Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a book that captures your imagination when you first read it as a child of ten, and continues to stir your delight and your intellect when you read it for the last time as a senior citizen of 99. There are very few books in English that appeal to such a range of adults and children, and that they never tire of. Or at least I don’t. