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Jane Doe

Mr. Cuffe

AP Literature

January 12, 20XX

Spiraling Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , down the Rabbit Hole

While the process of growing up is the most challenging obstacle a child has to go

through, it is often forgotten how troubling it actually is. Lewis Carroll creatively expressed the

challenges of growing up through his novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which follows a

young girl named Alice through her surreal experiences in Wonderland. Alice is roaming

through a garden when she spots a rabbit hole, and as any young girl would do, she is compelled

to follow it. As she is spiraling down this never-ending rabbit hole, she comes to the conclusions

that maybe this was something she should have reconsidered. Once she arrives in the alternate

world of Wonderland, nothing she had learned in the real world seems to be relevant anymore.

Every situation that is put before Alice requires knowledge that although she thought she had,

she does not. Whether the situation is caring for a baby or testifying in front of a jury, all

previous knowledge no longer matters, because this alternate world does not require real world

solutions, but the logic is like that of the people of Wonderland, and Alice quickly realizes that

she does not fit in. Alice spends her time in Wonderland not only trying to make sense of the

world she landed in, but also trying to escape, but to no avail. This mimics the cycle that

children go through when they are forced to leave their childhood behind and grow up. They

find themselves in a world of which they cannot make sense, and all the rules and knowledge

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that they had gathered throughout their childhood no longer matter, because they are in a world

run by entirely different people, and must learn to fend for themselves. Many children spend

years of their childhood wishing they could grow up, but once they are finally forced to, they

wish they could return to their childhood. While the overall theme of growing up throughout the

novel is pretty explicit, it is often overshadowed by the overt “nonsense” of the situations at hand

that Alice is facing. Lewis Carroll creates this parallelism between his novel and the path from

childhood to adulthood through his use of comparisons between “Real World” Alice and

“Wonderland” Alice, juxtaposition of the apparent normalcy of Alice and the abstractness of

Wonderland, the paradoxes expressed through growing and shrinking, and the variety of sexual

symbolism throughout the novel.

While the central meaning behind Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is

often interpreted in various plausible ways, one way a reader can see it is through Carrol’s

development of Alice in both the “Real World” and in “Wonderland.” Alice is a young girl

pushed into an alternate world all by herself, where she is forced to fend for herself. While this

world that she finds herself in does not always make sense, she tries her best to use previous

knowledge that she learned in her “real” world to help her make sense of the Wonderland that

she is in. Scenarios in which Alice compares her old world self to her new world occur

persistently throughout the novel, and one example can be found in the scene where Alice finds

herself in the courtroom of the Queen, where a very bizarre and apparent “unjust” trial is taking

place. Alice thinks to herself when she confronts its jurors thinking, “‘I suppose they are the

jurors.’ She said this last word two or three times over to herself, being rather proud of it: for she

thought, and rightly too, that very few little girls of her age knew the meaning of it all” (Carroll

125). Alice compares herself to the old world that she was accustomed, and this is a satirical

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way of Carroll exemplifying the process of growing up. This Wonderland is essentially the “real

world” that adults try to prepare their children for; however, the fact that even though Alice has

her old world knowledge, she has trouble adjusting to Wonderland shows that even the best

preparation cannot make a child ready to grow up for certain. This is further explained by Will

Brooker in his critical analysis of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Brooker explains:

However, [the story’s] appeal has to be explained beyond a Victorian social allegory, and Haughton maintains that their deeper, most central theme is the construction of identity and meaning. Alice is, measuring herself against what she remembers from the real world … but questions of who we are and what words signify are, of course, broad-ranging enough to apply beyond Alice’s schoolroom … [The novel is] grounded in [its] specific social context, although there is disagreement about the extent to which they intentionally reflect of parody individuals, debates, and locations in Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll’s lives. They are concerned with the child’s experience in an adult environment and with the process of growing up, with finding a sense of self (Brooker 93).

Alice is learning who she is on her own, making Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland essentially a

novel taking on the journey of growing up. While no child is thoroughly prepared for the real

world based solely on their home education, they can learn through experience – trial and error –

just as Alice does in Wonderland. Perhaps Carroll choses this theme to warn children coming of

age about the confusion that they might feel when they enter adulthood; or on the other hand,

there may be an underlying motive Carroll is subtly expressing: the world of adulthood doesn’t

always make sense.

