Paste your text in here…Haneen Khano
28.08.2017
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What do certain animals in Alice in Wonderland represent?
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Introduction
During Dodgson’s lifetime there was a ‘strong element of distrust towards fairy tales’. Victorian mothers and tutors found that it was a ‘waste of time to study the kingdoms of fairyland instead of learning the latitude and longitude of Otaheite’ and most English fairy tales were almost only found in oral versions. In Victorian England, children books were ‘uniformly educational’ . Dodgson wrote the Alice books during a period of growing interest in folklore and mythology ‘partly stemming from the work of the Grimm brothers’ and ended up creating a whole new category of literature with books such as Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham and A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh being categorized in it. This new category of literature was completely alien to all other type of Victorian literature, with the sole purpose of entertaining children with no moral lessons slipped into the stories. These books were the first of their kinds to use animals as main characters in their stories and giving them human characteristics, emotions, speech and more. This essay will explore the roles of multiple animal characters in Alice in Wonderland.
Why Dodgson wrote Alice?
On the fourth of July 1862 Charles Lutwidge Dodgson took Lorina, Alice and Edith Liddell, the daughters of Henry George Liddell who was a fellow dean of Dodgson’s at Oxford University, on their first boat ride together. Dodgson, better known under his pen name, Lewis Carroll, came up with the Alice stories by telling them to the three sisters however it was the middle child, seven year old Alice, who was truly interested and inspired Dodgson to put his stories onto paper. He first wrote the stories as a Christmas present to Alice in 1862. Alice’s father encouraged Dodgson to get Alice’s adventures published. After this encouragement Dodgson illustrated and refined the stories and sent the book to publishing under the name ‘Alice’s Adventures in Under Ground’. In 1865 ‘Alice’s adventures in Wonderland’ was published and a huge success.
Towards the end off the nineteenth century awareness of childhood to authors was ‘no longer an interest in growth and integration’ but used writing as ‘a means of detachment and retreat from the adult world.’ Dodgson was no different from these other writers. He used his stories, including the Alice stories to get close and become friends with children who made him feel relieved of his adult duties and life. Alice however was also a symbol of ‘innocent life’ and a way of letting Dodgson express his ‘frustrated exclusion from Life.’ The Alice books were a small opening to Victorian society and the ‘curious blend of literal-mindedness and dream, formal etiquette and the logic of insanity’ tell an observant reader a great deal about Victorian habits, beliefs and ways of living. Most of these things are shown through Alice who is the typical Victorian child ‘looking for rules and murmuring her lessons’ just like she was taught.
It was as a young man that Dodgson started seeking to escape his real, adult life. At the age of 23 he saw a performance of Henry VIII and fell in love with story making and escaping through fantasy. In a diary entry he wrote that acting and writing were a way ‘to raise the mind above itself and out of its petty cares’ which were things he very much wanted to do. At an even younger age he wrote in a diary ‘I’d give all wealth that years have piled, The slow result of life’s decay, To be once more a little child For one bright summer day.’ Obviously there was no way for him to grow younger so he turned to story telling as a way of ‘regressing towards the irresponsibility of youth, childhood, infancy and ultimately nescience itself.’
The White Rabbit
The White Rabbit is the first character from Wonderland that Alice meets and it is thanks to this ‘White Rabbit with pink eyes’ that Alice finds herself in Wonderland. Alice first sees the White Rabbit as she is dozing off into the dream world of Wonderland. The fact that she was falling asleep while seeing the rabbit for the first time brings up the question at the end of the Alice Adventures on whether or not the whole story wasn’t just a dream of Alice’s. Alice follows him without hesitation showing her lack of fulfillment in her everyday Victorian life. The rabbit in Alice’s eyes is adventure and an escape to a new, more interesting world however she has no idea what she would do if she were ever to catch him. The Rabbit, like all the other animals Alice encounters in wonderland before entering the garden, is given human features with clothes, a human personality and emotions and human responsibilities. The Rabbit is the red King’s master of ceremonies and his anxious chatter and repletion of ‘Oh dear!’ due to his nervousness about being late that gets Alice’s attention and begins her adventures. As soon as we are introduced to the White Rabbit we see the uncertainty and lack of confidence he has in contrast with Alice’s impulsiveness and childlike thinking who runs after him with ‘never once considering how in the world she was to get out’ . Another contrasting feature is Alice’s honesty and constant politeness compared to the Rabbit who is seen as two faced and sometimes rude. Alice’s politeness is shown multiple times through out the book for example when she asks the fish footman in chapter six ‘Please then, how am I to get in.’ , while the Rabbit’s treats people differently according to their social classes. For example when he thinks that Alice is ‘Mary Ann’ his servant, he orders Alice rudely to ‘Run home this moment’ page 59 and fetch his gloves and fan or how he forces his gardener, Bill, to go down the chimney of his house in chapter four when Bill clearly didn’t want to. However in the presence of the queen he is completely subdued and cowardly and does anything she asks. The Rabbit, also representing adults, shows that while going through the transition of childhood to adulthood, people lose many good qualities they once owned as children such as honesty, curiosity and bravery. This was something that Dodgson believed in strongly, explaining why he often chose to either spend his time in the presence of children or alone.
