Alice In Wonderland: Conservative or Progressive?

Author’s Note

Following on from the recent success of my historical reading of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, in which I interpret the text as a piece of World War fiction, I have decided to publish another essay of mine. This one was written during my third year of English Literature for a module called ‘Victorian Childhoods’. The original set question was:

“Victorian narratives of childhood are always ultimately socially and morally conservative.” With close reference to one text, to what extent do you agree with this statement?

I decided to respond to this by focusing on Lewis Carroll’s novel Alice In Wonderland and its sequel Through The Looking Glass.

Before I begin the essay, I would like to add a quick thank you for all the feedback I have received on my last post and I welcome any feedback / thoughts you have for this one.

Happy Reading
xoxox

Introduction

Alice In Wonderland; Today
Modern adaptations of Alice In Wonderland offer a very progressive re-interpretation of the novel, drawing out sexual imagery and allegories about drug-use perceived to be woven within the original narrative (Douglas-Fairhurst, 2015). Whether or not Lewis Carroll would have agreed with these adaptations, we will never know (perhaps he is rolling about in his grave at the very thought of them). However, thanks to a literary concept known as Death of the Author – which doesn’t actually refer to the literal death of the author – it becomes possible to understand a text without considering the author’s original intentions, background or historical context.

In this essay, I will be attempting to consolidate both the modern understanding and a historically-informed reading of Alice In Wonderland, as well as its sequel, Through The Looking Glass.

Alice In Wonderland; Then
When exploring narratives of childhood written in the Victorian Era, the texts have a tendency to seem morally and socially conservative to the modern reader.
Lewis Carroll’s novel Alice in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking Glass may appear dated to the modern reader, with their awareness and frequent parody of Victorian society. On the other hand, a defining feature of the two novels is their ability to avoid fixed applications of meaning and inspire paradoxical interpretations from its readership.
Much like the Victorian Era itself, they can be interpreted as being either conservative or progressive depending on how they are perceived by the reader.
It is also possible to focus on them as tales written to entertain its child readers, rather than as stories which express any moral or social concerns in their narratives.

By exploring and engaging with opposing readings of the books, as well as considering them in relation to texts of a similar genre and audience, I hope to displace the argument that all Victorian children’s texts are ultimately conservative.

ANALYSIS

Victorian writers’ tendency to use their narratives to provide moral guidance to their young readership.

Regarding children’s literature produced in the Victorian Era as a collective group of texts, many narratives demonstrate a conscious effort on the adult writer’s part to instruct the child reader on the correct ways of behaving.

Several key children’s novels from the era, including Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies and Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, contain narratives which sought to engage with contemporary issues and topics of Victorian society.

The Alice stories, however, found their origin as a means of simple entertainment for the author’s child friend, Alice Liddell.

In Charles Dodson’s diaries, there is little evidence to suggest that he intended these initial tales for a public readership until he was encouraged by others to publish a revised version (Carroll, pg. 264). Instead of attaching his real name to this new piece of work, Dodson decided to publish it under the pseudonym, Lewis Carroll.

Many readers view this decision as an opportunity for Dodson to construct a new and separate persona for himself.

In her book Inventing Wonderland, Jackie Wullschläger perceives Dodson to be “outwardly a man of the most conventional propriety… [who] disciplined his emotional self almost into non-existence” (Wullschläger, 1995). She interprets the Alice books as being the author’s only way of expressing himself within a society that repressed eccentric individuals like himself.

By creating a fantasy world, some writers sought to escape from the repressive attitudes and values of Victorian society.

Through the use of a fantasy setting, i.e. Wonderland, it can be argued that Carroll was attempting to escape from the conservative and rigid values imposed on him, retreating into a world of his own creation rather than staying firmly rooted in a conventional Victorian setting.

By taking on a name other than his own, it gave him the freedom to express non-conformist views without compromising his own reputation as a respectable member of Victorian society.