Lewis Carroll continues to subtly compare “Real World” Alice to “Wonderland” Alice

throughout the novel in order to progress the idea of a child blindly entering the adult world. In

curious situations, Alice becomes weary as to how she should react to everything that is

occurring. All the creatures in Wonderland seem to know exactly what is appropriate for the

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situation; however, their reactions are peculiar in accordance as to what Alice would have done

had she been in her world. For example, when Alice is attending the Queen’s croquet game, she

watches how the people around her are behaving, so that she knows to appropriately behave in

order to please the Queen. Carroll remarks:

Alice was rather doubtful whether she ought not to lie down on her face like the three gardeners, but she could not remember ever having heard of such a role at processions; ‘and besides, what would be the use of procession,’ thought she, ‘is people had all to lie down on their faces, so that they couldn’t see?’ So she stood where she was and waited (Carroll 92).

Alice compares her “Real World” self to the scenarios that she finds herself in, but her logic does

not always coincide with what the animals and people in Wonderland are doing; rather, they

often conflict. She often has difficulty finding meaning behind their logic, being that in some

cases it is rather irrational and confusing from her own mindset. As Jan Susina concludes in his

critical analysis of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, “[Alice] uses her lessons as a form of self-

validation” (Susina 35). Alice feels sure of herself in these situations where her behavior seems

irrational to these characters because she is behaving the way she had learned to behave at home.

In her mind, lessons are more important than experience; instead of using the knowledge she has

around her from the creatures in Wonderland who are behaving according to their customs, Alice

is behaving the way she perceives to be normal. In comparison, a child may act the way their

parents had taught them to act once they reach adulthood, but that is not to say that these morals

that they have been taught are the most appropriate to use. As Natov asserts in his critical

analysis of Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland:

If only personality theory were so simple, children might feel a bit safer among complex and often erratic adults. How well Carroll depicts Alice's need to define, limit, control the chaos of so many of the Wonderland situations. Beginning with her free fall through

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space down the rabbit hole, Alice tries to find rules to relieve her discomfort. (Natov)

Alice resorts to previously followed rules and regulations to make herself feel more comfortable.

She feels as though she is in the right if she is following directions that her parents had put

before her back at home. For example, parents may teach their children to be trusting in others;

but once they reach adulthood, they may learn that people are not always honest, and they have

to learn to use their best judgment instead of trusting everyone that they meet. Carroll mimics

this journey of children growing up through Alice’s behavior and rationale in Wonderland.

Alice also compares herself to the creatures in Wonderland by her level of education.

Alice uses her education from home to label her social status, she believes that she is smarter

than the creatures in Wonderland; and therefore, she acts as though her rationale is the best

rationale, and is not accepting of the mindset of the Wonderland creatures. While they often

recommend the opposite of what Alice would do, instead of trying to understand their logic,

Alice dismisses them and resorts back to the behaviors she learned in her classrooms back home.

One scenario in which Alice uses her schoolroom knowledge to label herself as smarter than the

creatures of Wonderland occurs when Alice is having a conversation with the Mock Turtle. The

Mock Turtle begins:

‘We had the best of educations – in fact, we went to school every day – ’‘I’ve been to a day-school, too,’ said Alice. ‘You needn’t be so proud as all that.’‘With extras?’ asked the Mock Turtle, a little anxiously.‘Yes,’ said Alice: ‘we learned French and music.’‘And washing?’ said the Mock Turtle.‘Certainly not!’ said Alice indignantly.‘Ah! Then yours wasn’t a really good school,’ said the Mock Turtle in a tone of great relief. ‘Now, at ours, they had, at the end of the bill, ‘French, music, and washing – extra.’’ (Carroll 110).

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Alice uses what she has learned at school to try to one-up the Mock Turtle; however, they are

judging each other on topics irrelevant to intelligence. While “washing” has nothing to do with

whether the Mock Turtle of Alice is more intelligent, they are arguing simply for the satisfaction

of being considered the smarter person. As Jan Susina claims in his critical analysis of Alice’s

Adventures in Wonderland, “Alice uses her accumulated knowledge as a marker of social status

… She and the Mock Turtle play a game of private-school one-ups-manship…as she shows her

superiority by having gone to the school with the most extras” (Susina 35). This game of back

and forth is only played so that Alice feels superior to the Mock Turtle, and so the Mock Turtle

will feel inferior to Alice. Alice uses her knowledge to measure her power. Susina continues,

“Carroll shows that education has little to do with understanding a subject. Alice uses it as a

social marker to feel superior” (Susina 35). This further compares “Real World” Alice to

“Wonderland” Alice. Carroll strategically places a child in an entirely new world to show the

path from childhood to adulthood. As a children learn to grow up, they will always believe they

are better because they may have been superior as a child; but, that does not necessarily mean

that they will not come across someone in the “real world” who is inherently smarter than them,

or superior to them in any way. Growing up becomes difficult when a child realizes that they are

not as superior as they were once believed to be, and Carroll shows this through Alice’s “one-

ups-manship” with the Mock Turtle.

