Alice As The Fantasy World Of Wonderland example essay topic

The Victorian Era held many common beliefs that contrast to everything modern society holds as true. These beliefs e compassed such areas as social theory, class differences, racial prejudices, the effect of capitalism in society, and the role and extent of education Lewis Carroll challenges and satirizes these social constructs in his novels Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by the use of fantasy characters and settings. He confronts the reader indirectly through Alice; as the fantasy world of Wonderland disobeys Alice's established views, so does it disobey the reader's views. Throughout Alice in Wonderland, Alice interacts with things that are commonly seen in her Victorian world. Throught out the majority of both novel the inhabitants of Wonderland, who all have distinct personalities and the ability to communicate, dictate Alice's behavior.

However, in the final scene of Wonderland Alice turns the table on the citizens of Wonderland. Rather than continuing to accept and comply with their behavior, she recognizes that they do not behave as they should in Victorian society. When she shouts to the army of cards that they are in fact nothing more than a mere pack of cards Alice immediately wakes up to find that she has returned from Wonderland. Once she treats the cards as she should in her own society, simply as objects, then Alice is allowed to return to her own world. She has learned the lesson that a girl in Victorian England must control the objects around her, rather than be controlled by them. The actions of Alice at the end of Through the Looking Glass and Alice Wonderland references Carroll's views of Victorian education.

Education plays a large role in the Alice books, contributing both to Carroll's characterization of Alice and of his perceptions of the common Victorian English citizen. Throughout the Alice books Alice alludes to her lessons and her education, usually very proud of all that she knows... However, most of the time the information that she spurts out is either useless or absurd, for when she can recite exactly how many miles it is to the center of the earth she follows up with the comment of how funny it will be when she comes to the other side of the world and everything is upside down. She is quite often aware of her folly but her mistakes almost always go unnoticed by those around her and are always left uncorrected.

Rather than emphasizing academic studies by having the event that enables Alice's return to England involve correcting her scholarly errors, Alice's return is initiated by a change in her attitude towards her material surroundings. Such a conscious decision on Carroll's part satirizes his idea of education in Victorian society of the day. Carroll was some what amuse med at the trivial fashion of English education. Traditional public schools in Victorian England emphasized Greek and Latin, house systems, school spirit, improving character, and that the goal of education was to mold the student into a young Christian gentleman.

This approach can be seen in Alice, since her knowledge seems to consist mainly of maxims and morals about obedience and safety. In his satirical characterization of the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland Carroll once again mocks this system. Alice's experience with her makes the reader laugh at the absurdity of such a character. Carroll certainly made a conscious decision to make morals and tales of obedience, a large part of Victorian upbringing, nonsensical. This rejection of typical Victorian manners and education of children supports one of the themes in his Alice books, the idea that a child's imagination has value As per any time period, education was constantly changing in the Victorian Era. During the nineteenth century theories of race were evolving both by scientific writings and in the daily newspaper.

Spurred on by such texts as Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, the concept of the evolution was being subjected to a new scientific racism. Phrenology, a popular theory of the time, claimed to demonstrate that the bone structure of the skull, especially the jaw formation and facial angles, revealed the position of various races on the evolutionary scale, and a debate raged on whether there had been one creation for all mankind or several, with several of the creations being subordinate and therefore fitting to be ruled over as a lower class. A scene from Alice in Wonderland in which a cook proceeds to throw pots and pans at the Duchess and in turn the Duchess demands the head of the Alice for contradicting her relates directly to the racism and classicism in the Victorian era. In Lewis Carroll's presentation of reality from the point of view of a child's fantasy world, adults are cruel, irresponsible, and self indulgent. These are the views Victorian Society believed were characteristic of the lower classes. Carroll, through the use of Alice, shows how these characteristics can also apply to adults, authority figures, and even royalty.

Carroll turns the perceptions of the Victorian classes around by presenting his readers with an irresponsible, childlike figure in the form of an adult authority figure, . a royal member of the Victorian upper class. With this scene, Alice in Wonderland, views the adult world on a child's level, questions the authority of adults and of royalty, and mocks commonly held prejudices of its day. A more obscure reference in the Alice books is the topic of Capitalism. Carroll constantly shows scenes of images of Alice reaching for a desired object, obtaining it after some bit of struggle, but continually seeing something else apparently even more desirable just beyond the horizon of availability. This imagery represents the heart and soul of the capitalistic ideal which thrived in Victorian England as it does in America today. In capitalism, as in Through the Looking Glass, one is in both a never ending pursuit of the unattained and the blatant disregard for what one already has.

Bigger and better objects are the object of unattainable desire, but capitalism is inherently situated with missing that which is of any real substance. In other words, never being content and appreciating that which one has. For Alice this fact translates into a physical distance that can never be crossed. For the Victorian citizen such a distance is represented in class differences caused by material wealth. Just as Alice never really puts a second thought into the things she has lost, a true capitalist never seems to care about the possessions they have because they are always in a quest for a new desire. Ebeneezer Scrooge personifies this exact desire in Victorian literature, and even being that Alice is no were near as cruel and heartless, the same mode of desire exists in both.

Many modern works of both fiction and non-fiction revolve around the stories fanatical capitalists, those who stop at nothing and are willing to give up everything near and dear to them to obtain that which is just out of their reach and never really appreciate that which they already have. Alice goes through the same motions but in a seemingly more innocent manner. Such innocence draws attention away from harsh reality but still personifies everything inherent in a capitalist society. The Victorian Age was an age of growth, change, and uncertainties. While those of the time were coming into the modern era in the technological sector, their ideas in the social arena were still behind their time. However, in Alice in Wonderland, Caroll's foresight sought to question the ideals common of the era.

With Alice, Caroll satirized class and race systems, education, capitalism and challenged the fragile order of the Victorian social construct, for the amusement of a teenage girl.