- the number and type of their readings of the Alice
come one of the most widely interpreted pieces of books. They analyzed the stories from many points
literature ever produced. Victorians praised Lewis of view—political, philosophical, metaphysical,
Carroll’s wordplay and brilliant use of language. and psychoanalytic—often evaluating the tales as
Critics after his death found psychological clues to products of Dodgson’s neuroses and as reactions to
Carroll’s own subconscious in the book’s curious Victorian culture. Because of the nightmarish qual-
dream-structure and the strange and often hostile ities of Alice’s adventures and their violent, even
creatures of Wonderland. During the 1960s, many sadistic, elements, a few critics have suggested that
young people read the book as a commentary on the books are not really suitable for children. “We
the contemporary drug culture. Alice’s Adventures have also been bombarded by a horde of wild sur-
in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Look- mises,” declares Cohen, “mostly from the psycho-
ing-Glass and What Alice Found There still fasci- logical detectives determined to unlock deep mo-
nate critics, who continue to find new readings and tives in the man and to discover hidden meanings
new meanings in Carroll’s stories for children. in the books. These analysts sometimes seem to be
Early reviews of the novel on its original re- engaged in a contest to win a prize for the most
lease in 1865 concentrated on Carroll’s skills at in- outlandish reading of the texts. One such writer has
vention and his ability as a molder of words. They proved to his satisfaction that Alice was written not
mentioned his parodies, his use of language, and by Lewis Carroll at all, but by Queen Victoria.”
his literary style. According to Morton N. Cohen Some of the most well-known interpretations
in his critical biography Lewis Carroll, the noted of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are those that
poets Christina Rossetti and Dante Gabriel Rossetti try to understand the story in light of Carroll’s well-
both praised the book in private letters to the au- documented preference for the company of young,
thor. Novelist Henry Kingsley thanked Carroll for preteen, girls. Critics who take this approach con-
his copy, saying “I received it in bed in the morn- nect Carroll’s apparent inability to form an adult
ing, and in spite of threats and persuasions, in bed relationship with a woman and his artistic pho-
I stayed until I had read every word of it. I could tographs of little girls, and conclude that Carroll
pay you no higher compliment … than confessing was a closet pedophile—although major critics

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agree that there is absolutely no biographical in-

formation to support this theory. Analysts who use
the theories of noted psychologist Sigmund Freud,
says Cohen, “suggest that the book is about a What
woman in labor, that falling down the rabbit hole
is an expression of Carroll’s wish for coitus, that Do I Read
the heroine is variously a father, a mother, a fetus,
or that Alice is a phallus (a theory that, at least,
Next?
provides us with a rhyme).” Other readings inter-
pret the story as about toilet training or about fallen • The roughly contemporary fairy tales of the
women. “Unfortunately,” Cohen concludes, “these Danish novelist Hans Christian Andersen (avail-
eccentric readings, while they may amuse, do not able in many editions), which established a Vic-
really bring us any closer to understanding Carroll torian passion for fairy stories.
or his work.” • John Ruskin’s The King of the Golden River
To the extent that critics are able to agree about (1851), a classic Victorian fairy tale that, like
the meaning of the Alice books, they conclude that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was origi-
the stories are primarily games, stories invented by nally written for a little girl. Ruskin was at one
a man who loved young children and who loved to time an instructor for Alice Liddell.
invent his own word-games and mind-puzzles. Al-
• The Victorian wordplay of Edward Lear, con-
ice’s Adventures in Wonderland, they agree, is the
tained in A Book of Nonsense (1846), Nonsense
work of a lonely and brilliant man who found con-
Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets (1871),
solation in the company of children and tried to re-
More Nonsense, Pictures, Rhymes, Botany, Etc.
pay some of the debt he felt.
(1872), Laughable Lyrics: A Fourth Book of
Nonsense Poems, Songs, Botany, Music, Etc.
(1877), and Nonsense Songs and Stories (1895).
Criticism
• George Macdonald’s allegorical fairy tale about
Stan Walker growing up and coming to sexual maturity, The
Golden Key (1867).