One possible unorthodox idea conveyed in the texts is a struggle to conform to societal norms. This struggle is perhaps most evident in the books’ characters themselves and how many of Wonderland’s and the Looking Glass world’s inhabitants appear to parallel each other.

The Alice books pair up and parallel its characters to represent the struggle of conformity.

In his essay ‘Escape into the Garden’, Florence Becker Lennon organises the characters into pairs. He describes these pairings as being “double exposure[s]” and indicates ways that characters, such as the Cheshire Cat and Dinah, can be linked together (Lennon, 2006).

While it may not be possible to form a strong argument based on the assertion that one character from every pair conforms more to Victorian standards of behaviour than their counterpart, it is possible to discern a divide in some pairs between Victorian conventionality and Wonderland eccentricity.

This argument lends itself particularly well to the pairing of the Rabbit and the March Hare. Despite being a similar species of animals, the two characters perform different functions within the narrative and have two very distinct personalities.

The Rabbit closely resembles a conventional image of the Victorian civilian in his dress and manner. He is depicted in both the text and its illustrations as wearing a waistcoat. Moreover, his compliance to Wonderland’s faintly Victorian class structure is evident in the way that he is always conscious of offending those of a higher class status to himself, as well as revealing in Alice in Wonderland’s fourth chapter that he has a “housemaid” of his own (Carroll, pg. 26).

In contrast, the March Hare appears to counteract the Rabbit’s orderliness with his association with Wonderland’s most eccentric features. He is introduced in a scene which overturns any conventionality that a tea-party in a Victorian narrative could have. In a chapter accurately named “a mad tea-party” (Carroll, pg. 52), the guests engage in a discussion entirely comprised out of word games, unanswerable riddles and absurd anecdotes. The setting is made further strange by the way it challenges the laws of time through it being “always six o’clock” (Carroll, pg. 56).

As singular characters, both the Rabbit and the Hare possess the simplistic and unrealistic personalities of stock characters in fairy tales. However, when they are compared against one another, the conflicting traits of their characters can be said to externally represent the difficulty in conforming to strict codes of behaviour expected within Victorian society.

The conflicts within Alice’s character further demonstrates the struggle to conform.

It is also possible to find evidence of an internal struggle to conform to Victorian standards within a single character. Alice, the books’ protagonist, is the most prominent example of this. In her fondness “of pretending to be two people” (Carroll, pg. 12), two conflicting personalities are revealed within the opening chapter of Alice in Wonderland.

One of them can be interpreted as the emotional and child-like side of Alice. This part of her character has a tendency to react to and be frightened of, the difficult situations that she finds herself in upon entering Wonderland. In contrast, her other personality approaches these challenges in a calmer, emotionally detached way. It is this personality that reflects the respectable Victorian adult.

These two sides of her character sometimes struggle against each other in the narrative, and at points of emotional distress, the more controlled part of herself seeks to suppress her emotional self.

An example of this is when Alice is no longer tall enough to reach “the little golden key” (Carroll, pg. 12) that opens the door to the garden. She fears that she has become trapped in the room and her initial reaction is to cry. Her more controlled self then intervenes and chastises her, making herself feel “ashamed” (Carroll, pg. 14) about getting upset.

It is possible to interpret Alice’s split personality as being nothing more than an ordinary childhood game or as a coping method for dealing with her distress when no adult is present. Nevertheless, it is difficult to overlook the pressure she places upon herself to contain her emotions and adhere to her own ideas of a “respectable person” (Carroll, pg. 12).

Carroll’s negative approach to emotional outbursts more closely abides by Victorian conventions (e.g. Alice’s pool of tears and the Queen of Hearts).

The narrative’s insistence on being able to control one’s own emotions leads to another way of interpreting the text. This reading considers Carroll’s treatment of emotional outbursts, and to what extent his mostly negative portrayal of them suggests a conservative attitude towards emotion that closer abides by Victorian sentiment.

