HL2042 Children’s Literature. Growing Up in Wonderland

March 28, 2024 • 6 min read • Essay

There has been much scholarly writing on the symbolism, imagery and meaning of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, but much can be gleaned from reading the novel through the lens of a coming-of-age story. Carroll deliberately thrusts Alice into an unfamiliar world, where she is armed only with classroom knowledge steeped in theory and memorisation. Alice abandons her “traditional Victorian education processes” (‘Sedlacek’, 65), learning how to handle strange new social circumstances with the help of her childlike creative imagination. Alice matures both emotionally and physically through the lessons she learns in Wonderland. Finally, as she reaches maturity, she loses her imagination and wakes into the real world of the adults. Hence, I will argue in this essay that Carroll heavily uses symbolism in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in to portray her coming of age, while delivering a critique on Victorian education through Alice’s various shortcomings.

In the paper ‘Satire and Synthesis: Parody and Satire of Victorian Education in the Works of Lewis Carroll’, Cameron Sedlacek argues that Carroll intentionally parodied and satirised Victorian educational institutions “to provide alternatives that are more suitable and beneficial to children of Victorian England.” (Sedlacek, 3) Sedlacek illustrates this failure of Victorian education with Alice’s thoughts as she falls into Wonderland:

“I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think—” (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the school-room, and though this was not a very good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over). (Carroll, 19)

Alice attempts to determine her location using geography as she learnt in the classroom but ultimately fails, as she only does so for the sake of “showing off her knowledge”. Carroll critiques the rote memorisation taught in Victorian education, where children like Alice proved their learning by memorising theory lessons and reciting them in class (Sedlacek, 90). Hence, it comes as no surprise that Alice cannot apply the lessons taught to her in her education practically when she arrives in Wonderland (Sedlacek, 91). Carroll establishes early in the novel that Alice cannot mature into an adult with only theory lessons that are taught in the classroom. An “alternative form of education, one based on justification and understanding” (Sedlacek, 3) is required for Alice to learn the lessons for her to reach adulthood. This “alternate form” is represented by the imaginative setting of Wonderland, which is the catalyst for Alice’s emotional and mental growth.

When Alice is deliberately placed in an unfamiliar world, she is forced to organically learn the life lessons she cannot learn in the classroom, such as social rules. As a seven-year-old child, Alice is painfully ignorant of social norms. After crying a pool of tears, Alice makes two failed attempts to converse with the Mouse. She first tries to mimic the archaic speech from a Latin textbook, addressing it as “O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O Mouse!” (Carroll, 8) The mouse fails to respond, and Alice becomes aware that her classroom knowledge has failed her. It offers her no practical or useful knowledge of the required social skills for her to converse with the Mouse. Still, Alice tries to use her classroom knowledge, addressing the Mouse in French:

So she began again: “Ou est ma chatte?” which was the first sentence in her French lesson-book. The Mouse gave a sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver all over with fright. (Carroll, 9)

Alice’s classroom knowledge of French has failed her once again. She merely memorises the line and recites it without thinking. More importantly, Alice displays an incredible lack of empathy in mentioning cats, the natural predator of mice, to the Mouse. Alice even tells the Mouse that her cat is “such a capital one for catching mice”, causing it to be deeply offended. However, Alice does learn from the experience. She does not broach the topic of cats to the Mouse again for fear of offending him. The lesson stays with her in her later encounters in the novel, evidence of Alice learning empathy and maturing emotionally. Through the incident between Alice and the Mouse, Alice learns important lesson on social boundaries and conversational taboos, maturing socially. At the same time, Carroll critiques Victorian education for not teaching practical knowledge to children.

