Wonderland Identity

Late rabbits, talking cats, and dancing cards are just some of the un-natural occurrences that take place in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In today’s society with competing books, such as Harry Potter, these elements in the book may seem like no big deal, but for the time period the book was published, these were anything but normal. This children’s book was first published in 1865 in the United Kingdom; during the Victorian time period, named after Queen Victoria. The book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland represents a satire on the Victorian Era and how people were expected to act, through which Carroll displays an overall theme of growing up.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll follows the young girl Alice down the rabbit hole to Wonderland where she meets the different creatures of Wonderland. One of

Issues concerning her size, identity, and her social exchanges with both Wonderland and its creatures spur and characterize Alice’s development towards becoming a young woman.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story of a young girl’s journey down the rabbit hole into a fantasy world where there seems to be no logic. Throughout Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice experiences a variety of bizarre physical changes, causing her to realize she is not only trying to figure out Wonderland but also trying to determine her own identity. After Alice arrives in Wonderland the narrator states, “For this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people” (Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 12). This quotation is the first instance that shows Alice is unsure of her identity. The changes in size that take place when she eats or drinks are the physical signs of her loss of identity.

Alice can be very childish, but throughout the story, she encounters many animals with human qualities that make her change her perspective of the world she lives in. The main obstacle in Alice's life is growing up. As she grows up, she looks at situations in a very distinctive way, such as the moment when alice meets the March Hare, The Mad Hatter, and the Dormouse. By the time the story is over, Alice is already a grown up because of all the experiences she confronted such as, the mad tea party, the encounter with the caterpillar smoking a hookah pipe, also Alice's encounter with the Red Queen during the croquet game and the trial.

I am Alice when I read; Alice goes seeking adventure in wonderland, just as I do when reading, to escape reality. Alice was finding out herself that people could be little pieces of something, something that could be exchanged by a senseless force. Lost in Wonderland, the little girl was confused and scared and nevertheless shows true bravery in the face of her insecurities. She exchanges sense for non-sense, in an all-encompassing attempt to be able to take hold of even the most intimate core of her, so that she is forced to discover who she really is and find her identity. Like a child who is sleeping, ideology in fictional stories, quietly seeps through the narrative cracks of novels. It is embodied as an unconscious knowledge, a knowledge that doesn't know itself, and that needs to be understood and pondered by the readers. ‘Alice in Wonderland’, seen to most as simply a children’s story, has so much more depth and deals with classis themes such as coming of

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland creates a warped reality, causing each character’s identity to become confused. An exception to this confusion of identity is the Cheshire Cat, who shows an uncanny awareness of his own madness, giving him considerable control over his presence and allowing him to occasionally leave only a grin behind. Alice, contrarily, is strewn all over as she loses herself in Wonderland. In Wonderland, all are “mad,” but to Alice this is preposterous, even as she fails to explain who she is – both to herself and to others. Carroll’s juxtaposition of the Cheshire Cat and Alice in their first meeting scene exaggerates Alice’s insecure identity and its development throughout her adventures in Wonderland.

Alice following the rabbit down the hole shows the curiosity she, like most other children, has. She follows the rabbit throughout Wonderland, almost as if it’s a guide. The rabbit can also be seen as an older figure in Alice’s life that sparks the curiosity into adulthood for her. Alice sees something intriguing in that person and their being older that gets her curious as to what it might be, just as a talking rabbit might spring her interest. She looks up to them and wants to have the qualities they do. Alice follows the rabbit as she would this person to quench her curiosity and see exactly what is going on in this part of life that Alice is so far naive to.

Within the first six paragraphs of the story Alice is already falling down a seemingly endless rabbit hole (Carroll, 13&14). This rabbit hole stands as the archetypal Threshold. The threshold stands as "a gateway to a new world the hero must enter to change and to grow" (crsivels.com, 1). Alice enters the rabbit hole because of her curiosity regarding the white rabbit. Though the detail that the rabbit can talk is not what interests Alice.

“Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange. -Inception” (50 Dream Quotes). Carroll writes Through the Looking Glass based off of the dream concept. This novel is strange compared to most because of the dream Alice has. In the beginning, Alice is playing with her kittens. As she drifts off to sleep, Alice goes through the mirror and enters Looking Glass World. While there, Alice joins a chess game as a pawn. She continues across the board and meets all sorts of characters who help Alice in her journey to become Queen. She meets the Red Queen, White Queen, Humpty Dumpty, and White Knight in different squares throughout the game. When she reaches the honor of Queen, Alice is

The Victorian Era was a time where not many ethical ideals and moral standards were sustained. Yet, it is also an Era in which modern society uses to make advancements in both humanity, and philosophy. Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, was a novelist who wrote pass his time. He wrote further in the future of the "common" Victorian Era. The ideology he presents in Alice in Wonderland is conducive to an individual attempting to bring attention to the deteriorating mental health and humane conditions in Victorian-Era England. Alice is representative of a normal child in everyday-Victorian England. This child, Alice, has not been exposed to the likes of diversity, but instead solidarity. The type of solidarity that is all too prevalent throughout the Victorian Era, primarily in the upbringing of children during this time. Children in Victorian Era England were taught to be followers of the norms already established by adults, and to ask no questions. These types of parameters placed restraints on children growing-up during this time; not only physical restraints, but also mental restraints, such as their imaginations'. Carroll was no stranger to this ideal or the likes of this concept; In fact, he constructed Alice in The Wonderland with this in mind, to defy the imaginative 'norm' of Victorian-Era England. He created a character that dreamt of falling down a rabbit hole into another universe. This dream or imagination becomes so vivid in his novel that the

   Lewis Carroll's Wonderland is a queer little universe where a not so ordinary girl is faced with the contradicting nature of the fantastic creatures who live there. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a child's struggle to survive in the condescending world of adults. The conflict between child and adult gives direction to Alice's adventures and controls all the outstanding features of the work- Alice's character, her relationship with other characters, and the dialogue. " Alice in Wonderland is on one hand so nonsensical that children sometimes feel ashamed to have been interested in anything so silly (Masslich 107)."

'Alice in Wonderland' by Lewis Carroll seems a first a simple fairy tale, but in fact its meaning is a lot more profound. This novel criticizes the way children were brought up during the Victorian era. Carroll presents the readers with the complications these offspring must endure in order to develop their own personalities/egos, as they become adults. For Alice, Wonderland appears to be the perfect place to start this learning adventure. A way to understand her story is by compering it to the world as if being upside-down. Nothing in Wonderland seems to be they way it’s supposed to. The first lesson, Alice must learn in this peculiar journey through Wonderland is to achieve separation from the world around her and to stop identifying herself through others, in order to discover who she

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll endures as one of the most iconic children 's books of all time. It remains one of the most ambiguous texts to decipher as Alice 's adventures in Wonderland have created endless critical debate as to whether we can deduce any true literary meaning, or moral implication from her journey down the rabbit hole. Alice 's station as a seven year old Victorian child creates an interesting construct within the novel as she attempts to navigate this magical parallel plain, yet retain her Victorian sensibilities and learn from experience as she encounters new creatures and life lessons. Therefore, this essay will focus on the debate as to whether Alice is the imaginatively playful child envisaged by the Romantics, or a Victorian child whose imagination has been stunted by her education and upbringing.

Do you ever notice in stories, the female characters tend to be weak and sometimes have a mentor to guide them? Alice Adventures in Wonderland turned the tables on this type of character and made a strong, lively character Alice. Carroll disregarded the traditional plot lines and development of characters of his time by creating an empowered Alice, who overcomes the challenges in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Not only does Alice face different challenges through the story she also faces her pre-teen years of emotional and developmental stages. We can argue that Carroll disobeyed the normal childhood innocence by taking away Alice’s innocence because she had to go through Wonderland, facing different challenges that made her a strong