Focusing on the first Alice book, in particular, enough evidence can be found within the text to suggest the danger of emotional outbursts. Returning to the scene where Alice cries, a literal example of how reacting emotionally can be dangerous becomes evident. When she shrinks, her tears quickly become “a pool of tears” (Carroll, pg. 17) and she almost drowns in them. Alice believes that she is being “punished” (Carroll, pg. 17) for her previous outburst. This attaches the idea of negative reinforcement to not being able to control one’s own emotions.

Another character that portrays emotional outbursts negatively is the Queen of Hearts. Both in the novel and its subsequent adaptations, she is positioned as the narrative’s antagonist.

The author himself described her as being “a sort of embodiment of ungovernable passion”. This is evident in both her frequent outbursts and her most memorable and quoted line, “off with his head” (Carroll, pg. 65). The Gryphon undermines the Queen’s authority by revealing that the executions she orders only exist in “her fancy” (Carroll, pg. 72). By this point, it becomes difficult for the reader to consider her anger as anything but melodramatic.

In highlighting the comical elements of emotional outbursts or presenting them as being dangerous obstacles in the narrative, it is therefore possible to discern a critical attitude negating against them. Nevertheless, this argument is not without flaws that point towards the earlier mentioned need to escape.

Once again examining the “pool of tears” (Carroll, pg. 13) chapter, it is significant that while Alice’s tears present a threat to her, they also provide her only means of escape from the room. This suggests an ultimate need for an emotional release, despite the danger it poses.

Wonderland and the Looking Glass world can be interpreted as places which express anxiety about change through their disturbance of natural order. One way of reading the Alice books is as a response to Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

This reading of the two novels draws out the more conservative ideas that can be taken from their narratives, and also acknowledges the important fact that the Victorian Era was not simply a period trapped by its own traditional values.

It was a time of moral and social change.

One of the greatest influences on moral and social attitudes from the Victorian Era came in the form of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. The Alice stories were devised almost three years after the publication of Darwin’s work, and Alice in Wonderland first became available for public readership a further three years after that (Rackin, 2013).

This would have left more than enough time for Darwin’s theories to gain the attention of the Victorian public, as well as begin to receive some critical responses of its own. Also, there is evidence in Dodson’s diaries of him having read work, such as “Mivart’s Genesis of Species”, which responds to Darwin’s theories surrounding natural selection. This suggests a degree of personal interest in the subject.

Critics that read the Alice books in the viewpoint of engaging with Darwin’s theories are quick to point out elements in the texts that could suggest evolution.

A popular passage for this interpretation, which is discussed in Donald Rackin’s essay ‘Blessed Rage: The Alices and the Modern Quest for Order’, is the chapter where the baby transforms into a pig (Carroll, pg. 48). Rackin argues that it is comically reflective of “wishful progressive evolutionism”.

Considering Rackin’s argument, it is evident in the text that Carroll’s portrayal of degeneration differs from other Victorian children’s novels, like Kingsley’s The Water Babies, whereby degeneration is used to morally reinforce good behaviour. In Carroll’s novel, the baby is punished simply for being unable to stop “sobbing” (Carroll, pg. 48).

While this behaviour may be unpleasant for those listening, it can be argued that this is typical behaviour of a young infant and not one that he deserves to be punished for. Therefore, the connection made in the text between evolution and morality can be seen as mocking it and infers a resistance against other Victorians who accepted and attempted to integrate Darwin’s theories into their own religious beliefs.

Other evidence in the books which suggest anxiety about the period’s moral and social changes can be found in the underlying rules of the fantasy worlds themselves.

Wonderland and The Looking Glass world could also be read as a reflection of the changes caused by the Industrial Revolution.

In his introduction to Victorian Fairy Tales: The Revolt of the Fairies and Elves, Jack Zipes comments on how many Victorian writers produced literature, including those that were aimed at children, to express how the Industrial Revolution “changed the fabric of society in Great Britain” (Zipes, 1987).

Both Wonderland and the Looking Glass world appear to do this in their resemblance to Victorian England and the way that they produce a distorted reflection of society through the subversion of its class system.

