Victorian Social Norms In Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland

Alex Brink explains in a scholarly article, that Tim Burton’s movie adaptation of the novel, Alice in Wonderland, demonstrates Victorian social norms, which become rejected at various points in the film, and thus digressing from Victorian culture (Brink 1). For example, in the scene where Alice returns to the real world from Wonderland, Alice breaks Victorian tradition when she tells Hamish, the son of her father’s friend, “I’m sorry Hamish. I can’t marry you. You’re not the right man for me. And there’s that trouble with your digestion” (Burton, Alice in Wonderland). After Alice says this, she goes on to tell everyone that she will live her life the way she wants to live it, directly displacing her from cultural expectations of that era (Burton,

Alice in Wonderland) . However, there was one part of the film that stayed within Victorian social norms. Since young Victorian women were expected to get married while they were still young, unmarried women would be pitied and sometimes ostracized from society, such as the case as Aunt Imogene in Burton’s film (Fisher 4).
Alice rejects the cultural expectations of passiveness while she was in Wonderland as a means of active rebellion against Victorian traditions. For example, she chooses to chase the White Rabbit instead of reading or making daisy chains, thus giving her an active role right at the beginning of the story: “Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do; once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations?’” (Carroll 13). Notice how Alice’s sister is given the traditional female passive role who falls into a static trap of other women in that literary period. Her activity continues:
“So she was considering... whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the
trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a WHite Rabbit with pink eyes ran
close by her... Alice started to her feet... burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it...
In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was
going to get out [of the rabbit hole] again” (Carroll 13).

Usually this type of active role was reserved for male protagonists.
Yet, Alice possesses some masculine qualities like male heroes of that time period, such as heroism and courage. For instance, in a conversation with the Queen of Hearts, Alice defies the Queen’s authority multiple times and is not afraid of the consequences or threats she faces because Alice knows she is safe (Carroll 93). Alice also saves the gardeners’ lives from execution (Carroll 94-95). Alice yet again acts with courage and insubordination toward the King and Queen of Hearts during the trial by standing up against the two, who could easily punish or kill her (Carroll 140).
In the same scene, Alice demonstrates another act of rebellion against social norms by acting out of turn. To start off the scene, Alice loses her temper by the squeaking pencils of the jurors, and calls them “Stupid things!” indignantly (Carroll 127). She also took away one of the jurors pencils, angrily (Carroll 127). Earlier in the book, Alice initiates arguments with the Caterpillar and with the Tea Party

Guests.
Under what Thomas Gramstad calls androcentrism, Victorian women were seen as inferior to men, and a wife was “subject to her husband..., and often treated as a superior servant not as an equal” (Fisher 1).

Yet, Alice is portrayed as a strong-willed and logical character in Wonderland. According to Hughes, “women were considered physically weaker, yet morally superior to men, which meant that they were best suited to the domestic sphere” (Hughes 1). Alice disproves this by being strong and convincing herself not to cry at the beginning of the novel (Carroll 19). Her constant crying exemplifies her frailty as a child and woman, but making herself stop is not something usually seen in Victorian society. To showcase women’s frailty and inferiority to men, Victorian fashions included “long skirts and blouses that emphasized a small waist, ample bosom, and inaccessibility” (Fisher 3). It is known that women also wore corsets during this time as well, which Alice refuses to wear in addition to stockings in the film version of Alice in Wonderland (Burton, Alice in

Wonderland).
To a young child like Alice, these fashions and cultural expectations would have been confusing, making her to try to make sense out of the nonsense (Bloomingdale). Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland sheds women in a new light not seen during the Victorian Era by making the main character, Alice, the heroine of the story who questions social and gender norms. When Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was written, most women were unable to be seen as a heroine in literature. Instead they were always in mother-like or governess roles. The literature of the Victorian era lacks symbols and myths of female power and heroism (Gramstad 14). Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is different from the literature of that era because the story gives Alice qualities normally reserved for men (Gramstad 6). Her curiosity and logic based decision-making is the driving force of the plot. She is not reserved or passive in Wonderland. She is, however, inquisitive, outgoing, and active. Sometimes, Alice is even argumentative. Whenever the subject of marriage or motherhood comes up in the novels, Alice goes against the status quo and does what she wants. Alice is revolutionary because she is dimensional versus the static heroines of her time (Brink 3). In any situation where Alice is faced with either following the cultural and social norms of women during the Victorian Era or not, she consistently chooses to be different and break several of the unwritten rules of Victorian etiquette, making her a true feminist heroine.