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Alice in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll’s works Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There are by many people considered nonsense books for children. Of course, they are, but they are also much more. Lewis Carroll had a great talent of intertwining nonsense and logic, and therefore creating sense within nonsense. If you look past the nonsense you can find a new meaning other than the one you found completing your third grade book report. You find that the books are full of references and parallel aspects of Victorian Society such as topics of etiquette, education, and prejudice, and through these topic’s is shown a child’s ability to survive in a hostile world. By this last statement I am referring to Cohen’s comment that “Wonderland” (published in1865) captures “the disappointments, fears, and bewilderment that all children encounter in their dealings with authoritarian, pompous and mystifying adults” which Wonderland seems to have no deficiency of.

Throughout the story Carroll portrays his views on the education of the times. He make’s “morals and tales of obedience”(Brown,May Lee) seem nonsensical by the character of the Duchess and Alice’s preoccupation with her lessons. The Duchess keeps insisting to Al

. . .

“now then! Show your ticket, child!” the Guard went on looking angrily at Alice. ” Alice, thinking this as a great opportunity to show off her knowledge, starts to discuss the Earth’s rotation on it’s axis.

Furthermore throughout the book adults are shown to be cruel and uncaring. One of these rules was “A lady should never ‘cut’ someone after encountering them socially”(Gardner, 115) or, in a more familiar term, never fail to acknowledge their presence after being introduced. ”

The mutton got up in the dish and made a little bow to Alice; and Alice returned the bow, not knowing whether to be frightened or amused. ”(Makinen, 1) Alice is scolded and ridiculed for having no ticket. While waking through the “wood where things have no names” Alice meets up with a fawn and they advance through together. Wong) The finer and rarer specimens, such as the tiger-lily and the rose, are placed in a higher class than the more common and simpler daisies which the tiger-lily describes as “the worst of all. The second time Alice tries to carve a slice, the pudding reacts with “Characteristic Wonderland pettiness”: “What impertinence! I wonder how you’d like it, if I were to cut a slice out of you, you creature!’(Through the Looking Glass, 201)

In conclusion Carroll’s wonderland charters (all adults) “are complete mockeries of the adults that Victorian children had to obey. At the end of the first book Alice stands up and expresses her feelings that the whole trial is nonsense and that the “soldiers” were just a pack of cards.

“Well, I shan’t go, at any rate,” said Alice; “besides, that’s not a regular rule: you invented it just now. Another rule of etiquette was that Victorian children were expected to behave at all times. ”(Gardner, 101) In Victorian times proper etiquette meant everything and there were numerous rules present which governed proper behavior. ”(Makinen, 1) The last example of rudeness by adult figures occurs at the feast.

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