This alteration of Victorian society is emphasised when the Red Queen tells Alice, “I don’t know about your way… but all ways about here belong to me” (Carroll, pg. 121). Her explanation of how the Looking Glass world operates is initially alien to both Alice and the reader, but carries some traces which are recognisable due to its accordance with the rules of chess.

Also, the Alice books can be read in a way that suggests textual awareness of how the Industrial Revolution affected the genteel class. Carroll uses the titles of “King” and “Queen” (Carroll, pg. 61) for several of his characters, but undermines any sense of authority that they both suggest by bestowing royal status onto small, inanimate objects which would otherwise seem insignificant.

The conflict between character and status is noticed by Alice in the first book, when she first meets the Queen of Hearts and her subjects, and observes that they are “only a pack of cards” (Carroll, pg. 61).

It can be seen as a turning point in the novel where, after she realises who Wonderland’s ruling class are, she becomes less passive and demonstrates that she has the “courage” (Carroll, pg. 62) to resist those that attempt to exert authority over her.

Alice’s realisation of their insignificance is therefore reflective of the loss of influence previously held by the gentry when the Industrial Revolution enabled those not necessarily of a high-class background to prosper.

Relating these points back to the essay’s question, it can be argued that Carroll’s disturbance of traditional power structures presented in the novels’ fantasy worlds depicts an unsettling atmosphere, rather than one which welcomes change. This makes it possible to draw a conservative reading from the text concerning the class system.

The author’s argument against deeper meaning… Are the Alice books simply nonsensical children tales?

Another way of interpreting the Alice books is by reading them as entertaining children’s tales that are detached from moral and social concerns. This is a reading of the books which appears to be supported by the author himself.

In his correspondence with contemporary readers, Carroll frequently asserts that the books “do not teach anything at all”, and in an article which he wrote following the first theatre adaptation of his work, he confesses that “every such idea and nearly every word of the dialogue, came of itself” (Carroll, pg. 276).

This latter detail suggests that at least the first Alice novel was mostly a product of spontaneously thought-out plot rather than an intended design.

Dodson’s selection of this novel’s final title is another piece of evidence which supports the idea that the text was only meant to entertain its child audience. The original manuscript was titled Alice’s Adventures Underground, however, Dodson admits to settling on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland because its previous title was “pronounced too like a lesson-book” (Carroll, pg. 268).

In his keenness to disassociate his novel with other texts which have an educational purpose, Dodson gives it a distinctive quality not common in other children’s texts of its time.

The Alice Books appear to parody moral lessons often preached within Victorian children’s literature and resists moral conclusions.

Commenting on Victorian children’s narratives in his documentary series ‘Age of The Do-Gooders’, Ian Hislop describes them as being “drearily didactic moral fables”. He argues that using literary texts to instruct the child reader follows a more traditional, Puritan belief where children are considered to be “in need of firm moral guidance and rigid discipline to become good”.

The Alice books, on the other hand, appear to subvert the use of didactics in its narrative.

One of the most notable examples of this subversion, as Gillian Avery comments on in her essay ‘Fairy-Tales for Pleasure’, is Carroll’s alteration of existing Victorian “Schoolroom poetry” and parody of their “pious, moralizing verses” (Avery, 2013).

Focusing on the ‘Pig and Pepper’ chapter, Carroll takes a stanza from David Bates’ poem ‘Speak Gently’ and changes its language to completely reverse its meaning. This new stanza uses the original poem’s didactic tone against itself to comically endorse the rough treatment of children instead of the Victorian ideal of a harmonious household. No longer existing as a good example of acceptable Victorian behaviour, the poem is stripped of its moral value and can only be read as a comical verse.

Another way that the Alice books appear to rebel against didactic devices is through the use of its characters.