The Dodo
After Alice creates a river of tears, a now normal sized Alice and an assembly of animals collect on the remaining dry land. In this fifth chapter the readers are introduced to the Dodo. The Dodo represents two things. Firstly he is a reference to the newly opened natural history museum in Oxford. Secondly he is a caricature of Dodgson himself, Dodo being a ‘stammered version of Dodgson’ . Dodos were flightless birds found in the Mauritius islands but after the colonization of the islands they were made extinct around the year 1681. Dodos were one of the first species rendered extinct by humans. Dodgson also used the Dodo as a way of sharing some of his political views. The Dodo suggests a ‘caucus race’ to solve the problem at hand, the problem being the wetness and cold of the party at hand. The caucus race provides a thin representation of English and international politics at the time through Dodgson’s eyes while also commenting on the general meaninglessness of life. The animals and Alice ‘began running when they liked, and left off when they liked’ without making any real progress and even though in the end they all reached the goal of getting dry there was no clear path, no rules, no understanding of what anyone was doing as well as no real winners. By the publishing of Alice in Wonderland, in 1865 Great Britain along with the rest of Europe had gone through the industrial revolution and there was political and social change in the air. The caucus race shows how Dodgson viewed the actions and decisions of British politicians during this time of great change and how they could never agree on anything and in the end no one won. The caucus race also may comment on the unpredictability of life and how everyone has a different path but in the end ‘the race is over’ for everyone and there is the same outcome for each person, death. Dodgson was a strong supporter of the monarchy and the caucus race was a way or representing the ‘absurdity of democracy’ for there was a lot of ‘running around in circles, getting nowhere and with everybody wanting political plum’ .
The Dodo is only present in Alice’s adventures for a chapter potentially showing how Dodgson knew that he would not have a permanent position in Alice Liddell’s life. Dodgson used the Alice books as a way of escaping reality because life was more of a burden than a gift in his eyes and the caucus race shows the randomness and lack of meaning in life with it ending the same for everyone.
The puppy
At the end of chapter four, while running away from the White Rabbit's house, Alice encounters an ‘enormous puppy’ . This puppy is the only creature that Alice meets in wonderland that acts the way it would in the real world. It did not speak and walked on all fours. This was because Dodgson had a strong dislike for canines and, as a sort of punishment to them, did not make the puppy special or extraordinary. In chapter six the Cheshire cat compares himself to a dog saying ‘you see a dog growls when it’s angry and wags its tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.’ . This shows how Dodgson viewed dogs as conforming animals that were used by men for sport or companionship and unlike cats, were not independent or intelligent creatures.
The Caterpillar
In chapter five Alice meets the Caterpillar sitting on a mushroom ‘with its arms folded, quietly smoking a hookah’ . It is believed that Dodgson’s friend and fellow academic, Edward Fitzgerald, inspired the character of the Caterpillar. Edward Fitzgerald was an Irish aristocrat and a ‘hookah-smoking poet’ . Fitzgerald was also intrigued, like the rest of Victorian England by Persia, Hindu and Arab stories, poems and mathematics. The Caterpillar shows the ‘Victorian fascination with Hindu, Persian and Arab tales’ and especially with the Arab mathematician, Omar. The bright blue caterpillar could also have been representing the oriental world in general, most of it being under the rule of the British, and how Eastern culture and knowledge challenged the British in the same way in which the Caterpillar challenges Alice. The Caterpillar’s main role is to challenge Alice’s identity and to show her how much she has changed. This is done from the first minute of their encounter with the Caterpillar asking the question ‘Who are you?’ and Alice finding herself unable to answer. At first she thinks that this uncertainty in her identity is due to her constant changing in size but the Caterpillar makes it clear to her that it is not just her size that has changed since her time in Wonderland. By making Alice recite the poem ‘Father William’ by Robert Southey, a poem about the importance in living in moderation that most Victorian children were made to learn by heart at school. Alice finds that she cannot recite it properly and that her recitation was ‘wrong from beginning to end’ showing how much she is no longer the Victorian little girl she was at the beginning of her adventures.