In the following essay Walker, a doctoral can-
didate at the University of Texas, explains the back- • Victorian poet Christina Rossetti’s famous nar-
ground of Charles Dodgson, who wrote Alice’s Ad- rative poem “Goblin Market” (1862), which,
ventures in Wonderland under the pseudonym Lewis like the “Alice” books, is outwardly for children,
Carroll. He explores the sources the author used in but nonetheless deals with many adult themes—
creating the novel, and examines how its major particularly repressed sexuality.
themes of growing up and finding one’s identity are
• The American fairy tales of L. Frank Baum, in-
a reflection and product of the Victorian age.
cluding The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), its many sequels.
Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece of children’s nonsense • Gilbert Adair’s Alice through the Needle’s Eye
fiction, has enjoyed a life rivaled by few books (1984), a modern attempt to add to the “Alice”
from the nineteenth century, or indeed any earlier stories.
period. Alice has inspired several screen adapta-
tions, from Disney’s well-known 1951 animated
feature to more “adult” versions by contemporary
Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer and Playboy. It
has been adapted for the stage several times, has needs no explanation: its sheer imaginative force,
served as the basis for countless spin-offs in the coupled with its blend of humor, unsentimental
realm of fiction, and has inspired at least one well- sweetness, and a sense of wonder, make the book
known pop song (Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 hit unique, and likely to endure for some time. As Sir
“White Rabbit”). Episodes from Alice and its com- Richard Burton puts it in the “Terminal Essay” to
panion piece, Through the Looking Glass (1872), his famous translation of The Thousand and One
have also frequently been used to illustrate prob- Nights (1886), “Every man at some turn or term of
lems in contemporary physics and ethics. On one his life has longed for … a glimpse of Wonder-
level, perhaps, the reason for Alice’s popularity land.”

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Lewis Carroll was the pen name of the Rev- Caterpillar was evidence of a very profitable and
erend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a professor of still encouraged trade in opium with China; Sir
mathematics at Christ Church, one of the colleges Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective Sherlock
of Oxford University. Politically, he was conserv- Holmes, for example, was addicted to opium.
ative, “awed by lords and ladies and inclined to be Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland can be char-
snobbish toward inferiors,” according to Martin acterized as a funhouse mirror version of a child’s
Gardner in The Annotated Alice. He was also a “journey” through the “adult” world, specifically
skillful photographer (when photography was a the world of upper-class Victorian England. One of
new technology), a patron of the theater (a pastime the main things that the child must grapple with on
generally discouraged by church officials at the such a journey, and one of the principal themes that
time), and a fan of games and magic. And if “he Alice takes up, is the question of his/her identity in
was so shy that he could sit for hours at a social that world. “Who are you?” Alice is frequently
gathering and contribute nothing to the conversa- asked early in her adventures, and it is a question
tion, … his shyness and stammering ‘softly and that she at first has a difficult time answering. Her
suddenly vanished away’ when he was alone with initial erratic changes in size could be said to rep-
a child,” notes Gardner. resent her inability to “fit” herself into this world.
This fondness for children, specifically young Her mastery of this process enables her to begin to
girls (he intensely disliked boys), has led to much be the master of her own destiny—to “fit,” by en-
speculation about Carroll’s psychological makeup. abling her to walk through the door that leads to
There is little to no evidence, however, that his nu- the “beautiful garden,” which she has wanted to en-
merous relationships with girls were anything other ter since the beginning of her adventures.
than purely platonic. These relationships tended to This garden is hardly a Garden of Eden,
break off after the girls passed through adolescence. though. Indeed, what Alice is immediately con-
A principal exception was his relationship with fronted with, the painting of the roses and con-
Alice Liddell, daughter of Henry George Liddell, demnation to death of the painters by the Queen of
dean of Christ Church. Alice in Wonderland was Hearts, is an instance of the other principal of
written at her request, and represents a record (ex- Alice: the absurdity, even insanity, of the “adult”
panded and polished) of a tale he told her one af- world from the point of view of the innocent.
ternoon in July 1862. On this “golden afternoon” “We’re all mad here,” the Cheshire Cat informs her
of the verse prologue, the two went rowing on the in their famous exchange. This absurdity is fre-
Thames River with Dodgson’s friend the Reverend quently little more than a source of amusement to
Robinson Duckworth and Alice’s two sisters. Alice; many times, though, it is a source of grief.