Another thing that is created by Carrol is sexual symbolism. It is strewn throughout

Alice’s journey. It is overtly shown in the scene in which Alice encounters a series of doors.

None of the doors seem to be unlocked, but as Carroll states, “however, on the second time

round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door

about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight, it

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fitted!”(17). While it is peculiar that none of the average sized doors were open, it is stranger that

there is a key strategically placed beside the only door of short stature. In Goldschmidt’s

psychoanalysis of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, he claims:

Here we find the common symbolism of lock and key representing coitus; the doors of normal size represent adult women. These are disregarded by the dreamer and the interest is centered on the little door, which symbolizes a female child; the curtain before it represents the child's clothes (Goldschmidt)

This assertion of an infatuation of female minors is often supported by critics. It is said that

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is based off of a true girl, Alice Liddell. Lewis Carroll would

often tell stories to the Liddell sisters, Lorina, Alice, and Edith. However, when Lewis Carroll

began telling them the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice made a strange request.

As W. H. Auden relays, “this time, Alice did what she had never done before – she asked him to

write the story down. At first he said he would think about it, but she continued to pester him

until, eventually, he gave his promise to do so” (Auden and Phillips 4). It is clear that this novel

was written based off of a living girl whom Carroll knew very well, so it can be deduced that

much of the sexual symbolism could be in reference to the Alice Liddell that Carroll knew. It is

asserted that, “By befriending small girls, identifying with them, seeking to divert them,

projecting himself back into childhood, and imagining stories explicitly for children, he managed

to create two texts that have been, and are, as widely read, known, and quoted as any imaginative

literature of the past two centuries” (Polhemus). On the other hand, there are literary critics who

believe that the novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has absolutely nothing to do with sexual

symbolism. As critic Bernard M. Patten clearly testifies, “The Alice narrative is not about the

zoo of interpretations that critics have contrived for it and for Carroll. It is not about … the

proposition that Alice equals phallus. The narrative is not about a lot of things” (Patten 11).

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While there is no exact proof as to what the novel truly is about, these speculations help readers

to form their own opinions, and while in some cases these opinions may be that Carroll had a

love for little Alice Liddell, others may see it simply as a child’s story, and nothing more.

The central theme of growing up in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is further evident

when considering the paradoxes that are expressed in the novel. The story seems to be contrived

of nothing but a constant string of paradoxes. Readers often find themselves trying to make

sense of something that possibly is not meant to make sense in any way. It is possible that Lewis

Carroll meant for these paradoxes to represent something on a much larger scale, not to just

make it meaningful for his narrative, alone. With this said, perhaps the paradoxes should be

taken as a whole, not taken one by one to each mean something. For example, one paradox that

can be broken down into meaning is Alice’s consistent change in stature. Alice begins by

shrinking, Carroll expresses, after she drinks a mysterious liquid in one segment of the narrative,

“she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now

the right size for going through the little door into that lovely garden” (Carroll 18). Shortly after,

Alice eats a mysterious biscuit and begins growing uncontrollably, as it is explained, “Just at this

moment her head struck against the roof of the hall: in fact she was now rather more than nine

feet high, and she at once took up the little golden key and hurried off to the garden door”

(Carroll 23). While it is hard to exactly determine why Alice continually shrinks and grows, it

can be nothing more than a paradox of sorts. As Gilles Deleuze contrives:

She is larger now; she was smaller before. But it is at the same moment that one becomes larger than once was and smaller than one becomes. This is the simultaneity off a becoming whose characteristic is to elude the present … Alice does not grow without shrinking, and vice versa. Good sense affirms that in all things there is a determinable sense or direction, but paradox is the affirmation of both sense or directions at the same time (Deleuze 1).

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Carroll may have made Alice shrink and then grow to create a paradox – she cannot grow

without having been small, and she cannot shrink without having been large. It is possible that

Carroll is just trying to further confuse his readers, as he did throughout the majority of this

novel, creating nonsensical scenarios and absurd situations. Perhaps these paradoxes were

simply to get readers’ minds moving. Another paradox that Carroll iss famously known for was,

as Patten puts it:

The class of things that [the novel] is not about is much larger than what it is about – much, much larger. Just as (and here I am quoting the man himself) the classes of nonexistent things far exceeds the classes of things that do exist … If the classes of nonexistent things don’t exist, how can they be larger or more numerous than those classes of things that do exist? (Patten 11).

