Introduction: Alice and the Critics

The introduction traces the evolution of the critical readings on the Alice texts throughout the past century and a half, from the biographical studies of Carroll’s life, the novels’ allusions to the scientific and cultural milieu of the Victorian age, and the studies on the educational and pedagogical aspects of the novels, to the linguistic, philosophical, and allegorical interpretations of them.

1. 1.

   As Jones and Gladstone note, ‘Carroll matured as a tireless finder and loser of child-friends’ (1995, 198).

2. 2.

   Douglas-Fairhurst specifies: ‘Whereas a modern viewer might see nakedness, Carroll saw nudity. […] in each case [of the photographs] Carroll’s true motivations remain a troubling blank’ (2016, 256).

3. 3.

   Shari L. Savage (2018) indicates that no evidence has ever been provided that Carroll acted on his alleged erotic urges towards young girls, even by those scholars that believe that he was actually a pedophile.

4. 4.

   A third argument is suggested by Douglas-Fairhurst when he reports that ‘a number of Carroll’s contemporaries thought that his sexual interests, however pale and repressed, were more likely to have been focused on other men,’ though he later specifies: ‘Yet it is just as likely that Carroll’s feelings were as much of a mystery to him as they are to us’ (2006, 138).

5. 5.

   Noteworthy are those films that include Lewis Carroll in their narratives. These are: the French production Alice in Wonderland (1949), which is the first color adaptation of the books, in which events in Dodgson’ and the three Liddell sisters’ lives at Oxford are read as the inspiration for the telling of the story on the expedition on the river. Actors and actresses performing in the Oxford scenes lend their voices to the stop-and-motion animated characters in Wonderland, thus reproducing a doubling of their parts typical of fantasy films such as The Wizard of Oz (1939). The expedition on the river takes central importance in Dennis Potter’s TV film (1965), in which the stuttering and introverted reverend’s real life, his relationship with Alice Liddell, and the history of the book’s publication are alternated with the scenes taken from the books, as well as in the 1972 adaptation directed by William Sterling and the 1986 BBC version. The expedition on the river is also depicted in the theme of the Anglia Television five-episode series (1985) and in Dreamchild (1985). In the latter film, an elderly Alice Liddell Heargraves visits New York in 1932 to celebrate Carroll’s centenary and to receive an honorary degree from Columbia University. On the occasion she remembers through flashbacks events involving her and Carroll as well as she fantasizes about some portions of Carroll’s stories in which her young self acts as the fictional Alice. By offering an interpretation of Carroll and his relationship with Alice Liddell these films thus allude to the critical interpretations on the writer’s life.

6. 6.

   Apoorv Agarwal et al.’s “Social Network Analysis of Alice in Wonderland” (2012) uses an annotation scheme for a dynamic network analysis of Carroll’s text created by the interactions between (and observation of) the characters as social events, focusing specifically on the characters of Alice, the White Rabbit, and the Mouse.

7. 7.

   As Elsie Leach brilliantly summarizes, the characters in Wonderland ‘snap at her [Alice], preach to her, confuse her, or ignore her. They behave to her as adults behave to a child—they are peremptory and patronizing [and exhibit a] ponderous didacticism, and contradictory behavior’ (1974, 125).

8. 8.

   My translation. Charles Taliaferro and Elizabeth Olson argue that Wonderland is an amusing rather than horrifying world, ‘because of Alice’s sensibility, all the situations, characters, and commands are exposed as ludicrous and absurd. […] Alice is sensible, rational, and grounded. She does not panic or even truly lament her predicament’ (2010, 189).

9. 9.

   As Donald Rackin argues, ‘Not only is Alice’s previous identity meaningless in Wonderland; the very concept of permanent identity is invalid’ (1974, 458).

10. 10.

    Kathleen Blake (1974) has read the character of Alice through the pedagogical theories elaborated by Jean Piaget, arguing that the seven-year-old child represents the third period of the psychologist’s development model, which signals the appropriate use of logic on the part of the child and his/her attempt to entertain more complex social interactions.

11. 11.

    According to Douglas-Fairhurst, ‘Alice’s adventures are a celebration of language—its pleasures, anxieties, rewards, risks’ (2006, 147).

12. 12.

    Parker himself contradicts such an interpretation of the texts by arguing that Alice experiences the reality of Wonderland as absurd and distorted before she takes any alleged drugs (2010, 138).

13. 13.

    Songs referring to Carroll’s works abound and include: Chick Corea’s entire album The Mad Hatter (1978), Chary Garcia’s ‘Alicia en el Pais’ (1980), Annihilator’s ‘Allison Hell’ (1989), Symphony X’s ‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1998), Forever Slave’s ‘Alice’s Inferno’ (2005), Hypnogaja’s ‘Looking Glass’ (2005), Lisa Mitchell’s ‘Sometimes I Feel Like Alice’ (2007), Buck Tick’s ‘Alice in Wonder Underground’ (2007), Natalia Kills’ ‘Wonderland’ (2010), Avril Lavigne’s ‘Alice’ (2010), Monkey Majik’s ‘Wonderland’ (2011), Egypt Central’s ‘White Rabbit’ (2011), Panic! At the Disco and Fun’s ‘C’Mon’ (2011), AKB48’s ‘First Rabbit’ (2012). Several artists have specifically focused on the poem ‘Jabberwocky’ in their songs, referring to it in their lyrics or performing a recited version of it. Among these, Boeing Duveen and The Beautiful Soup’s ‘Jabberwock’ (1968), Ambrosia’s ‘Mama Frog’ (1975), Verkraum’s ‘Beware the Jabberwock’ (2008), and Hatcham Social’s ‘Jabberwocky’ (2009). On the other hand, Carroll’s texts have also inspired orchestral works, operas and ballets, starting with Dick Cotsford’s In Wonderland: Six Duets for the Pianoforte (1876), Deems Taylor’s suite Through the Looking-Glass (1918), and Irving Fine’s Three Choruses from Alice in Wonderland (1942) to David Del Tredici’s symphonies (1969–85), the operas by Unsuk Chin (2007) and Alan John (2008) as well as the ballets by John Craton (2010) and Joseph Hallman (2010).

