Breaking Boundaries and Growing Up in Lewis Carroll's Looking-Glass

Louise M. Rosenblatt, in her book Literature as Exploration, defines the basis of reader-response criticism:

To share the author's insight, the reader need not have had identical experiences, but he must have experienced some needs, emotions, concepts, some circumstances and relationships, from which he can construct the new situations, emotions, and understandings set forth in a literary work. (77)

To share identically with Lewis Carroll or rather Charles L. Dodgson's experience would be impossible.[1] His complex, obsessive lifestyle; his infatuation with young children; his love of mathematics and his avoidance of the finality of the vows of ordination would lead the reader down an entirely new path, impossible to replicate and impossible to travel. Dodgson's inspiration for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There was a small girl named Alice Pleasance Liddell. His thoughts, emotions, and experiences with this child prove significant, far beyond what he himself realized. The character Alice, between the end of Wonderland and the beginning of Looking-Glass, ages six months. This seemingly small amount of time has a great impact on the land beyond the looking-glass. The spontaneity of Wonderland breaks way to the disturbed looking-glass world, a sign of the erosion of imagination via maturation. Alice's "growing up" sends a shock-wave through the realm of Wonderland and produces a backwards world, where structure and blatant rudeness prevail. As Florence Becker Lennon states: "Looking-Glass is a masterpiece-only a shade less than Wonderland-but it already exudes the ripe flavor of approaching decay and disintegration into the cruel" (Phillips 65).

Carroll, at the beginning of each work, utilizes a poem as an epigraph. Before Wonderland, the poem speaks of a boat ride with three children[2] and the excitement of a tale to be told of "wonders wild and new" (3). The poem reflects the coming tale about a land that is full of wonders, a new experience for the children to whet their appetites. All goes well at the tale's end and "home [they] steer, a merry crew, / Beneath the setting sun" (4). The mood of the Wonderland poem is much unlike the one preceding Looking-Glass. Alice has aged and the world is different now: sensitive and foreboding. Carroll speaks, not of "wonders," but of fleeting time. His nostalgic sadness and fear that he (Dodgson) should be forgotten hangs heavy over Alice's new adventure. Simple words that did not appear in the Wonderland piece appear here: "forget," "dread," "bitter," "unwelcome," "melancholy," etc. (103). Carroll's phrases also complement the notion that life has moved on for both Alice and Dodgson: "I have not seen thy sunny face, / Nor heard thy silver laughter," and "We are but older children, dear, / Who fret to find our bedtime near" (103). His obvious admittance, "the shadow of a sigh / May tremble through the story," breathes a certain life into the idea that Alice's adventures will not be as wondrous and innocent, but will embody a world that is shadowed and shrouded by impending maturity.

This maturity that haunts Looking-Glass begins in the poem "Jabberwocky" (116). Although Carroll invents words in an attempt to conserve the immaturity and child-like ignorance of language rules and boundaries, the theme of the poem is of a boy coming of age by slaying the famed Jabberwock. The reader does not need to know the meanings of the words "brillig," "slithy," and "mimsy" to understand that a boy sunk a blade of a sword into a dragon-like beast (116). Alice realizes this herself.[3] Considering that Alice has to use the looking-glass to read the poem leads the reader to believe that Alice has yet to understand her own coming of age. Alice admits, though, that "Jabberwocky" "seems to fill [her] head with ideas" (118). These ideas, never being unearthed, may be realizations that she is growing up.

