Alice In Wonderland Essay, Research Paper
In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll tells an entertaining story about a
young girl’s adventures in a strange “Wonderland.”
This novel represents a typical girl’s struggle to break away from adult control and
receive a desired freedom from their absurd society.
Although the novel was written during the Victorian age and many of the events of the
story are based on Victorian society, children today also feel the suffocation of adult
control and a society without morals.
Carroll uses symbolism and various scenes throughout the novel to show the reader the
freedom that Alice strives to achieve as well as how she tries to break away from the
domination and conformity.
The first scene in which Alice’s struggle to break away from adult control and
Victorian England’s society is in Chapter 1.
After falling into the rabbit hole, Alice finds herself lost in a corridor with many locked
doors.
The doors being locked represents Alice being controlled by society.
The reader can see Alice’s struggle to break away from this control when, finding a key,
she searches right away for the door that it fits in.
She finds that it fits a very small door and when she unlocks it, Alice first sees “the
garden.”
She believes it to be the “loveliest garden you ever saw” and “longed to get out of the
dark hall, and wander about among those bright flowers and those cool fountains…”
Alice’s strong desire to enter the garden is clearly evident.
After trying everything she can think of to get into the garden, Alice finally realizes that
she is not yet able to enter it and breaks down in tears.
Not being able to get into the “lovely garden,” which represents a place Alice can be
away from Victorian control and rules, shows that Alice is not quite ready to break away
from conformity and stand up to the adults.
A final scene in which Alice’s struggle is evident is in Chapter 7, when Alice is
just about to enter the garden.
It is here that the reader sees how much planning and preparation Alice made to be able
to break away.
Once more she found herself in the long hall, and close to the little glass table.
‘Now, I’ll manage better this time,’ she said to herself, and began by taking the
little golden key, and unlocking the door that led into the garden. Then she set to
work nibbling the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocket) till she was
about a foot high: then she walked down the little passage: and then- she found
herself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds and the cool
fountains.
The preparation for her chance to enter the garden includes keeping the key as well as a
little piece of mushroom in her pocket so that she would be able to not only unlock the
door to the garden, but make herself the right size to enter into it.
It is apparent that Alice learned from her past mistakes of leaving the key on the table
after becoming small enough to enter the garden, and then becoming too big to enter it.
Alice was also cautious about nibbling slowly on the mushroom, so she would not shrink
too fast or too much.
Everything that Alice went through almost seems worthwhile when she “at last enters the
beautiful garden” and finds herself “among the bright flower-beds and the cool
fountains.”
However, when Alice enters the garden, she finds that she is not yet free from the control
of adults or society.
A final scene in which Alice’s desire to overcome Victorian England’s restrictive
environment is the at the trial, when the Queen is giving the Mad Hatter his verdict.
Here the adult victim’s view nicely corresponds with the child’s view up
grown-up authority. If a child is called to task, told to remember some rule or
duty he has forgotten about or never fully realized he was responsible for, who
feel like the Mad Hatter, who is told ‘Don’t be nervous, or I’ll have you executed
on the spot.’
The unnecessary power given to the monarchs was one thing mocked by Carroll in the
novel and in this scene in particular.
The monarchs had power to execute whoever they wanted for any reason.
The end of the trial also represents Alice’s revelation that society cannot be
changed so she must change herself in order to be happy.
Alice changed herself in this part of the book by standing up to the Queen and adult
society.
During the trial, Alice changes in height without meaning too, she just grows on her own.
`No, no!’ said the Queen. `Sentence first–verdict afterwards.’ `Stuff and
nonsense!’ said Alice loudly. ‘The idea of having the sentence first!’ ‘Hold your
tongue!’ said the Queen, turning purple. `I won’t!’ said Alice. ‘Off with her head!’
the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved. `Who cares for you?’
said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) ‘You’re nothing but a
pack of cards!’
Within Victorian society, it was not considered proper etiquette to raise your voice to
anyone, whether you are an adult or not.
Alice rebels against the rules of the Victorian culture by expressing herself in such a
manner.
Free in the garden, Alice defies the Queen when she tries to execute her.
It is then that Alice realized she must act against society or it would control her. .
Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a paradoxical novel that
represents a typical child’s struggle to break away adult society’s beliefs and rules.
It is shown in three vital scenes of the novel how Alice struggles to enter the lovely
garden of “Wonderland,” which represents a freedom from society’s rules and
regulations.
Alice did understand until the closing of the novel that society cannot be changed and to
get away from it, you have to change yourself and rebel against it.