14. 14.

    The 1951 Disney adaptation, which mixes characters and events from both the 1865 and 1871 books, is notable for its transformation of many objects and animals (such as the teapots) into surreal projections as well as for the final chase sequence inspired by Dalì’s works. Disney’s version has been however criticized for its ‘cheaply pretty,’ over-sugared songs and for being too episodic and stylistically inconsistent (Boslaugh 2016, 53 and 55). On the other hand, as Will Brooker has noted, Disney’s film fixed ‘Alice’s image as cultural icon’ (2004, 200). The 1951 film is the first to introduce the scene of the Pigeon, but there are several sequences that are completely original to it, such as the protagonist’s wish to live in an ideal world where things work on the contrary, the golden doorknob, and Alice getting lost in the Tulgey wood while attempting to return home. Also, in Disney’s film there is a major emphasis on the danger (especially, of beheading) that Alice is threatened with during the story.

15. 15.

    The 2010 Alice in Wonderland directed by Tim Burton is structured as a sequel to the original story, Alice being a nineteen-year-old girl who returns to the realm (actually called ‘Underland’) and liberates its inhabitants from the tyrannical yoke of the hydrocephalic, ‘castrating’ Red Queen (who suffers from her own deformity). This is an unwelcoming, nightmarish version of the fantasy world created by Carroll, which is characterized by ‘gloomy landscapes and allusions to the Darwinian concept of the struggle for existence’ and emphasizes the post-traumatic stress of many characters (Sanna 2017, 78). Alice is kind, resourceful, and brave, but the film also emphasizes her nonconformity to societal norms of femininity and female behavior by presenting her as a freethinking agent who must accept her role as a strong female lead and finally reject a life of domestic constraints. The film exemplifies Burton’s fondness for absurdity and the bizarre in the use of nonsensical language and whimsical characters as well as it epitomizes the director’s visual style in the representation of both psychedelic, gracious landscapes and waste, joyless lands.

16. 16.

    Brooker’s volume examines in details two of the most renowned cinematic adaptations of Carroll’s novels, Jonathan Miller’s 1966 Alice in Wonderland and Jan Svankmajer’s Alice (1988). The former, a slow-paced film with no real vivacity and a mesmerizing soundtrack, is set in a series of apparently abandoned buildings, such as a hospital, a church, a manor and some country houses and the countryside, where the young protagonist (whose voiceover supplants much of the original dialogues) meets several people representing Carroll’s characters. There are no animals in this production, only extravagant and bizarre individuals in Victorian costumes, who represent Alice’s encounter with an adult world. The human actors’ and actresses’ wild and irrational behavior seems to define the locations more properly as a madhouse. More disquieting is the fact that Alice rarely looks at the other characters, but rather stares blankly straight ahead with an absent expression. In Svankmajer’s film, it is Alice herself who tells the story, addressing spectators directly and reciting all of the characters’ lines. Wonderland is depicted as a decrepit building and its creatures (stuffed animals and their skeletons, often hybridized with miniature objects, wooden dolls, and a pack of cards) and objects move by means of the stop-motion technique. The latter further contributes to the feeling of anxiety and the uncanny generated by this film’s images, which linger on discomforting details (the close-ups on dirt and the food residues mixed with nails and pins) as well as on menacing themes (Alice becomes a doll after eating tarts and drinking ink, and she is often chased by the creatures or hurts herself during her adventure), and are accompanied only by raw sound effects. According to Brooker, Svankmajer creates a series of repeated motifs (such as Alice’s many struggles to open school desks and the White Rabbit’s greediness for sawdust) that emphasize some of the original books’ themes, including sadism, eating, and mathematical puzzles (2004, 216).

17. 17.

    Susan Sontag’s Alice in Bed is a 1993 play in eight scenes presenting the fictionalized character of Alice James, sister of the intellectuals Henry and William James who died of breast cancer at forty-three. In the play, set in London in 1890, the protagonist is forced to her death bed, where she is visited by her relatives and some literary personages; her interior journey and exploration of the past is characterized by the death wish and the curative function of fantasy. The parallels with Carroll’s novels abound, from the mirror motif and references to hookahs, changes in size, and dreams to a recreation of an exclusively female tea party. As Nadia Butt argues, “the play is, in reality, a vehement vituperation of gender discrimination towards a woman who aims to explore her physical and mental talents as freely as her male counterparts, but is brutally thwarted by social and familiar mores” (2016, 115).

Authors and Affiliations

1. Università degli Studi di Sassari, Sassari, Italy

   Antonio Sanna

Editors and Affiliations

1. Università degli Studi di Sassari, Sassari, Italy

   Antonio Sanna

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