The distortions of time and space in the two worlds lends to her growing and the awkwardness that accompanies it: "Most of her anxieties are connected with a change of her body (body image)" (Schilder 285). The issue of Alice's anxieties is a thread that will be picked up again later, but it is safe to mention that she frets when assailed by different comestibles that either make her grow or make her shrink. In Wonderland many items beg "Eat Me" or "Drink Me," but in Looking-Glass, Alice is not faced with any decision of the sort. Her curiosity is not so strong as to defy the boundaries of parental warnings to not eat or drink anything that is not known. Granted that she is faced with food-the cake with the Lion and the Unicorn, and the feast in her honor-her imagination makes it impossible for her to eat. The cake is devoured before she gets a piece and the food at the feast comes alive and introduces itself. Also, her body does not contort in Looking-Glass as it does in Wonderland. But on the contrary, time is warped and her notions of forwards and backwards are skewed. The Red Queen takes Alice for a run and ends up where they began, with Alice exclaiming, "Well, in our country, you'd generally get to somewhere else-if you ran very fast for a long time as we've been doing" (127). As children grow up, it is known that they change, in body and in mind, and those changes somewhat distort the placement of their own bodies.

Alice's creation of characters between the two worlds is significantly different. In Wonderland the characters are whimsical and ignorant of each other's feelings. They are not blatantly rude as the characters in Looking-Glass. The animals that Alice meets after the flood of tears involve her in a long tale and a "Caucus-race" where everyone wins (22). The Caterpillar, however apathetic, gives Alice advice, even encourages her that she will "get used to [easily offended creatures] in time" (41). But quite the opposite happens in Looking-Glass. The live flowers that inhabit the looking-glass garden are plain rude. When Alice begins speaking to the flowers, one of them, the Rose, remarks that Alice's "face has got some sense in it, though it is not a clever one" (121). She again states later that "it's my opinion that you never think at all," followed up by the Violet, "I never saw anybody that looked stupider" (122). The batteries of criticism do not end with the flowers, but continues with the creatures in the train carriage. Their rude comments on whether or not she should know which way she is going frustrates her. But she fails to understand that her own imagination has provided the voices of these new characters. The six-month difference in the creation of characters shines through their attitudes. No longer easily offended like the creatures in Wonderland, the creatures in Looking-Glass are offending Alice.

Like the characters, the land and structure of Looking-Glass lacks the impulsiveness of Wonderland. In Wonderland, the characters and the events take no order; they appear out of nothingness, as with the Cheshire-Cat, and the Mad Tea Party. On the other hand, the Looking-Glass world is a structured land, "'I declare it's marked out just like a large chess-board!' Alice said at last" (125). With her moves mapped out by Carroll before the adventure begins, Alice cannot stray from her path to find and experience new things. Her imagination is growing stale with age, reality is setting in. The normal hum-drum of life is seeping into her mind, much like how the poem "Jabberwocky" "seems to fill [her] head with ideas" (118). Alice finds the Looking-Glass world more stressful than Wonderland. In Wonderland, Alice accepted the odd, but in Looking-Glass she does not understand. The notions of time and its flexibility strain her and she ponders instead of accepting. But to alleviate this stress, Looking-Glass maintains the extremely structured boundaries of a chess game.

Schilder rightly states that the Looking-Glass world is "a world of cruelty, destruction, and annihilation" (289). The cruelty stems from the creatures reactions and conversations with Alice. The destruction is seen everywhere from Humpty Dumpty's great fall to the approaching darkness (it was never dark in Wonderland) while spending time with Tweedledum and Tweedledee.[4] Also it is seen in the jailing of the Mad Hatter from Wonderland for a crime he has yet to commit.[5] Three scenes come to mind for annihilation: Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Lion and the Unicorn, and the White Knight and the Red Knight. These acts of intended annihilation are off-shoots of the destruction of the imaginative world of Alice's mind. The battle between Tweedledum and Tweedledee is over a broken rattle. Alice notes that "it's only a rattle," but it does not matter to them, they nonchalantly agree to do battle (146-47). Before their act is through, the two run off, scared of the "monstrous crow" (darkness). The fight between the Lion and the Unicorn is an interesting one. The Unicorn is a figment of unreality, while the Lion is a creature of the real. The rhyme that Alice repeats to herself:

The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown:

The Lion beat the Unicorn all round the town.

