Her voice is stronger each time, beginning with thinking and ending with shouting. Finally, the correlation of this awareness and physical growth lends itself to the idea that Alice is growing, mentally and physically. Her sister might believe she will retain her juvenile mindset, we all learn, once something magical is proven false, its wondrous quality is impossible to recover.Once upon a time (okay, let's say it was just last week), I found myself tumbling down the rabbit hole of creativity, musing on how to write a story like Alice in Wonderland. As soon as she declares that the court is “nothing but a pack of cards” she is transported out of the dream world and back into “dull reality” (104). Only when Alice recognizes the world around her as false–a delusion–is she freed from it. The cards swarm around her and she wakes up to find that it is nothing but leaves falling on her face (102). ‘You’re nothing but a pack of cards!'” Alice makes a clear, definitive statement about the nature of the cards. As the Queen threatens to chop off her head one final time, we see Alice’s growth completed, and her childhood naiveté lost: “‘Who cares for you?’ said Alice (she had grown to her full size by this time). This culminates just before Alice wakes up from her dream, in the chapter tellingly titled “Alice’s Evidence.” Again, her realization of the improbability of wonderland corresponds with a description of her growth. Throughout the trial, she grows as she begins to point out the irrational: the narrator tells us “she had grown so large in the last few minutes that she wasn’t a bit afraid of interrupting ” and tells him “‘ I don’t believe there’s an atom of meaning in it'” (100). Here, her realization is internal, and not fully formed. What prompts her growth her is the Mad Hatter’s eating of his teacup, evidenced by Carroll’s use of “Just at this moment.” Something about this incident causes her to start growing, and it is her recognition of his action as improbable. Just at this moment Alice felt a very curious sensation until she made out what it was: she was beginning to grow larger again” (92). Here, it is different: “in his confusion bit a large piece out of his teacup instead of the bread-and-butter. Until this moment, when Alice changes size throughout the story, it is always due to the effect of some food or drink. However, at the conclusion of the story, this begins to change and is signified by Alice’s growth at the trial. Through it all, she never questions that the irrational things she sees are real. Throughout the story, Alice tries to apply rational (if imperfect) understanding to completely irrational circumstances: as she falls down the rabbit hole, she muses about whether she’s reached the center of the earth (2-3) and applies similar lines of thought to her experiences throughout wonderland. While her sister states that Alice “would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood,” (104) if we look more closely at the conclusion of Alice’s time in wonderland, we can also see a loss of childhood innocence which brings the sister’s assertion into question. TreeStump on Mettus Curtius and His CountenanceĪlice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story about growing up.ontheCountof3 on Mirroring Expectations.ontheCountof3 on Delicate, Worthless, “Poor, Faint, Valueless”: Oh, Fair Dreamer!.Victorian's Secret on Dutiful Daughters?.Victorian's Secret on Gender Construction in “The Yellow Drawing Room”.freudian slip on Gender Construction in “The Yellow Drawing Room”.Delicate, Worthless, “Poor, Faint, Valueless”: Oh, Fair Dreamer! November 5, 2021.Mirroring Expectations November 5, 2021.Alice to d4: Chess and Gender in “Through the Looking Glass” November 8, 2021.The New Woman (Again) November 22, 2021.A new sight in this song November 23, 2021.Mettus Curtius and His Countenance November 23, 2021.
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