Much of the nonsense in Alice, as well as many Her treatment at the hands of the inhabitants of
incidental details, are based on things from mid- Wonderland, though brought upon her at times by
nineteenth century English life. The majority of the her childish candor, is often rough, occasionally
songs in the book are burlesques of poems and even cruel, and many times she is reduced to tears.
songs popular at the time, and familiar to Carroll’s Moreover, her adventures end with an apparent vi-
child audience. The last of Alice’s adventures, the sion of the ultimate injustice of this adult world—
trial, is based on a then-familiar nursery rhyme. An- the trial—though with her innocent frankness she
other device Carroll used was creating incident out is able to overcome this injustice, as her body sym-
of common sayings. The character of the Cheshire bolically grows to fill the courtroom.
Cat, for example, is based on the then-common Yet Alice is not political or social satire per se.
phrase, “Grin like a Cheshire cat,” while the Carroll may turn the adult world on its head, but
episode of “The Mad Tea-Party” is based on two there is no sense in the book that he is advocating
common expressions, “mad as a hatter” and “mad any substantial changes to things as they are. More-
as a March hare.” (the “madness” by which hatters over, if an absurd, and even at times menacing
were frequently afflicted was caused by prolonged world, Carroll’s England as reflected in Wonder-
exposure to mercury, used in the curing of felt, land is a world that can be mastered, suggesting
while March in England was the mating season of (though some critics have contested this) that it is
the hare.) ultimately a benign world. Despite all the transfor-
Certain more “exotic” details attest to the suc- mations she undergoes, Alice is never harmed, at
cessful ventures of the British Empire: the flamin- least in any overt way. Indeed, her self-assured re-
gos, for example, pointed to missionary and colo- sponses to the rough treatment she receives comes
nial expansion in Africa. The hookah-smoking from the confidence—fortified by her class posi-

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tion—that “God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with does not see any sustained and, one might say, “se-
the world.” rious” attempt in the Alice books to explore the pos-
Source: Stan Walker, in an essay for Novels for Students, sibilities of a freer, richer adult life-style. Such a di-
Gale, 1999. mension seems, indeed, almost too much to expect
of books that we turn to for the whimsy of talking
Roger B. Henkle animals, logic games, and parodies.
In the following excerpt, Henkle examines Car- Yet within the Alice books are explorations of
roll’s emphasis on play, including its limitations. an adult life that venture as far as Carroll could risk
going toward freedom from the duties, responsi-
It was just over a hundred years ago that bilities, and arid self-limitations of modern soci-
Through the Looking-Glass, the second of Lewis ety—and in this aspect we may discover the im-
Carroll’s two Alice books, was published, yet Car- mediacy of their appeal to contemporary readers.
roll’s fantasy adventures into a little girl’s dream Furthermore, in Carroll’s ambiguous feelings to-
worlds have a wider, more responsive audience ward the relatively stable middle-class society that
than they may ever have had. Looking-Glass in- oppressed him, and in his anxieties about the self-
versions and Wonderland absurdities give us strik- exposure that his nonsense barely cloaked, we dis-
ing shorthand renditions of the language and be- cover something of the reasons why writers prob-
havior of a modern world in which it sometimes ing from within a culture turn predominantly to
seems—to quote the Cheshire Cat—that “I’m mad. comedy—as they have done in England for a cen-
You’re mad. We’re all mad here.” André Gregory’s tury and a half and in America for the last decade.
recent New York stage version exalted the manic
One of the pleasures, surely, of reading Alice
potential of the Alice worlds to black humor pro-
in Wonderland is to witness the absurd and some-
portions. The dry, ingenuous tone and the mix of
times devastating ways in which a rather too well-
rebellion and self-indulgence in the Alice books
bred little girl learns of the caprices of language
have been made to order for the canny, loose “youth
and logic and of the alarmingly erratic tracks of her
culture” of the last few years; and the psychedelic
own mind. I am going to concentrate here, how-
landscapes that the Jefferson Airplane and others
ever, on what may be an even stronger source of
have discovered are stunning enough to cause some
its appeal to adult readers, the covert delight that
people to wonder whether shy, inhibited Charles
we take in madcap behavior. Much of our enjoy-
Lutwidge Dodgson, creator of a hookah-puffing
ment of all comedy lies in our realization that we,
caterpillar and mushrooms that change your size,
too, would like to play and carry on, just as the
might not have been surreptitiously in the opiate
adult creatures of Wonderland and Through the
tradition of Coleridge and DeQuincey.