In his essay ‘Alice in Wonderland: The Child as Swain’, William Empson explores how “the talking-animal convention” has been used for “didactic purposes ever since Aesop”. He argues this is because they “can be made affectionate without making serious emotional demands on [the child reader]” (Empson, 2006, pg.48) and that this idea is parodied in Alice in Wonderland.

Expanding on Empson’s argument, there are several examples in the novel of animals demanding something out of Alice, including the Rabbit ordering Alice to “fetch [him] a pair of gloves and a fan” (Carroll, pg.26) and the Dodo ordering her to hand out “prizes” (Carroll, pg.22) at the end of the Caucus-race. These can be seen as two examples that literally and deliberately contradict the idea that animals appear less demanding than adults.

Another key character that can be seen as undermining the use of didactics is the Duchess. With her tendency to spurt out increasingly absurd morals, she is frequently seen as a character that stresses the first novel’s lack of moral and social purpose.

Nevertheless, there have been alternative readings into the Duchess’s character which suggest that her dialogue is not as frivolous about morality and hidden meanings as it may at first seem. In his essay ‘The Wonder Child in Neverland’, James R. Kincaid presents the interesting argument that the Duchess “may offer the secret of how to make interpreting fun” by being “poststructurally adept, [and seizing] on secret puns, [and] hidden disconnections” (Kincaid, 2013).

This reading of the text suggests that the Alice stories are innovative rather than conservative or disregarding in their treatment of morality. It can be supported by other areas in the books that resist and challenge moral conclusions.

One particular area of the novels that resists moral conclusion is ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ poem in Through the Looking Glass. While both characters in the poem are involved in tricking the young oysters out of the sea and eating them, the Walrus is depicted as feeling remorseful about his actions through his “sobs and tears” (Carroll, pg.140).

Alice, Tweedledum and Tweedledee all engage in a moral discussion about the poem after it has been recited. Alice springs upon its most obvious and simple moral conclusion by saying that she “like[s] the Walrus best” because “he was a little sorry for the oysters” (Carroll, pg.141). Tweedledee challenges this assertion by revealing that “he ate more than the Carpenter” (Carroll, pg.141). When this changes Alice’s mind, his brother points out that the Carpenter “ate as many as he could get” (Carroll, pg.141). They are then forced to come to the conclusion that both the Carpenter and the Walrus are “very unpleasant characters” (Carroll, pg.141).

Their discussion draws attention to the fact that neither characters are ultimately good or evil, and that both are open to moral debate. Relating this back to the broader context of the two novels, it becomes evident that none of the characters are wholly antagonistic.

The Red Queen, for example, may seem like an overbearing force due to her repeatedly interrupting Alice’s dialogue and instructing her on correct manners to behave, such as “open your mouth a little wider when you speak” (Carroll, pg.121). However, she can also be seen as helpful because of her explanation of the Looking Glass world’s rules. Alice’s conversation with the Red Queen leads her to the understanding that the world is “marked out just like a large chess-board” (Carroll, pg.122).

CONCLUSION

The Alice stories are a pair of texts which resist a singular and definitive reading.

With their lack of moral preciseness, a characteristic of many other children’s narratives produced during the Victorian Era, it becomes difficult to determine whether or not they can be read as fundamentally conservative texts. To do so would be to disregard the multitude of meanings which they have to offer.

Therefore, it is left to the reader to interpret whether or not the books are conservative or progressive.

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Bibliography

Avery, Gillian, ‘Fairy-Tales for Pleasure’, in Alice in Wonderland, ed. by Donald J. Gray, 3rd edn. (New York: Norton Critical Edition, 2013), pg.313-315

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Lennon, Florence Becker, ‘Escape into the Garden’, in Viva Modern Critical Interpretations: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, ed. by Harold Bloom (New York: Viva, 2006), pg.19-37

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Wullschläger, Jackie, ‘Lewis Carroll: the Child as a Muse’, in Inventing Wonderland: Victorian Childhood as seen through the lives and fantasies of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, J.M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, and A.A. Milne (London: Simon & Schuster Inc, 1995), pg.31-64

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