Patten is asserting that the novel is about far less than what critics have conjured it up to be. The

novel is simple and plain text, and it is literature analysts who have made the novel seem to be so

much more than it actually is, and that is the great paradox that Lewis Carroll was trying to

prove. However, those who do believe that everything within Lewis Carroll’s novel does have

meaning would argue that these paradoxes and continues stature changes of Alice mean much

more than just that. As Charles Frey and John Griffith assert:

No parent, teacher, or critic can really "do justice" to Alice in Wonderland. The work is far too dense and multivalent to be explicated and interpreted at all satisfactorily, and the work now has become surrounded by so much mystification and hoopla that interested readers must pick their way carefully through a mass of theories and counter-theories about Carroll and Alice if they wish to guide themselves or any children to sensible understanding and judgment of the work (Frey and Griffith).

These two literary critics believe that there is so much depth to the stories of Alice that it cannot

merely be a children’s story. They are convinced that beneath the seemingly fun and strange

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adventures of Alice there is far more meaning. While they believe that, “Alice is engaged in a

romance quest for her own identity and growth, for some understanding of logic, rules, the

games people play, authority, time, and death” (Frey and Griffith), others may take an entirely

different approach to the paradoxes presented by Carroll. Many critics believe that the constant

size changes in Alice represent sexual urges. This is particularly related to the scene in which

Alice is growing uncontrollably, Alice exclaims, “Now I’m opening out like the largest telescope

that ever was! Good-bye, feet!” (Carroll 23). This is where critics get the idea that Alice is

equivalent to phallus, and that the novel is hinting at strong sexual urges. As Goldschmidt

reveals, “The whole course of the story is perhaps to be explained by the desire for complete

virility, that conflicts with the desire for abnormal satisfaction” (Goldschmidt). This means that

Carroll is perhaps expressing his “abnormal” sexual drive towards little, ten year old Alice

Liddell. Whether this assertion is valid or not is not known, but it is an assertion that is made by

many critics. The ending of this novel, in which Alice wakes up to realize that her adventures in

Wonderland were nothing but a dream, shows that Carroll’s sexual attraction to Alice Liddell is

incomplete and withheld. Goldschmidt concludes, “Later, as we have said, the story comes

under the control of the conscious mind, and there are no irrelevant incidents. But the reader, if

he accepts our thesis in its main lines, may proceed to find for himself, in the earlier part,

symbols of minor importance” (Goldschmidt). This conclusion draws attention to the fact that

Carroll is recognizing that these urges are abnormal; and he could not advance on them, thus

ending the novel with Alice simply waking up from a dream. The paradoxes that Carroll strews

throughout Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland can be interpreted in a variety of ways – whether it

is Carroll’s way of simply making something out of nothing, or if it possibly is displaying that

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Carroll had sexual feelings for real life Alice Liddell, therefore further developing the idea that

maybe even Carrol himself struggled with the process of growing up, much like Alice.

Juxtaposition is also a key factor in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Alice is a seemingly normal young girl; however, when she is placed in the strange alternate

world of Wonderland, roles reverse. It is almost as if the strange customs and behaviors in

Wonderland are normal, and it is Alice who is seen as strange. This role reversal is due to

juxtaposition – placing ordinary Alice in an extraordinary world. One form of juxtaposition is

revealed in situations where Alice believes that she is full of knowledge, but this knowledge

means nothing when it is not useful in the world of Wonderland. Wonderland has its own set of

rules, customs, and knowledge, and everything Alice considers to be knowledgeable is rather

useless in Wonderland, being that it seems to be the “real” world’s exact opposite. One such

situation is when the Caterpillar asks her to recite poetry that she knows. As Jan Susina explains,

“Carroll suggests that when a dutiful child, such as Alice, is forced to memorize such verses, she

is more concerned with the performance than with the message of the poem” (39). In Alice’s

real world, memorizing verses was all that she needed to do to be considered smart and at the top

of her class; however, when she meets the creatures in Wonderland and they ask her what the

verses mean, she is at a loss. The Mock Turtle asks Alice as she is reciting her verses, “What is

the use of repeating all that stuff if you don’t explain it as you go on? It’s by far the most

confusing thing I ever heard!” (Carroll 121). Alice may be full of knowledge in her world, but

when she is placed in this alternate world of Wonderland, she is no longer considered

knowledgeable when she cannot give meaning to the verses she is reciting. Susina goes on to

say, “Alice is more preoccupied with performing the poem than understanding it. The same lack

of comprehension is evident in her lessons. While Alice frequently shows off her knowledge, it

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is usually scrambled” (Susina 39). This observation can be related back to the idea that Alice’s

Adventures in Wonderland is a novel about the journey from childhood to adulthood. Alice

considers herself to be very knowledgeable, just like many children on the brink of adulthood

might think of themselves; however, once she is thrown into Wonderland, she realizes that

maybe she isn’t that knowledgeable after all. Children who are thrown into the “real” world may

think they’re ready and smart enough to take on the life of an adult, until they realize all that it

entails. Textbook knowledge is not all that is needed to take on the lifestyle of an adult; in fact,

textbook knowledge will not get a person very far at all. Alice comes to this reality when

everything she has learned in the schoolroom is completely irrelevant to the issues she is facing

in Wonderland. She tries to show off and one-up everyone as much as she can, but they are not

as impressed as she had intended them to be. Just as children growing up may be ready to

impress the adults in the real world with the knowledge that they have, they may have more to

learn then they thought. This is the main idea of the juxtaposition in Alice’s Adventures in

Wonderland – Carroll is, in a sense, placing a child into an adult world when he places Alice in

Wonderland.

Through the use of comparison between “Real World” Alice and “Wonderland” Alice,

juxtaposition of the seemingly normal young girl Alice and the abstractness of Wonderland, the

countless paradoxes that are expressed through morals and scenes in the novel, and the array of

sexual symbolism scattered throughout the novel, Carroll takes his readers through the wild

journey of Wonderland. Carroll uses these techniques to parallel a child’s journey to adulthood,

and all the trials and tribulations that this journey entails. Believing that she is knowledgeable

and worthy of being thrown into an adult world, Alice is soon shocked beyond belief when she

realizes that everything she was taught in the “real world” no longer matters in Wonderland. In

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comparison, children may believe they are smart enough and capable of adulthood until they are

actually forced to grow up, in which they learn that they are not at all ready – textbook

knowledge is not a strong source of reliability in comparison to experience – something that both

Alice and children everywhere learn when they are placed in a new world. Alice struggles to

find a way to return back home, just as adults everywhere wish they could return to their

childhood; however, to Alice’s benefit, she wakes up in her sister’s lap to find that Wonderland

was just a dream – something adults can’t conclude about adulthood. While this may not have

been Carrol’s initial goal, watching Alice struggle to fit in in her new world leaves readers

wondering, is textbook knowledgeable and schoolroom curriculum enough to help a child learn

to grow up? Should schools be teaching more valuable and practical lessons in order for children

to be able to survive the “real world”? Or is experience the only way to learn how to survive the

adult world?

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Works Cited

Brooker, Will. Alice's Adventures: Lewis Carroll in Popular Culture. London: Continuum, 2005.

Print.

Carroll, Lewis, and Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking

Glass. Maidenhead: Purnell, 1975. Print.

Deleuze, Gilles. The Logic of Sense. New York: Columbia UP, 1990. Print.

Frey, Charles, and John Griffith. "Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." The

Literary Heritage of Childhood An Appraisal of Children's Classics in the Western

Tradition. Charles Frey and John Griffith. Greenwood Press, 1987. 115-122. Rpt. in

Children's Literature Review. Ed. Gerard J. Senick. Vol. 18. Detroit: Gale Research,

1989. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Jan. 2015.

Goldschmidt, A. M. E. "'Alice in Wonderland' Psychoanalyzed." The New Oxford Outlook. Ed.

Richard Crossman, Gilbert Highet, and Derek Kahn. Basil Blackwell, 1933. Rpt. in

Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Laurie Lanzen Harris. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale

Research, 1982. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Jan. 2015.

Natov, Roni. "The Persistence of Alice." Lion and the Unicorn 3.1 (1979): 38-61. Rpt. in

Children's Literature Review. Ed. Tom Burns. Vol. 104. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature

Resource Center. Web. 12 Jan. 2015.

Patten, Bernard M. The Logic of Alice: Clear Thinking in Wonderland. Amherst, NY:

Prometheus, 2009. Print.

Phillips, Robert S. Aspects of Alice; Lewis Carroll's Dreamchild as Seen through the Critics'

Looking-glasses, 1865-1971. New York: Vanguard, 1971. Print.

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Polhemus, Robert M. "Lewis Carroll and the Child in Victorian Fiction." The Columbia History

of the British Novel. Ed. John Richetti. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

579-607. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Marie C. Toft and Russel

Whitaker. Vol. 139. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Jan. 2015.

Susina, Jan. The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature. London: Routledge, 2008. Print.