There is a common discussion amongst those interested in literature about the metaphors and allusions in the works of Lewis Carroll. Lewis Carroll first invented the Alice character in the work Alice in Wonderland, published in 1865. Scholars studying Carroll’s stories, including Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass have debated whether or not he was able to weave together abstract notions into a cogent story, or if he simply delivered fractured fairy tales for a 20th Century audience. The truth is that Carroll worked purely within the realm of thte imagination, and although he did occasionally reference other literature in metaphor, the idea that his works were a grander allegory is false; Carroll wrote pure fantasy. The Alice Tales include scenes, poems, characters and events that are clear literary references, but both are ventures into random fantasy in which one event is not causal to the next. Both stories imitate the structure of a dream more than they generate a linear, cause-and-effect story with a clear character arch.
The 19th Century had an audience that was accustomed to great works of fiction; this was the era of Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, H.G. Wells, Transcendentalism and Walt Whitman (Rahn 1). Each of those writers wrote in fiction prose, but had one literary foot in realism and one in fantasy, crafting their pieces as extensions, or mutations of the real-world. Lewis Carroll did nothing of the sort. Carroll wrote for a propensity toward abstract nonsense and pure fantasy (Sen 173). Carroll did not invent, nor did he revolutionize the genre; he made it fun.
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are Carroll’s two most famous novels. Each tell the story of a young and respectively slightly older girl named Alice who navigates a very interactive dream. What is unique about her dream, is that she is the protagonist of a story that she is a part of, and not overtly the author of (Gardner, 25)
Dreams have a special purpose in people’s psyche as they can both represent and draw from events in life, much like the characters and settings for Alice, but dreams can also hold deeper, more complex metaphorical realities and truths that are missed when awake (Domhoff, 1). What is important about dreams, is that there are no physical consequences for the average dreamer, during their processes of exploration. A dream is a safe environment to exercise the imagination.
The setting of Wonderland is a scape that transcends the physical rules of the corporeal world. As a result, Alice is able to manifest different perspectives through the projection of characters from life, into her dream. The dream-like Wonderland is populated with interpretations and representations of people from Alice’s life, some taking new personae as friends, other metaphorically demonstrated as tyrannical or gibberish nonsense; as Alice truly perceives them while she is awake (Carroll 100).
Alice’s dreams (Wonderland) take the reader on a disconnected venture into her perception of the world around her. One reason for the lack of continuity and consistency in metaphor is that Alice is a child at first, and her understanding and imagination and perception of individuals and her role to all of them is still being unfurled (Gardner 25). One event in Wonderland then, is not preceded by any logical step, or measure, but rather the unconscious ramblings of a dreaming child.
As readers, it is incumbent to often try to find meaning in the rambling. Much like the physical world of Alice, there is an attempt to put order to the chaos of life, and find meaning in that which surrounds the everyday. Alice personifies her pets, places abstract, cartoonish qualities on the dream-metaphors of adults in her life, and creates characters for her own companionship (Carroll, 75). Often as people age, they stop doing such actions, but Alice is both young, and unencumbered during her dreams, and ventures to Wonderland; thus, her world is one of unfettered magic.
Although magical in the actions and events in Wonderland, Alice does actively draw from that which last remembers while awake. What is unique about Alice (and Carroll’s work in general) is that she takes a finite set of characters and settings and manipulates them to fit her needs. In Through the Looking Glass, the knights and queens are direct references to the chess board that she first sees come alive. Loosely related to the reader, this latter sequence can be understood as Alice ‘falling asleep,’ but then the typical rules of the corporeal world are quickly shed as Alice begins to co-create her world with her own uncontrollable imagination.
One consistent theme that manifests in Alice’s dreams, is her burgeoning adulthood. Alice is a young woman and it is reasonable that she herself is having a growing intellect which is matched by the evolving world of Wonderland. The characters are more complex than rudimentary figures which wait for Alice to act upon them, instead, the characters have imbrued personalities and distinct features. Many of the characters in Wonderland ask Alice who she is, which is an inherent paradox as Alice is the one whose imagination created the characters that have in turn, questioned her as to who she is. Alice is using the characters as an objective analysis of herself, who, in a safe environment, is beginning to explore who she wishes to become in the context of new individuals and situations; courageous, empathetic, kind, all possible reactions in a world with no consequences to guard against.
What marks adulthood separate from that of childhood is reason. When a person begins to understand cause-and-effect, and foreshadow potentialities and make decisions, then he or she is said to be an adult. Being an adult often comes at great cost for the enjoyment of imagination, as the power it takes to imagine is spent navigating the dangers of life (Carroll 93). The trouble with defining adulthood beyond reason, is that there is no other indicator of adulthood; some never fully gain reason, and others do at a young age. Alice’s dreams and ventures in Wonderland are a metaphorical fusion of the process from nonsense to reason. Alice is placed into a series of bizarrely odd, and unpredictable circumstances, and despite being a child, is the character that uses reason and intellect to navigate and solver her problems- hashing them all out, including the benefits and dangers of curiosity, in a safe environment.
Even a series of stories told through vignettes will have a measureable notion of one act leading into another. Vignettes however, are very much dependent on the reader, and how he or she interprets and emphasizes different aspects of a story. Carroll’s two novel discussed in this paper both follow a typical five-act story structure, but neither tell stories that have dependent actions which logically lead to another. Both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass more succinctly manifest the meanderings of a dream than a structuralism approach to narration and causation. Carroll’s vivid and bizarre imagination allowed him the ability to both craft intensely clever metaphors and similes while maintaining an original neutrality by not writing a grand allegory, or parable to be considered.
Works Cited:
Carroll, Lewis, John Tenniel, and Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass. Chicago, IL: J.G. Ferguson Pub., 1992. Print.
Domhoff, G.William. “Dreams Have Psychological Meaning and Cultural Uses, but No Known Adaptive Function” Dreams Research. UCSC. N.d. Web.
Gardner, Martin. The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass. New York: C.N. Potter, 1960. Print.
Rahn, John. “Victorian Literary Period” Jalic. 2011. Web.
Sen, Nivedita. Family, School and Nation: The Child and Literary Constructions in 20th-century Bengal. New Delhi: Routledge India, 2015. Print.
