Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Down the Rabbit-Hole of Experiencing Childhood

    Being an adult and attempting to understand what it is like to be a child is difficult, as is the search for a piece of media or literature that can accurately make a child feel understood or seen. This is why Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is so enduring in its impact on worldwide culture; It is effective in taking familiar “boring” actions and rituals most children experience, and turning them whimsical and wacky, thus creating an extremely vivid and wonder-filled experience for a person of any age to enjoy and step into Alice’s, or any child’s, shoes. Carroll manages to accurately depict and communicate a young girl’s experience with growing out of childhood and into a more aware member of society through this transformation. 

    Often times, adults shake their heads when children show their tendency to cry, in response to seemingly anything, but Alice demonstrates how it feels to be a child experiencing such large emotions and her realizations that such dramatic responses may result in dramatic consequences. Alice is quite a bold and confident protagonist, traits many children embody at a young age, before the conscious realization that embarrassment exists kicks in. She still has much to learn though, as is demonstrated through the lessons she takes away from the responses she receives from her actions that may have been thought of as familiar before jumping down the rabbit hole. This is highlighted in the title of the second chapter, “The Pool of Tears.” Being overwhelmed by the confusion of growing to an absurd height after eating a strange cake, Alice does what any child would do: sit down and cry. She is well aware of her actions and is dismayed, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ said Alice, ‘a great girl like you,’ [...], ‘to go on crying in this way! Stop this moment, I tell you!” (Carroll 8). Despite her imploring, her childlike nature gets the better of her and she continues to cry until the tears reach a height of four inches. The familiar reaction is suddenly contrasted by the unfamiliar result, after shrinking to a miniature size, she finds herself struggling to swim in the pool. This series of occurrences create an effect of surprise for the reader to see Alice, who is characterized by her bold and confident nature that only a child could boast, to be feeling “hopeless” and frustrated (Carroll 8). It produces a sense of reflection, to ruminate on the effects of growing up and understanding the consequences of your actions, which you may need to pay for eventually, although Alice pays for immediately to exemplify the fast-paced nature of children's stories. 

    The basis of many of Alice’s adventures and unfamiliar changes to her body in the underground world is through the ordinary activity of consuming food and drink. She picks up a jar of marmalade that she is disappointed to find empty as she’s falling, drinks curious liquids, eats cakes on multiple occasions, and even nibbles a strange mushroom. Each time, she either grows to an unexpected size, shrinks, or her neck even extends after eating the mushroom. There are all sorts of mixed reactions and interactions that come out of her constant physical changes, from being able to interact with mice and birds to having the Pigeon “[beat] her violently with its wings” after mistaking her long neck for a serpent (Carroll 26). But most of all, her dismay at each time she finds herself vastly larger or smaller than expected when she willingly ate, without much thought, is the most emotion she experiences throughout the story. Just the observation that her body has changed triggers pools of tears, and even an existential crisis at the alien nature of her unfamiliar body; She wonders, “Who in the world am I?” (Carroll 9). All children are familiar with the concept of eating and growing, and the relationship that inevitably exists between the two. They are told every day by their parents and in general to finish what is on their plates during dinner, to eat their vegetables, and to maintain a balanced diet to “grow strong and healthy.” However, in Western societies, there comes an age when girls growing out of childhood are told to stop eating as much. The change from being told to eat more to eating less can be very shocking and challenging to come to terms with, especially when there are many changes to the body accompanying these contradicting statements and observations about the state of others, and even the shame that frequently haunts young girls struggling with body image. This motif of eating, then growing or shrinking renders the previously familiar as strange and new, and ultimately explores the idea that Alice often enjoys and seeks the experience of control over her body and its size, for example, she is “delighted to find that she began shrinking directly” after consuming some cake (Carroll 21). But this is accompanied by the fact that she often finds herself struggling after her actions of reckless eating, serving as a parallel to experiencing changes to the body that are not always in one’s control, especially as a child who is still learning and growing, such as Alice. The tale serves as a parallel and rumination on the female experience Alice must go through at the age of seven, or even as she gets a little older and continues to come to terms with her size and growth into womanhood. 

    The function of making familiar actions, such as eating and crying, strange in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is to allow the reader to lucidly experience growing up and realize certain things about not being a child anymore, such as having to deal with the consequences of one’s actions. The sheer drama of growing to nine feet tall after consuming cake, and finding yourself in a pool of tears has a much bigger-than-life effect than if she simply ate to satiate her hunger, or if she wiped her tears away with a tissue. This stays true to the naive nature of children experiencing much of what the world has to offer for the first time, and what it is like to function in society for the first time, something adults find difficult to sympathize with when they have gone through so much more. It is still relevant to attempt to understand children who are feeling such large things when they reach an age such as Alice’s, and Carroll does so by making the familiar strange.