Alice´s adventures in Wonderland

Culture English Literature General Literature

11.04.2021

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This beautiful world-renowned work is full of magic and unique characters. Certainly created for children, the story can seem somewhat dark. Virginia Woolf commented on this work and its sequel “The two Alices are not books for children, they are books to become children”.

Alice in Wonderland is full of fantasy. When we stop to reflect on the phrases, and dialogues of the characters, we can discover a world full of teachings and situations that are worth reviewing.

The Play

Alice in Wonderland was published in 1865. And it is classified as a children’s novel, within the genre Nonsense, fantastic literature. Some have also classified it as surreal. Lewis was a visionary, as it would take many years to create the surrealist style. And it is that, as the story unfolds, several pictures of surrealist art could easily be composed with the characters and settings.

The original name of the novel was ¨The Underground Adventures of Alicia¨. As the book was published, it was shortened to its current name. Alice had a second part, which was not as famous as the first part, Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, published in 1871.

This story is inspired by Alice Liddell, a girl close to Lewis. During a long and tedious journey down the River Thames, the girl and her sisters asked Lewis to tell them a story. Alice especially was drawn to the story.

The Author

Lewis Carroll, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was a British writer, logician, mathematician, and photographer. Born in 1832. He wrote poetry and some short stories that were not so successful.

Lewis befriends the family of the new dean of Oxford, where Lewis taught mathematics. A strong friendship developed with Henry Liddell’s wife and their three daughters. One of them, Alice, was always attentive to Lewis’s stories. The author gives the work “Alicia’s Underground Adventures” to Alice, who was 10 years old. Lewis always made it clear that the Alice in his story was not inspired by any real-life character.

Lewis caused controversy then and even today, because of his role as a photographer. Carroll can be considered one of the fathers of contemporary fine art photography. Lewis used to photograph girls, in somewhat unusual poses and situations, in some of the photographs the girls are naked. For the Victorian era, it is important to note that girls were seen as the image of innocence. However, today Lewis can be accused of being a pedophile. He created around 3,000 photographs, many have been intentionally destroyed and others have not withstood time.

The Phrases

Alice in Wonderland is full of extraordinary phrases, loaded with messages that in some scenes can be phrases without coherence. However, they carry a thread that makes this a sweetener, easy to feel trapped.

Let’s see some of the most attractive phrases from Alice in Wonderland:

¨There is no use going back to yesterday because then I was another person¨

Day by day they lead us on different paths to those we have experienced in the past, therefore, we can never be the same as days or weeks ago.

¨This is my dream and I will decide as follows¨

Each one works their way, in the daily decisions that are made.

“I’m not crazy, just my reality is different from yours.”

In life everything is about perspective, what is good for one person can be very strange or bad for another.

Curiosities

All characters are said to be inspired by real-life people. Lewis was a stutterer, and the character of the Dodo in the play stutters as well, which is why the Dodo is said to be a representation of himself.

The madness of the Hatter is explained by the fact that, in Victorian times, the artisans of the hats glued the suede of the hats using compounds that contained mercury, in addition to making them in closed workshops. The effects of mercury on the nervous system of humans are known, hence the “madness” of this character.

The March Hare, the character who is somewhat crazy, and drinks tea with the Hatter, has its origin in the fact that, during March, European hares tend to exhibit strange behavior due to the beginning of the mating season.

If you have not read this magnificent book yet, I hope these lines have filled you with curiosity to start doing it.