Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy

Curiouser and Curiouser

William Irwin, Richard Brian Davis

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780470590270
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The perfect companion to Lewis Carroll's classic book and director Tim Burton's March 2010 remake of Alice in Wonderland

Alice?s Adventures in Wonderland has fascinated children and adults alike for generations. Why does Lewis Carroll introduce us to such oddities as blue caterpillars who smoke hookahs, cats whose grins remain after their heads have faded away, and a White Queen who lives backwards and remembers forwards? Is it all just nonsense? Was Carroll under the influence? This book probes the deeper underlying meaning in the Alice books, and reveals a world rich with philosophical life lessons. Tapping into some of the greatest philosophical minds that ever lived?Aristotle, Hume, Hobbes, and Nietzsche?Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy explores life?s ultimate questions through the eyes of perhaps the most endearing heroine in all of literature.

• Looks at compelling issues such as perception and reality as well as how logic fares in a world of lunacy, the Mad Hatter, clocks, and temporal passage
• Offers new insights into favorite Alice in Wonderland characters and scenes, including the Mad Hatter and his tea party, the violent Queen of Hearts, and the grinning Cheshire Cat

Accessible and entertaining, Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy will enrich your experience of Alice's timeless adventures with new meaning and fun.

PART ONE

“WAKE UP, ALICE DEAR”

Chapter 1

UNRULY ALICE: A FEMINIST VIEW OF SOME ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

Megan S. Lloyd

“Come to class ready to discuss and defend your favorite fairy-tale heroine,” I told my students in “Unruly Women through the Ages.” The course began as a survey of feminist archetypes and issues, but it quickly became a forum for a group of rather unruly female students aged eighteen to twenty-two to discuss candidly topics such as date rape, abortion, sexual harassment, battered women, male and female relationships, anorexia and bulimia, and what it means to be a woman today. For one class period, we turned to the realm of fairy tales. To my initial question, I expected students to write about Little Red Riding Hood or Goldilocks, but most students chose a Disney princess—Cinderella, Ariel, Belle, Mulan, mostly unruly females going against the flow of male rules imposed upon them. Two students, however, chose Alice as their favorite unruly fairy tale character. They argued that Alice, unlike other fairy-tale heroines, requires no fairy god-mother, huntsman, or good fairy—just her own wits and ingenuity—to navigate through Wonderland successfully, keeping her head intact. My students know Alice not through Carroll but through Disney, and this Disney heroine Alice is a precursor to the strong Belle and Mulan and counter to the pliable Cinderella and the passive Aurora and Snow White, who require male aid to bring them to life and reality again.

In Carroll’s or Disney’s version, Alice’s journey through Wonderland has long been seen as a tale of identity, agency, and adulthood. The curiosity and confidence that Carroll instills in Alice connect her with other unruly women we studied in class, such as Lysistrata, Shakespeare’s Kate, Emma Bovary, Marie Antoinette, Marilyn Monroe, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Camille Paglia, Pandora, and Eve. Alice’s direct, candid approach to life is refreshing and something the young women in my class can relate to. They understand the story of a young woman who has the world before her, ready to embark on life, who changes herself, primarily by eating and drinking, to fit in. She encounters all types, tests herself, tastes life around her, and once she learns the right combination to fit in and be comfortable with herself, she’s welcomed into a beautiful world where she possesses wisdom, power, and prestige.¹

Nice Girls Don’t Make History

As if by instinct, Alice follows the White Rabbit down the hole “never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.”² Landing, she feels no fear, but rather engages in her surroundings and wonders how far she has fallen. “At such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling downstairs!”³ This self-assurance and unquestioning spirit, this Pandora mentality or, as some would say reckless, wild, impetuous streak, is also the kind of indomitable spirit today’s young women appreciate.

Alice rejects and frees herself from stereotypical female traits; she is not trapped by the confines of roles or requirements. First, she rejects the world her sister occupies; then in her journey through Wonderland she questions the nurturing role of mother; and finally she stands up to seemingly powerful females and males alike, including the Queen of Hearts, the Caterpillar, the Mad Hatter, and the Cheshire Cat. Alice’s confident attitude leads her safely through Wonderland and she begins “to think that very few things indeed were really impossible,” a message young women of today need to keep in mind.⁴ Plucky, undaunted, and impervious to the dangers that may lie in Wonderland, Alice is a curious, empowered seven-year-old girl eager to delve into a new world she chooses to enter. What a wonderful model for our young women to look up to!

Alice’s intrepid attitude elicits some criticism, however. In Carroll’s original and Disney’s rendition, Alice may seem abrasive. As my students came to realize in our historical survey, society all too often ridicules strong women, interpreting assertive actions as aggressive and transgressive. The powerful, autonomous woman to some may be the impetuous, reckless, and unruly woman to others. Indeed, Alice eats and drinks what she sees, intrudes, barges in, takes her seat at the tea party uninvited, hears a squeaking pencil from one juror and takes it from him,⁵ uses her intellect to solve problems, and frequently speaks her mind—everything young women should do. Nice girls don’t make history, after all. Alice is assertive, and unfortunately, almost 150 years after Carroll’s publication, in Wonderland and today that assertiveness can still seem pushy, forward, and aggressive.