Looking-Glass do. The creatures Alice meets are
There is no real evidence that Carroll tripped clearly grown-ups (with the exception of the Twee-
to hallucinatory worlds, but there are enough indi- dles) and they are engaging in pastimes whose al-
cations that Carroll was deliberately probing in the lure would seem to be peculiarly to adults.
Alice books for a new adult life-style, built around
a concept that is close to play, to explain their strong What a pleasant change the caucus-race would
appeal to contemporary readers. Alice’s Adventures be from the competition of most “games” and adult
in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass occupations: “they began running when they liked
have always led double lives as adult fantasy lit- and left off when they liked,” and at the end of the
erature as well as children’s classics—Katherine race “everybody has won and all must have prizes.”
Anne Porter once observed that she found them, in How nice it would be to sit, as the Mock Turtle
fact, enjoyable only when she read them as an does, on a shingle by the sea, and sentimentally ru-
adult—but we have been inclined to look upon them minate on one’s experiences—to surrender to all
largely as grownup escapes into childhood and not the self-indulgence that seems too rarely possible
as attempts to define and come to new terms with in modern life. It is always tea-time for the Mad
adult life. William Empson has argued, for instance, Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse, and
that the Alice books reflect the post-Romantic feel- people they don’t like just aren’t invited; “No
ing that “there is more in the child than any man room! No room!” says the Hare. When Humpty
has been able to keep.” Though Empson adds that Dumpty uses a word it means what he chooses it
Carroll uses Alice to bring out some hard-headed to mean, neither more nor less.…
and unsentimental judgments about the foolishness The exuberance of play, however, is often de-
and even puerility of adult behavior, he apparently liberately restrained by an arbitrary order of rules in-

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vented by the player, and this was especially im- and the creatures. At the end of the innocuous cau-
portant to Carroll . In this quality of personally de- cus race, the Mouse tells Alice his “tale”; it is about
vised order—the brief moments in the Alice books Fury and it prefigures the terrifying dissolution of
of creatures rehearsing their individual delights— the Wonderland dream itself. According to the tale,
one captures the pleasure of personal control of one’s personified Fury, who this morning has “nothing
life, and perhaps achieves the stasis that so many to do,” imperiously decides he’ll prosecute the
Victorians sought in a rapidly changing world. Mouse: “‘I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,’ said cunning
old Fury; ‘I’ll try the whole cause and condemn
Even more important is the relief play brings
you to death.’”
from the officious moralizing of other people. The
“moral” of Wonderland is drawn by the Duchess Time and again the delights of play are cut off
(although she doesn’t practice it): “If everybody suddenly by such arbitrary violence, for we per-
minded their own business, the world would go ceive that play by its nature cannot last. No won-
round a deal faster than it does.” Victorian comic der the Mad Hatter curtly changes the subject when
writers from Thackeray to Butler tried to fend off Alice reminds him that he will soon run out of
those ponderous forces that were bent on dictating places at the tea-table. Too soon he is dragged into
ethical, social, and even psychological conformity. court by the Queen to be badgered and intimidated,
In moments of play, at least, one can operate, as despite his pathetic protest “I hadn’t quite finished
Johan Huizinga has noted, “outside the antithesis my tea when I was sent for.” Play can only tem-
of wisdom and folly … of good and evil.” In later porarily remove us from outside reality, as Carroll
years, Carroll could rhapsodize about his dream- himself repeatedly discovered, because authority,
Alice because she was living in the happy hours society (characterized in those adult women—
“when Sin and Sorrow are but names—empty Queens and Duchesses) will interfere and impose
words signifying nothing!” The homiletic hymns its angry will. This is why I believe it is inaccurate
and rhymes that Alice tries to recall in Wonderland to assert, as Hugh Kenner and Elizabeth Sewell
but cannot—“The Old Man’s Comforts,” “Against have, that Carroll’s books are “closed” works of
Idleness and Mischief,” “The Sluggard,” and art, literary game structures that are deliberately
“Speak Gently”—all share three elements: an in- isolated and fundamentally unrelated to the Victo-
junction to be industrious and responsible, the re- rian social world outside them. They show, on the
minder that we shall all grow old, and an invoca- contrary, Carroll’s reluctant conclusion that totally
tion of our religious duties. Significantly, these independent life patterns are impossible and even
banished thoughts are those we try to forget in play. dangerous, and they are Carroll’s paradigms of the
way social power is achieved and how it operates
Carroll could not forget them for long, how-
in Victorian England.
ever, and Wonderland’s imaginative projection as
a possible variant life style was at the same time Inherent in the very freedom of play is its weak-
an opportunity to register and somehow “work out” ness. Functioning by personal whim, it is potentially
the very anxieties that gave rise to the search for a anarchic, thus vulnerable to the strongest, most bru-
new life style. In dreams we are often able to do tal will. Halfway through the book, Alice unac-
all these things, and Wonderland is such a dream. countably must enter Wonderland a second time and
she finds its tenor radically different. Instead of the
True to the dream, most things in Wonderland
pleasantly free caucus race, she is in a croquet game
do not happen in a logical and chronological man-
where “the players all played at once, quarrelling
ner. There is no “plot” to the book; instead, dream
all the while.” All order has collapsed; hedgehog
thoughts pull seemingly disorganized elements to-
balls scuttle through the grass, bodiless cats grin in
gether. Almost immediately the anxieties Carroll
the dusk. And the domineering Queen of Hearts im-
recorded so often in his diaries come to the surface
poses her angry will more and more as she exploits
in the behavior of the White Rabbit, who’s late,
the anarchy of the hapless world of play.
who’s lost his glove, who’ll lose his head if he
doesn’t get to the Duchess’ house on time. The The antics that the mad tea party group, the
Rabbit will later act for the Crown in the surreal- Caterpillar, and other free souls had been indulging
istic trial of the knave at the book’s end, thereby in were, in a word, nonsense. Just as nonsense writ-
explicitly linking such social anxieties with the ar- ing is a form of play activity, play itself—at least
bitrary punishment and the dread of fury that per- as Carroll conceived it—is nonsensical in the con-
sistently flashes along hidden circuits of Wonder- text of the “real world”; it has been deliberately de-
land’s dreaming brain and periodically seizes Alice prived of meaning, of any overt social and moral

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significance. Alice noted at the tea party that “the insanity as an inability to distinguish which is the
Hatter’s remark seemed to her to have no sort of waking and which the sleeping life?
meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English.” At The psychologist Ernst Kris suggests that the
the trial of the knave, however, suddenly there is venture into comedy itself is “double-edged,” of-
meaning attached to nonsensical actions and state- ten carrying us near to the most unpleasant and ter-
ments: it is the meaning that the autocratic Queen rifying aspects of existence and non-existence. So
wants attached to them, so they can be made to often do comic writers from Cervantes to the pre-
serve her lust for persecution. The most damning sent play with insanity that we can well wonder
piece of evidence, according to the Crown, is a non- about the standard of “common sense” prevalent in
sensical letter purportedly written by the defendant. comedy; it seems at times to be an attempt to hold
Alice argues, “I don’t believe there’s an atom of onto some generally agreed-upon reality.
meaning in it,” but the King of Hearts insists, “I
All this is not to show that Carroll feared he
seem to see some meaning in [the words] after all.”
would go mad, but that he was acutely conscious
The individuals who assert power in society, Car-
of the distortions of the human mind. He was pre-
roll is suggesting, decide what things shall mean.
occupied enough with the train of his own uncanny
Their whims, prompted and carried out by an irra-
thoughts to have strong doubts about those poten-
tional fury against people who would be free, dic-
tially anarchic individual life styles that he con-
tate our responsibilities, our duties, our guilts, our
cocted. He was evidently uneasy about deviation
sins, our punishment.
from societal norms. For this reason Alice herself
Here the adult victim’s view nicely corre- acts in Wonderland and Looking-Glass as a check
sponds to the child’s view of grown-up authority. on the possibly manic behavior of even the “free”
If a child is called to task, told to remember some adult creatures like the Hatter and the Hare. She re-
rule or duty he has forgotten about or never fully tains throughout a nice balance of self-control and
realized he was responsible for, he feels like the imagination, which may be, in part, what made pre-
Mad Hatter, who is told “Don’t be nervous, or I’ll adolescent little girls so attractive to Carroll. Even
have you executed on the spot.” Justice from a at her most disoriented, Alice can declare firmly
child’s perspective often does seem to function like that “I’m I.” Though Carroll gently spoofs Alice’s
the Queen’s: verdict first, guilt later.… literal-minded common sense, she serves to remind
The madness in the Alice books is often no us that no matter how appealing some of the crea-
more than the “looniness” of children’s literature , tures’ life styles are, any sensible child her age must
or a harmless addlepatedness, which Alice usually see it all as silly behavior by grown-ups. When the
absorbs with considerable aplomb. But there is a chaos and foolishness of Wonderland get out of
more worrisome dimension to the motif. The hal- hand at the end of the book, it is Alice who be-
lucinatory qualities of the books, the sudden meta- comes the adult by growing in size and authority,
morphoses, the wayward thoughts of cannibalism and the imaginary creatures appear to be only er-
and dismemberment, the hot flashes of fury, all re- rant children. Built into the work which vividly and
mind us that in dreams, especially, our minds seem alluringly explores the free behavior patterns that
to wander dangerously close to insanity. Through- Carroll was attracted to is a perspective that makes
out his life Carroll displayed a fascination with it all seem puerile and pathetic, as if Carroll had
mental derangement. His long poem, “The Hunting doubts in his own mind about the sense (as well as
of the Snark,” subtitled “An Agony in Eight Fits,” the social wisdom) of that life style.
takes us imaginatively to the borderline of dissolu- Source: Roger B. Henkle, “The Mad Hatter’s World” in The
tion: a Baker goes out like a candle at the sight of Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter, 1973, pp. 99–117.
a boojum snark. An insomniac, Carroll worked off
and on at the small book of mathematical “pillow Nina Auerbach
problems” to take the mind, he said, off the “unde- In the following excerpt, Auerbach suggests
sired thoughts” that fly into the head in those late- that each character Alice meets in her adventures
night hours before sleep. And Carroll recorded in represents a part of Alice’s own personality.
his diary the confusion between dream and wake-
fulness that makes us question our very sanity: Dinah is a strange figure. She is the only
above-ground character whom Alice mentions re-
Query: when we are dreaming and, as often happens,
have a dim consciousness of the fact and try to wake, peatedly, almost always in terms of her eating some
do we not say and do things which in waking life smaller animal. She seems finally to function as a
would be insane? May we not then sometimes define personification of Alice’s own subtly cannibalistic

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hunger, as Fury in the Mouse’s tale is personified the exception of the powerful Cheshire Cat, whom
as a dog. At one point, Alice fantasizes her own I shall discuss below; most of the Wonderland an-
identity actually blending into Dinah’s: imals stand in some danger of being exploited or
“How queer it seems,” Alice said to herself, “to be eaten. The Dormouse is their prototype: he is fussy
going messages for a rabbit! I suppose Dinah’ll be and cantankerous, with the nastiness of a self-aware
sending me on messages next!” And she began fan- victim, and he is stuffed into a teapot as the Mock
cying the sort of thing that would happen: “Miss Turtle, sobbing out his own elegy, will be stuffed
Alice! Come here directly, and get ready for your into a tureen.
walk!” “Coming in a minute, nurse! But I’ve got to
watch this mousehole till Dinah comes back, and see Alice’s courteously menacing relationship to
that the mouse doesn’t get out.” these animals is more clearly brought out in Alice’s
While Dinah is always in a predatory attitude, Adventures under Ground, in which she encounters
most of the Wonderland animals are lugubrious only animals until she meets the playing cards, who
victims; together, they encompass the two sides of are lightly sketched-in versions of their later coun-
animal nature that are in Alice as well. But as she terparts. When expanding the manuscript for pub-
falls down the rabbit hole, Alice senses the com- lication, Carroll added the Frog Footman, Cook,
plicity between eater and eaten, looking-glass ver- Duchess, Pig-Baby, Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter,
sions of each other: March Hare, and Dormouse, as well as making the
Queen of Hearts a more fully developed character
“Dinah, my dear! I wish you were down here with than she was in the manuscript. In other words, all
me! There are no mice in the air, I’m afraid, but you
the human or quasi-human characters were added
might catch a bat, and that’s very like a mouse, you
know. But do cats eat bats, I wonder?” And here in revision, and all develop aspects of Alice that
Alice began to get rather sleepy, and went on saying exist only under the surface of her dialogue. The
to herself, in a dreamy sort of way, “Do cats eat bats? Duchess’ household also turns inside out the do-
Do cats eat bats?” and sometimes, “Do bats eat cats?” mesticated Wordsworthian ideal: with baby and
for, you see, as she couldn’t answer either question, pepper flung about indiscriminately, pastoral tran-
it didn’t matter which way she put it.
quillity is inverted into a whirlwind of savage sex-
We are already half-way to the final banquet uality. The furious Cook embodies the equation be-
of Looking-Glass, in which the food comes alive tween eating and killing that underlies Alice’s
and begins to eat the guests. apparently innocent remarks about Dinah. The vi-
Even when Dinah is not mentioned, Alice’s at- olent Duchess’ unctuous search for “the moral” of
titude toward the animals she encounters is often things echoes Alice’s own violence and search for
one of casual cruelty. It is a measure of Dodgson’s “the rules.” At the Mad Tea Party, the Hatter ex-
ability to flatten out Carroll’s material that the tends Alice’s “great interest in questions of eating
prefatory poem could describe Alice “in friendly and drinking” into an insane modus vivendi; like
chat with bird or beast,” or that he would later see Alice, the Hatter and the Duchess sing savage songs
Alice as “loving as a dog … gentle as a fawn.” She about eating that embody the underside of Victo-
pities Bill the Lizard and kicks him up the chim- rian literary treacle. The Queen’s croquet game
ney, a state of mind that again looks forward to that magnifies Alice’s own desire to cheat at croquet
of the Pecksniffian Walrus in Looking-Glass. When and to punish herself violently for doing so. Its use
she meets the Mock Turtle, the weeping embodi- of live animals may be a subtler extension of Al-
ment of a good Victorian dinner, she restrains her- ice’s own desire to twist the animal kingdom to the
self twice when he mentions lobsters, but then dis- absurd rules of civilization, which seem to revolve
torts Isaac Watt’s Sluggard into a song about a largely around eating and being eaten. Alice is able
baked lobster surrounded by hungry sharks. In its to appreciate the Queen’s savagery so quickly be-
second stanza, a Panther shares a pie with an Owl cause her size changes have made her increasingly
who then becomes dessert, as Dodgson’s good table aware of who she, herself, is from the point of view
manners pass into typical Carrollian cannibalism. of a Caterpillar, a Mouse, a Pigeon, and, espe-
The more sinister and Darwinian aspects of animal cially, a Cheshire Cat.
nature are introduced into Wonderland by the gen- The Cheshire Cat, also a late addition to the
tle Alice, in part through projections of her hunger book, is the only figure other than Alice who en-
onto Dinah and the “nice little dog” (she meets a compasses all the others. William Empson [in Some
“dear little puppy” after she has grown small and Versions of Pastoral, 1950] discusses at length the
is afraid he will eat her up) and in part through the spiritual kinship between Alice and the Cat, the
semi-cannibalistic appetite her songs express. With only creature in Wonderland whom she calls her

3 8 N o v e l s f o r S t u d e n t s
 A l i c e ’ s A d v e n t u r e s i n W o n d e r l a n d

“friend.” Florence Becker Lennon [in The Life of the trial done,’ she thought, ‘and hand round the
Lewis Carroll, 1962], refers to the Cheshire Cat as refreshments!’” Her hunger links her to the hungry
“ Dinah’s dream-self” and we have noticed the sub- Knave who is being sentenced: in typically am-
tle shift of identities between Alice and Dinah biguous portmanteau fashion, Carroll makes the
throughout the story. The Cat shares Alice’s equiv- trial both a pre-Orwellian travesty of justice and an
ocal placidity: “The Cat only grinned when it saw objective correlative of a real sense of sin. Like
Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it the dog Fury in the Mouse’s tale, Alice takes all
had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she the parts. But unlike Fury, she is accused as well
felt it ought to be treated with respect.” The Cat is as accuser, melting into judge, jury, witness, and
the only creature to make explicit the identification defendant; the person who boxes on the ears as well
between Alice and the madness of Wonderland: as the person who “cheats.” Perhaps the final ver-
“‘… we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’ dict would tell Alice who she is at last, but if it did,
‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice. ‘You Wonderland would threaten to overwhelm her. Be-
must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come fore it comes, she “grows”; the parts of her nature
here.’ Alice didn’t think that proved it at all….” rush back together; combining the voices of victim
Although Alice cannot accept it and closes into si- and accuser, she gives “a little scream, half of fright
lence, the Cat’s remark may be the answer she has and half of anger,” and wakes up.
been groping toward in her incessant question,
Presented from the point of view of her older
“who am I?” As an alter ego, the Cat is wiser than
sister’s sentimental pietism, the world to which
Alice—and safer—because he is the only charac-
Alice awakens seems far more dream-like and hazy
ter in the book who is aware of his own madness.
than the sharp contours of Wonderland. Alice’s les-
In his serene acceptance of the fury within and
son about her own identity has never been stated
without, his total control over his appearance and
explicitly for the stammerer Dodgson was able to
disappearance, he almost suggests a post-analytic
talk freely only in his private language of puns and
version of the puzzled Alice.
nonsense, but a Wonderland pigeon points us to-
As Alice dissolves increasingly into Wonder- ward it:
land, so the Cat dissolves into his own head, and
finally into his own grinning mouth. The core of “You’re a serpent; and there’s no use denying it. I
suppose you’ll be telling me next that you never
Alice’s nature, too, seems to lie in her mouth: the
tasted an egg!”
eating and drinking that direct her size changes and
motivate much of her behavior, the songs and “I have tasted eggs, certainly,” said Alice, who was
verses that pop out of her inadvertently, are all in- a very truthful child; “but little girls eat eggs quite
volved with things entering and leaving her mouth. as much as serpents do, you know.”
Alice’s first song introduces a sinister image of a “I don’t believe it,” said the Pigeon; “but if they do,
grinning mouth. Our memory of the Crocodile’s why, then they’re a kind of serpent: that’s all I can
grin hovers over the later description of the Cat’s say.” This was such a new idea to Alice, that she was
“grin without a Cat,” and colors our sense of quite silent for a minute or two …
Alice’s infallible good manners: Like so many of her silences throughout the
How cheerfully he seems to grin, book, Alice’s silence here is charged with signifi-
How neatly spreads his claws, cance, reminding us again that an important tech-
And welcomes little fishes in, nique in learning to read Carroll is our ability to
With gently smiling jaws!… interpret his private system of symbols and signals
When the Duchess’ Cook abruptly barks out and to appreciate the many meanings of silence. In
“Pig!” Alice thinks the word is meant for her, this scene, the golden child herself becomes the ser-
though it is the baby, another fragment of Alice’s pent in childhood’s Eden. The eggs she eats sug-
own nature, who dissolves into a pig. The Mock gest the woman she will become, the unconscious
Turtle’s lament for his future soupy self later blends cannibalism involved in the very fact of eating and
tellingly into the summons for the trial: the lament desire to eat, and finally, the charmed circle of
of the eaten and the call to judgment melt together. childhood itself. Only in Alice’s Adventures in
When she arrives at the trial, the unregenerate Wonderland was Carroll able to fall all the way
Alice instantly eyes the tarts: “In the very middle through the rabbit hole to the point where top and
of the court was a table, with a large dish of tarts bottom become one, bats and cats melt into each
upon it: they looked so good, that it made Alice other, and the vessel of innocence and purity is also
quite hungry to look at them—‘I wish they’d get the source of inescapable corruption.

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