Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Lewis's Underground Love Adventure

"Down, down, down" falls Alice through the Rabbit hole, leaving far above her the real world, and so, starts her nonsensical underground adventure. Through her conversations with the strange creatures, and the queer situations that she faces, she hopelessly searches for order, rule, and reason. However, Alice fails and surrenders to the unexplainable actions of these creatures. Unlike Alice, readers who know about Lewis Carroll's life- the creator of this chaotic world- are able to explain, and understand a lot of the aspects that he included in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In his essay, Richard Jenkyns expresses his believes that, the story reflects Lewis's fundamental life-events. Enough to say that, Lewis wrote this book to satisfy his special 'child-friend's' request. Alice Reddle asked him to write a book for her in whom she would be the heroine. For this reason, Lewis presented Alice in a unique way. He gave her a perfect and good mannered personality, and made her the agent through whom he achieved his own dreams.

During Lewis's life, (1832-1898) Victorians experienced tremendous changes in different fields, and they were introduced to new revolutionary inventions. England stood on a more solid ground, and become economically very powerful (Rackin 4). The Industrial Revolution mechanized all manual jobs known at the time, easing and accelerating economic production. To add to its power, England established railways for the first time in human history. Distances between cities became shorter, and trade expanded. However, such rapid progress seemed a puzzling matter for the " pragmatic reasonableness" (Rackin 36) of the bourgeoisie society. Some of them, including Lewis himself, showed their worries about such development.

Lewis, who was a worrying personality by nature, felt very uncomfortable towards the sudden rapid rhythm of life. David Huxley says in his book that " Carroll always wore gloves, as he believed that this was a hygienic habit" (77). Lewis's worries reached his social standing, he felt threatened by the tremendous economic changes: he was afraid of role alteration in life (Hudson 21). Lewis believed that, at any time people of a lower class than him might shift to a higher class then his, resulting the loss of his prestigious social position. It is surprising to mention that Lewis's religious background cont...

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...fe time specialization; mathematics. In her attempts to solve the puzzle of the changes that she feels about her self, Alice fails to multiply the simplest numbers correctly. She says, counting on her fingers "let's see, five times two is eleven, and five times seven is fourteen". Lewis also violates the hierarchy positions of the real world by altering the social roles. For example, in the fifth chapter, the White Rabbit treats Alice like a servant. With shrill, he orders her to go fetch him the gloves in his house. To prove to the chaotic feature of such dream, Alice obeys the Rabbit, and swiftly goes to the house fetching for the gloves.

Such attack on commonsense came to prove that one short experience in life could have an endless influence throughout generations. Lewis Carroll's friendship with Alice Liddle that is summarized in the story exemplifies this point. Wonderland's creator had known Alice for "3 years" (Hudson 12) only, however his love to her remained enjoyable to thousands, may be millions of children after his death. Alice's unique personality that teaches children many aspects about life would not have been there unless Lewis appreciated Alice that much.