Alice is not like the other females in Carroll’s stories, and this contrast appeals to my students and makes Alice an important female advocate. Even before she enters Wonderland, Alice has begun to reject the female reality her sister has chosen, a passive compliance, fulfilling a traditional female role. Her sister presents one vision of women, those well educated with little to do. Reading a book “without pictures or conversations” is of no use to Alice, and she seeks other means to occupy herself. ⁶ Next she contemplates making a daisy chain but wonders “whether the pleasure of making a daisy chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daises.”⁷ Significantly, the White Rabbit appears as Alice questions this busywork that would garner no productive results. Neither sitting and reading nor making daisy chains, Alice follows the White Rabbit down the hole and thus chooses an active function within the world, even if that world is Wonderland.

Motherhood Is Not a Requirement

Alice’s journey in Wonderland begins with a rejection of one female stereotype, the idle woman, embodied in her sister reading to while away the time. Continuing her journey in Wonderland, Alice learns more about the power of women when she literally opens the door for herself. In chapter VI, “Pig and Pepper,” Alice finds herself at the Duchess ’s door and knocks, but to no avail. This exchange between Alice and the Frog-Footman follows:

“But what am I to do?” said Alice.

“Anything you like,” said the Footman, and began whistling.

“Oh, there’s no use in talking to him,” said Alice desperately: “he’s perfectly idiotic! ” And she opened the door and went in.⁸

Her inability to enter the house through conventional means, acting the proper, demure female, causes Alice to question her situation: “What am I to do?” The Frog-Footman’s response, “Anything you like,” opens up all possibilities for her. Here she learns that the norms of society that she may follow really mean very little. She has the power to do anything within herself, a theme that recurs throughout Carroll’s works. Alice’s message for today—in Wonderland and the world at large—is that young women can do anything they like.

The world of possibility for women that Wonderland offers Alice includes an indifferent perspective toward motherhood, which in Victorian England (and in some places still today) was the primary function of women. Alice views the pride and pitfalls of maternity with a great deal of detachment. The Pigeon presents Alice with her first look at motherhood, a mother who expresses the suffering that comes with that role. Their meeting begins with the Pigeon beating a long-necked Alice.

“Serpent!” screamed the Pigeon.

“I’m not a serpent!” said Alice indignantly. “Let me alone!”

“Serpent, I say again! ” repeated the Pigeon, but in a more subdued tone, and added, with a kind of sob, “I’ve tried every way, but nothing seems to suit them! . . .

“I’ve tried the roots of trees, and I’ve tried banks, and I’ve tried hedges,” the Pigeon went on, without attending to her; “but those serpents! There’s no pleasing them! . . .

“As if it wasn’t trouble enough hatching the eggs,” said the Pigeon; but I must be on the look-out for serpents, night and day! Why, I haven’t had a wink of sleep these three weeks!”

“I’m very sorry you’ve been annoyed,” said Alice, who was beginning to see its meaning.

“And just as I’d taken the highest tree in the wood,” continued the Pigeon, raising its voice to a shriek, “and just as I was thinking I should be free of them at last, they must needs come wriggling down from the sky! Ugh, Serpent!”

“But I’m not a serpent, I tell you!” said Alice. “I’m a—I’m a—. . .

“I—I’m a little girl,” said Alice rather doubtfully, as she remembered the number of changes she had gone through that day.

“A likely story indeed!” said the Pigeon in a tone of the deepest contempt. “I’ve seen a good many little girls in my time, but never one with such a neck as that! No, no! You’re a serpent; and there’s no use denying it. I suppose you’ll be telling me next that you never tasted an egg!”

“I have tasted eggs, certainly,” said Alice, who was a very truthful child; “but little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you know. . . .

“I’m not looking for eggs, as it happens; and, if I was, I shouldn’t want yours.”⁹

In this exchange, Alice fails to commiserate with the Pigeon’s state as the maternally inclined might do, but instead apologizes for annoying her. Alice’s line, “little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do,” even resonates with today ’s pro-life/pro-choice discussion. The Pigeon names long-necked Alice a serpent; not rejecting this role for the Pigeon’s maternal one, Alice aligns herself with the serpent, predator to pigeons and eggs; rejects maternity, at least for the time being; and claims her autonomy.

Alice next encounters the maternal life of the Duchess. The ugly Duchess nurses a howling baby in a smoky kitchen. To contemporary readers, Carroll’s Duchess figures as a stereotypical white-trash mother, one who screams at her child, fails to consider its well-being (in a smoke -filled room with flying debris just missing it), and accompanies her sadistic song not with soothing rocks but severe shakes at every line. Tired of her crying child, the Duchess finally flings the baby at Alice and departs to do something better, like “play croquet with the Queen.”¹⁰ Today, this Duchess could be arrested for shaken baby syndrome or be demonized, like Britney Spears and Casey Anthony, and plastered all over the media.¹¹ Alice, herself, sees how unfit for motherhood the Duchess is, remarking, “If I don’t take this child away with me . . . they’re sure to kill it in a day or two.”¹² Alice’s disregard for the Duchess surfaces again when she learns that the Duchess, a prisoner of the Queen, is to be executed.

“What for?” said Alice.

“Did you say ‘What a pity!’?” the Rabbit asked.

“No, I didn’t,” said Alice. “I don’t think it’s at all a pity.”¹³

Alice catches the Duchess’s strange child, which ultimately transforms into a pig, and her indifferent treatment of it offers another view of motherhood. No cooing,...