Many analysts of the Alice books have claimed that drugs were involved during the process of writing and coming up with the Alice stories. Most of these theories were due to the mushroom that the caterpillar was sitting on and the caterpillar himself. Even though Dodgson ‘knew a number of people who smoked opium or took laudanum’ at the time, there is not enough proof to show that he was under any mind-altering substances during the time he was writing the Alice stories.
The Cheshire cat
Alice first meets the Cheshire cat in chapter six in the Duchess's kitchen and briefly again in chapter eight. Dodgson’s inspiration for the character of the Cheshire cat is believed to be Stanley, a fellow dean at Oxford who was, like Dodgson from Cheshire. However unlike Dodgson, Stanley was from the aristocratic Cheshire family and his family was a large estate owners. It was said that Stanley had the ‘cunning of a cat in pushing through reforms’ at Oxford university. Stanley also ‘prided himself on being able to see both sides of the theological argument’ the same way the Cheshire cat saw both the benefits and drawbacks to visiting the March Hare and the Mad Hatter when suggesting to Alice where to go. Just as the cat ‘looked good-natured’ Stanley, who was younger than most other people working at the university, looked harmless and na”ve, however just as the Cheshire Cat had ‘very long claws and a great many teeth’ , Stanley became respected thanks to his intellect and talent at eventually getting his way.
This famous cat is also often depicted as the symbol of ‘intellectual detachment’ and lunacy. The association with lunacy is usually connected with the way the Cheshire cat appears and disappears and the shape of his grin that resemble the moon. The moon has long been associated with lunacy. The cat also symbolizes intellectual detachment by the way his body can disappear, leaving only his head therefore symbolizing disembodied intelligence. In chapter eight when the Red King wished ‘to have this cat removed’ he is horrified to discover that one ‘couldn't cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it from’ representing the immortality of intelligence and knowledge.
The Dormouse
After her first encounter with the Cheshire cat Alice attends the ‘Mad Tea-Party’ where she meets the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Dormouse. The Dormouse usually a character that is overlooked is another door showing a glimpse of Dodgson’s personal life. The Dormouse is another interpretation of the author himself. The Dormouse is a nocturnal animal causing it to frequently fall asleep during the tea. Dodgson would often pretend to suddenly fall asleep while telling his stories to the three Liddle girls. The Dormouse is also often interrupted, the same way in which the three little girls would interrupt Dodgson while he was telling them stories.
It is also suggested that the inspiration for the Dormouse came from F.D. Maurice who was the founder of the Christian Socialist party in Oxford. This creates the tea party into a parody of the Christian Socialist movement, a movement that Dodgson disapproved of highly.
The March Hare
At the tea party where Alice meets the Dormouse she also meets the March Hare who, like the rest of the characters in wonderland, is mad. The main inspiration of the character of the arch Hare is the expression ‘Mad as a March hare.’ This saying is based on the behavior of hares during their mating season in March. During this time period hares tend to act ‘unusually wild’ due to the need to mate. The March Hare as well as the two other characters resemble ‘the philosophers J.M.E.McTaggart and G.E Moore, two of Russell’s fellow dons at Cambridge’ who were known by the local community as the ‘Mad Tea Part of Trinity’
Conclusion
In conclusion the animals in Alice in Wonderland are personifications or caricatures of Dodgson himself as well as his acquaintances. The animals are used to show Dodgson’s views on politics and social rules as well as creating a door showing Victorian England and Victorian customs and rules.
Bibliography
Carroll, L. (1993). Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Ware, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom : Wordsworth Editions Limited .
Gladstone, J. E. (1998). The Alice Companion . Padstow, Cornwall : T.J International Ltd,.
Gray, D. J. (1992). Alice in Wonderland . New York , United States of America : W.W Norton & Company, Inc.
Lewis Carroll, M. G. (1993). The Annotated Alice . New York , United States of America: Random House Value Publishing.