Alice’s struggles with identity are symbolic of puberty on her journey to becoming an adult. As Alice walks the path to maturity, it is inevitable that she must mature not only mentally and emotionally, but also physically. During her first physical transformation, Alice consumes a cake and grows incredibly large. She is incredibly distressed at the perceived loss of identity, and cries a pool of tears, crying out “Who in the world am I? Ah, THAT’S the great puzzle!” (Carroll, 7). Alice’s inability to cope with her change in physical size mirror her emotional immaturity when she speaks with the Mouse. If Alice must mature into an adult and leave Wonderland, she must come to terms with her physical identity as well. Until Alice finally learns how to control her physical size with the mushroom, she struggles to come to terms with her identity. Identity becomes a recurring theme in the novel as even the animals question Alice’s identity. The Pigeon mistakenly identifies Alice as a serpent because of her elongated neck and confession that she consumes eggs (Carroll, 22). When questioned about her identity, Alice replies that she is a little girl, but “rather doubtfully, as she remembered the number of changes she had gone through that day” (Carroll, 22). This is symbolic of the physical transformations children go through during puberty, which Alice also goes through, albeit in an exaggerated form. At the same time, Carroll alludes to the active process of learning Alice has gone through during her time in Wonderland. The “number of changes” Alice has gone through are not only physical, but also emotional and mental. However, her confusion about her identity prevent her from reaching maturity, remaining as a child.

In his essay ‘Power Struggle between the Adult and Child in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, Aihong Ren argues that many of the characters in Wonderland are adults who attempt to oppress and reign over Alice (Ren, 1). According to Ren, adulthood directly correlates to power in Wonderland. Alice, who is emotionally and physically immature, is repeatedly dominated by the adults in the story who can overpower her physically until she changes her size:

Alice’s change of her body size can be understood as a wish-fulfillment of the child to be free from the control of the adults. Children very often imagine themselves acquiring the ability to change at will. Sometimes they desire to become so tiny that they can be free from the adults; sometimes they long to get so large that the adults can do nothing with them. (Ren, 3)

Alice symbolically gains power over the adults during an incident in the White Rabbit’s house, where she drinks a size-increasing potion in the White Rabbit’s house (Carroll, 15). With her increased size, Alice fights back against the White Rabbit and even kicks Bill up the chimney with ease (Carroll, 16). Alice’s growth in physical size is similar to puberty, where a child grows to the size of an adult, allowing her to challenge and fight back against them. Alice not only grows physically, but emotionally as well as she learns to assert her agency with her newfound power (Ren, 4). Alice’s physical and emotional growth in the imagined space of Wonderland bring her closer to maturity.

Alice’s reaches full maturity in the final courtroom scene. Having full control over her size and the confidence to assert her own agency, she takes away Bill the Lizard’s squeaky pen (Carroll, 51) and finds the courage to speak out against the court’s nonsensical evidence: “I don’t believe there’s an atom of meaning in it.” (Carroll, 58) Alice’s physical maturity is alluded to when she grows to “her full size” in the courtroom and cries that the Queen is “nothing but a pack of cards” (Carroll, 59). Alice has reached full maturity and the imagined adult figures of Wonderland no longer hold any power over her, physically or emotionally. Alice outgrows the fantasy world of Wonderland, waking back into the real world. Alice’s emotional and physical growth have led her to maturity, where she openly defies the nonsensical and often unfair practices of the royal members. (Ren, 3)

By reading ‘Alice in Wonderland’ as a bildungsroman, we observe how Carroll deliberately stages events in Wonderland to reveal the inadequacy of Victorian education. Alice is instead forced to rely on her wits to survive in Wonderland, organically learning life lessons and growing emotionally. Alice solidifying her identity through gaining the power to change her size at will is symbolic of her physical maturity. As she grows emotionally, Alice also finds the power to assert her agency against the adults. Hence, we see how Carroll uses symbolism in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ to portray her coming of age, while critiquing the failings of Victorian education.

Works Cited

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Project Gutenberg, 2008. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11/11-h/11-h.htm

Sedlacek, Cameron D. “Satire and Synthesis: Parody and Satire of Victorian Education in the Works of Lewis Carroll” (2016). All Electronic Theses. Paper 348.

Ren, Aihong. “Power and Struggle between the Adult and Child in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 5, No. 8, pp. 1659-1663, August 2015 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0508.16

Originally written: 9 March 2020