Alice in Wonderland has been part of our society since the 19th century. First published in 1865, it has become a beloved children’s classic, which does not leave the readers even as they grow up.
The very first reader of this classic work was Alice Liddell. She enjoyed the tale so much that Lewis Carroll wrote a manuscript by hand just for her and her family titled “Alice’s Adventures Underground” so she can enjoy it at any time (Winchester, 88). The book seemed to catch attention of the whole Liddell family and they encouraged Carroll to publish the story for the public (Winchester, 88). The Liddell family was just a beginning of a vast majority of reader of Carroll’s beloved classic.
The author of the Alice books originally had a specific reader in mind when he created his manuscript. Even though he did some alterations to the text before it became mass printed, some references to the first reader still remains. It has been pointed out that themes of femininity can be found in the book. For example, Wonderland was meant to shape Alice as a good mother and woman due to her own loving childhood (Geer, 2). In the chapter, “Pig and Pepper”, where Alice had to take care of a baby who later turned into a pig, she states “Don’t grunt…that’s not at all a proper way of expressing yourself” (Carroll, 87). This displays the pre-existing attitude of Alice towards children and parenting, probably from the way she was treated as a child herself. In general this teaches the reader how one should behave with an offspring. The fact that Lewis had a specific reader in mind when creating his original story definitely shaped the edited version as well.
On the other hand the Alice books represent the point of view of a vast majority of children in general. Since Carroll had many friendships with children he understood how they thought and what they wanted to read (Stott, 75). The Victorian society bred gentlemen and ladies, the schools were secluded communities with their own regulations and customs (May, 37) and a constant state of discipline and order was obtained in the households (Avery, 121). However Carroll was the jester in the Victorian society (Warner, 12) therefore Alice turned out to be a character who mimics and parodies the adult norms (Warner). When the book was first published, it seems to be geared specifically at Victorian children who wanted an escape from their closed-off middle class homes.
At the same time, some conventions of a typical Victorian novel were still followed by Carroll. The Victorian novel does not provide the female character’s desire a resolution, since it was thought to distort the women’s body and push her out of the middle class culture (Deirdre, 111). This is displayed through Alice’s constant change in body size. (Deirdre, 112). In the chapter, “The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill”, after Alice goes into the White Rabbit’s house and drinks from a little bottle, her body grows extremely large and she ends up trapped in the room. The White Rabbit’s house is a typical middle class home and when Alice follows her desire to drink from the bottle she becomes “…very uncomfortable, and as there seemed to be no sort of chance of her ever getting out of the room again…” (Carroll, 45) displaying how she literally does not fit into the White Rabbit’s middle class home anymore. Since the book was published during the Victorian Period it has traces of being geared towards the specific readers of that time.
It must also be noted that not only children enjoy the Alice classics, but many adults as well. Many critics pointed out the fact that the humour in the book is very adult themed. The form of humour used is irony, which is thought to be the most difficult humour to comprehend, especially for young children (Heins, 141). Another aspect of humour is based on Victorian idioms, which are also difficult for very young readers to grasp, especially nowadays (Natov, 52). In today’s society the Alice classics are thought to be targeted toward a specific academic reading group (O’Dell, 905). However Western populations imagine new worlds for themselves and could be overthinking Carroll’s real intent for telling the story (O’Dell, 905). As the critics from the Examiner, pointed out when the novel was published “…the best of all is that the book has no moral, and is nothing but a capital jumble of fun” (Cripps, 41). The book ends up attracting adult reader for its light attitude and humor.
Nowadays the Alice classic has been adapted to cartoon and film versions, which could mean a decline in readers of the original text. At the same time the richness of the story would be lost (Natov, 38) and therefore people who will want to experience the full tale of Alice will pick up the classic and read it for themselves. Therefore the motion pictures and media coverage of the story can promote people and spark their interest to read the original if they liked the adapted version of the novel.
Bibliography
Avery, Gillian. Victorian People. London: Collins, 1970.
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. New York: William Morrow & co., Inc., 1992.
Cripps, Elizabeth. “Alice in the Reviews.” Children’s Literature: Annual of the Modern Language Association Division on Children’s Literature and the Children’s Literature Association. London: Yale University Press, 1983. Print.
Deirdre, David. The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Geer, Jennifer. “All Sorts of Pitfulls and Surprises: Competing Views of Idealized Girlhood in Lewis Carrol’s Alice Books.” Children’s Literature. 31. (2003): 1-24. Web. 26 Jan. 2012. <http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/231633>.
Heins, Paul. Cross Currents of Criticism: Horn Book Essays 1968-1977. Boston: The Horn Book Inc. , 1977. Print.
May, Trevor. The Victorian Public School. Oxford: Shire Publications, 2009.
Natov, Roni. “The Persistence of Alice.” Lion and the Unicorn: Children’s Classics. 3.1 (1979): 38-61. Print.
O’Dell, BD. “Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy: Curiouser and Curiouser.” Journal of
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Stott, Jon C, and First . Children’s Literature From A to Z. A Guide for Parents and Teachers . McGraw Hill Book Company, 1984. Print.
Warner, Marina. “Nonsense is Rebellion, the Childs Play of Lewis Carroll.” Lewis Carroll. Ed. Charlotte Byrne. London: The British Council, 1998. Print.
Winchester, Simon. The Alice Behind Wonderland. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.