"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don’t much care where --" said Alice.
"Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"-- so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you’re sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
The Alice in Wonderland books are those rare things -- stories you enjoy as a kid that you can go back to as an adult, only to find them just as charming as you remembered.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was first published on November 26, 1865, by Lewis Carroll, whose real name was Charles Dodgson. (Dodgson used a pen name for Alice in order to differentiate the books from his more serious publications on mathematics.) It was followed up in 1871 by a sequel, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. In these books, seven-year-old Alice finds herself in strange worlds filled with size-altering snacks, illogical rules, and endlessly confusing conversations with endlessly curious characters.
The books actually differ in location; it is only in the first story that Alice actually ventures to Wonderland. (The land through the looking-glass is a strange one, and similar in many ways to Alice's previous adventure -- but the world through the mirror is never called "Wonderland.") The worlds' themes differ slightly: Wonderland ultimately turns out to be inhabited by "a pack of cards;" whereas the world through the looking-glass is set up like a giant chessboard, with Alice determined to make it to the end of the board and earn a queen's crown.
The White Queen, a newly-crowned Alice, and the Red Queen
Charles Dodgson first came up with the story of Wonderland at the request of ten-year-old Alice Liddell. Dodgson had become friends with the Liddell family and served as something of an uncle to Alice, along with her sisters Lorina and Edith, and her brother Harry. Dodgson often took the children for picnic lunches on boat trips along the Thames, with adult friends or family along to share in rowing duties. It was on one such trip in 1862 that the children asked for a story, and Dodgson promptly began telling them about a bored little girl named Alice who got caught up in the most curious adventures. Little Alice Liddell was so delighted with the story that she asked Dodgson to write it down, and two years later, Dodgson presented her with a bound manuscript entitled Alice's Adventures Underground. An expanded version of that story would go on to be published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
The Alice books are part of that genre known as literary nonsense -- a genre where nonsense itself is used as the basis for the story, either as a joke or with some deeper meaning intended. Since Dodgson's death in 1898, literary scholars and historians alike have worked to unlock the meaning of Wonderland -- to figure out what Dodgson was really saying with his nonsense children's stories -- and their theories are decidedly all over the map.
Alice with her "croquet mallet" -- a flamingo
The current, most popular theory -- one which I've heard referenced many times -- is that Dodgson, a mathematician, put in many references to mathematics in the supposed "nonsense" of the Alice books. The argument is that Dodgson, a traditional mathematician, was contemptuous of the new lines of thought being put forth in his profession. Non-Euclidean geometries and the development of abstract algebra were not to Dodgson's more traditional tastes, and some historians argue that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland contain much criticism about the faulty (to Dodgson) logic of the new abstract mathematics. (You can read more about this particular theory here).
Not everyone sees the symbolism of Dodgson's stories as mathematical, however. The argument's been made that the stories are actually philosophical, with Dodgson using his writings to argue for the belief in "Non-Being." ("Lewis Carroll and the Search for Non-Being.") Others have made the case for Alice in Wonderland being a political satire of England's War of the Roses. ("The Truth About 'Alice'.") And many people will insist that, given the crazy and wild nature of the stories, the books must have been written as symbolic stories as to the nature of drug use. The lists of theories go on.
Alice at the Mad Hatter's tea party
The problem to me is that, even with the best of these theories (that one about mathematics is awfully convincing), a single flaw remains: Dodgson himself never said anything of the kind. He never claimed that his Alice stories were about mathematics, philosophy, or even drug use. When asked about the meaning behind his Wonderland-esque poem The Hunting of the Snark, he responded:
"I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense. Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them; so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer means. So, whatever good meanings are in the book, I'm glad to accept as the meaning of the book."
Stories can, of course, have meanings within them that arise without the author being aware of them. But it's harder to say that Dodgson meant the Alice books to be scathing commentary on the history of an English Civil War when Dodgson himself never said or wrote that he meant them as such. Perhaps some parallels between Wonderland and non-Euclid geometry can be made, but proof positive that Dodgson meant the books as anything but "literary nonsense" remains to be discovered.
For my part, I don't remember how old I was when I first discovered the Alice books, mostly because I can't remember a time when I didn't know and love them. I was absolutely captivated by the crazy characters Alice encountered, by the illogically logical inner workings of Wonderland and the world through the looking-glass -- and by Alice herself, who made her way through these worlds with no small amount of confusion, but with a delightful sense of wonder, humor, and good-natured exasperation. To me, there's a sense to be found within the nonsensical of Alice's adventures -- and that, for me, is enough to make these books of "literary nonsense" quite meaningful indeed.
The world through the looking-glass
Books
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass - both books in a single volume
The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition - Notes by Martin Gardner.
Audio versions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Audio versions of Through the Looking-Glass
Films
Walt Disney's 1951 animated film (starring the voices of Kathryn Beaumont, Sterling Holloway, Bill Thompson, & Verna Felton)
The CBS 1985 miniseries (starring Natalie Gregory, Red Buttons, Carol Channing, Sammy Davis, Jr., & Sid Caesar)
Hallmark's 1999 production (starring Tina Majorino, Gene Wilder, Christopher Lloyd, & Whoopi Goldberg)
Tim Burton's 2010 film (starring Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham Carter, & Johnny Depp)
Why is a raven like a writing-desk?
Spin-Offs
The Looking Glass Wars series - by Frank Beddor
Automated Alice - by Jeff Noon
The Wonderland Gambit trilogy - by Jack L. Chalker
The Looking Glass, or Voyage of the Space Bubble, series - by John Ringo
Articles
"Lewis Carroll's Shifting Reputation" - from the Smithonian
"'Lewis Carroll:' A Myth in the Making" - from the opening chapter of In the Shadow of the Dreamchild by Karoline Leach
-- Post by Ms. B
No comments:
Post a Comment