Essay - Critical Analysis of Alice in Wonderland Wondering About Wonderland at...

Critical Analysis of Alice in Wonderland

Wondering about Wonderland

At first reading at a very young *****ge, ***** in Wonderland held me spellbound. The marvelous imagination and wit of the story and characters was so entertaining that I never looked fur*****r until I began to learn something of Victorian Engl***** through studying literature. Then I began to see some of the parallels, and I discovered that scholars had actually written ***** this. While the stories may have been intended to entertain young girls, the author *****, indeed, communicating to a second adult audience. Much ***** this is lost on readers not of British origin, as we simply do not have enough background to "get it." We are not in on ***** jokes.

No other books written for children are more in need of explicati***** than the Alice books,' writes Gardner. 'Much of *****ir wit is interwoven *****h Victorian events and customs unfamiliar to American ***** today, ***** even to readers in England. Many ***** in the books could be appreciated only by Oxford residents, and *****s were private jokes intended solely for Alice.'... ***** White Rabbit mistakenly refers to Alice as "Mary Ann" because ***** name served as a British euphemism ***** "servant girl"; and that "Mary Ann" also was a slang term for the guillotine during the French Revolution. 'It is probably coincidental ***** Carroll's use ***** the name anticipates the obsession with beheading' of the Queen of Hearts."

Roberts 32)

In looking further, we should re-examine the conversations in the book, and ***** the various things which happen to Alice. Victorian "ladies" were totally preoccupied with appearance, ***** went to extreme measures to stay very thin. Corsets made their wa*****ts even smaller, and tended to make the ***** faint, since they ***** not breathe. ***** becomes a giant from one bite of a cookie.

A journal article by Rose Lovell-Smith does a dandy job of explaining the presence of so many animals in ***** as parallel symbols ***** the Victorian class system, and the way ********** ***** talk is not at all innocent or meant for children, but results in sharp criticism of ***** *****ciety.

***** *****k Denis Crutch is also roughly right... there is in Alice a hier*****rchy of animals equivalent to the Victorian class system ***** also suggesting a competitive model of nature: ***** white rabbit, caterpillar, and March Hare seem to be gentlemen, frog and fish are footmen, Bill the lizard is bullied ***** everybody, hedgehogs ***** flamingos ***** ***** use *****, and the dormo***** ***** the guinea pigs are victimized by larger animals and by humans."

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***** *****s many cutting political comments herself. While I always found *****se to be extremely entertaining, I never connected them ***** the politics of the time. I did catch some of the timeless joked, like Alice stating that in life, "one must either eat or be eaten." ***** ***** always quite enterta*****ed by the little "nuggets ***** wisdom" in this book, quotes by all kinds of animals