Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll – Life and Controversy

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, or "Lewis Carroll," as he was to become known, was born on January 27 1832, in Cheshire.  He studied at Christ Church, Oxford and later taught mathematics there. He died, suddenly, of violent pneumonia, on January 14, 1898.

Carroll wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) for the three daughters of Henry Liddell, Dean of the College. He became close friends with the mother and the children, Ina, Alice and Edith. Although he invented Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for the entertainment of children, many scholars have discovered various underlying influences in his work. The books have been explained from all kinds of viewpoints, like drug use, Freudian influences, mathematics, political satire, sex and pedophilia, nonsense, etc.

Though apparently attracted and attractive to women, he never married, and his emotional/sexual life is the aspect of his biography most enshrouded in controversy, misunderstanding, myth and mystery. He liked the company of female children and his interest in making nude studies of children has been interpreted as an indication he was pedophilic.

Beyond this much is unknown, contradictory and curious. Was his love for girls a suppressed sexual passion? Or was it as innocent as he always maintained? What happened to the four volumes of his diary 'lost' after his death? Who cut certain pages from the remaining volumes? (1)(2)

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

The most obvious theme that can be found in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is the theme of growing up. Lewis Carroll adored the unprejudiced and innocent way young children approach the world. With Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, he wanted to describe how a child sees our adult world, including all of the (in the eyes of a child silly and arbitrary) rules and social etiquette we created for ourselves, as well as the ego's and bad habits we have developed during our lives.

More and more Alice starts to understand the creatures that live in Wonderland. From the Cheshire Cat she learns that 'everyone is mad here'. She learns to cope with the crazy Wonderland rules, and during the story she gets better in managing the situation.

Related to the theme of 'growing up', is the motif of 'identity'. In Wonderland, Alice struggles with the importance and instability of personal identity. She is constantly ordered to identify herself by the creatures she meets, but she herself has doubts about her identity as well. The Cheshire Cat questions another aspect of Alice's identity. He is not questioning her name or species, he is questioning her sanity. As she has entered Wonderland, she must be mad, he states.

Characters

Alice: trustful, ready to accept the wildest impossibilities with all that utter trust that only dreamers know; and curious – wildly curious, with the eager enjoyment of life that comes only in the happy hours of childhood, when all is new and fair, and when Sin and Sorrow are but names.

Caterpillar: teaches Alice how to cope with the difficulties she encounters in Wonderland. He teaches her how to change size by eating the mushroom and thereby to adapt to her environment when needed.

The Cheshire Cat: the only character in Wonderland who actually listens to Alice. With his remarks, he teaches Alice the ‘rules’ of Wonderland. He gives her insight in how things work.

The White Rabbit: nervous and always in a hurry. However, he is confident enough about himself to contradict the King of Hearts. In a way, he is some kind of a guide through Wonderland for Alice, only unintentionally.

Interpretations

• The story about Alice falling through a rabbit-hole and finding herself in a silly and nonsense world, is fairly guileless as a tale. The underlying story, the one about a girl maturing in what seems to be a world ruled by chaos and nonsense, is quite a frightening one.

• Wonderland is a dream world where physical size and time are relative. Thematically, wonderland is not really another world. It is in fact our own world, only seen through the eyes of a child.

• At the beginning of Through the Looking Glass Alice says: 'It's a huge game of chess that's being played - all over the world'. This could refer to the numerous wars being fought at the time (and still are at present day). (2)

Alice Influences in Popular Culture

In The Matrix (1999) the protagonist Neo is told by his future mentor Morpheus to "follow the White Rabbit". Neo agrees to accompany visitors when he sees one of them sporting a white rabbit tattoo. The connection is further established with Morpheus' constant reference to being down the rabbit hole, as well as when Neo first transitions from the Matrix to the "real world" by interacting with a looking glass. The Wachowski brothers who directed the film have stated that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a running theme in their Matrix trilogy. Many more movies have also been heavily referenced by the Alice books such as Pan’s Labyrinth, Resident Evil, Spirited Away, and Labyrinth.

The world of music seems to have a love affair with Alice. The most known Alice reference in music is the Jefferson Airplane song White Rabbit. Many other bands and artists have songs referencing Alice in Wonderland including Radiohead, The Beatles, Marilyn Manson, Stevie Nicks and countless others. Several bands have taken their name after Alice in Wonderland like the band Alice in Chains. Along with the musicals works many artists have made music videos that takes imagery from the Alice books like Gwen Stefani, Aerosmith and lately a lot of artists from Interscope Records.

The influences on videogames, role-playing games, comics, anime and television are mind boggling. Alice sure has left her mark in history and her themes are widely used today in popular media in order to symbolize the absurdity of our complex (adult) societies.

(1) carrollmyth.com

(2) alice-in-wonderland.net