Some gave them white bread, some gave them brown:

Some gave them plum-cake and drummed them out of town. (172-73)

tells much of the outcome of the battle. In the end, reality wins the fight and it is time to grow up. The short, violent battle between the Red Knight and the White Knight is not as complex as the fight between the Lion and the Unicorn. Reality is not at stake, but only the notion of memory versus forgetfulness. Most adults forget what it is like to be a child, innocent and free. This is a wonderful setup for the conversation between the White Knight and Alice.

The boundaries of imagination are broken as Carroll enters the tale as the White Knight.[6] Alice proclaims that of all the strange things she saw on her journey "this was the one that she always remembered most clearly" (187). Carroll uses this to portray his hopes that Alice Liddell would always remember Dodgson as her White Knight in shining armor. After some whimsical nonsense and a song, the White Knight bids that Alice "sees [him] off" (190). He wants a grand finally, an ending for both of them to remember. The White Knight gets his wish and Alice jumps the brook and becomes queen.

Alice's anxiety rises as the red tape of becoming a queen sets in. Upon receiving her crown, Alice finds herself between the Red Queen and the White Queen. The Red Queen scolds Alice, "You ca'n't be a Queen...till you've passed the proper examination" (192). Alice tries to explain her thoughts and feelings but is cut off by the two bickering queens. They speak of dinner parties and manners before moving on to the test, which consists of impossible and unrealistic questions concerning mathematics and language. The disarray continues when they are all present at the dinner party in Alice's honor. She looks on anxiously as different foods are introduced and taken away. During her speech, "all sorts of things happened in a moment" (203). The world of the Looking-Glass began to fall apart. Alice's anxiety over the entire situation grew so large that she exclaimed, "I ca'n't stand this any longer" and pulled the table cloth out, guests, dishes, and food falling in one heap (204). She could no longer accept this world of imagination. She could fathom the nonsensical world of Wonderland, but she has grown and matured since then. Everything that once was enjoyable no longer makes any sense to her.

Outside of the text, Dodgson was watching the young Alice Liddell grow up. Readers will recognize these feelings of growing up and watching small children grow up. Dodgson's sadness, the idea that Alice Liddell was growing up and moving away from him, came through Carroll's writing of Looking-Glass. There's a sad nostalgia that appears when one knows that childhood is over or is coming to an end. The imagination does not seem to work as it does when one is a child. It is not difficult, then, to discern that Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass is an end to childhood and an end to Wonderland.

Notes

[1] To simplify matters, when speaking of the author's life, Charles L. Dodgson will be used; when speaking of the works, Lewis Carroll will be used.

[2] The three Liddell children, oldest to youngest: Lorina Charlott, Alice Pleasance, and Edith Mary.

[3] "Dragon-like" is a description of Sir John Tenniel's rendering of the Jabberwock (117).

[4] The darkness is a monstrous crow, but it passes and the light returns (152). The notion of destruction lies beneath the idea that the darkness occurred at all. The imaginative world is falling apart, and the once forever bright world of Wonderland is now becoming encompassed by the darkness of maturity.

[5] From Tenniel's drawing (151).

[6] As explained in the footnote to the text on page 181 of the Norton Critical Edition of Alice in Wonderland: "Many Commentators have found Dodgson in the White Knight. Dodgson too was an inventory of such devices as a map of London cut in sections so that it could be carried as a book in a pocket, and the Nyctograph, an invention designed to assist writing in the dark. The association between Dodgson and the White Knight is both strengthened and made poignant by the White Knight's departure from Alice, who really leaves him to become a queen."

Works Cited

Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Donald J. Gray. 2nd

ed. New York: Norton, 1992.

Lennon, Florence Becker. "Escape through the Looking-Glass." Phillips 66-79.

Phillips, Robert., ed. Aspects of Alice: Lewis Carroll's Dreamchild as seen through the

Critics' Looking-Glasses. New York: Vanguard, 1971.

Rosenblatt, Louise M. Literature as Exploration. 5th ed. New York: MLA, 1995.

Schilder, Paul. "Psychoanalytic Remarks on Alice in Wonderland and Lewis Carroll."

Phillips 279-82.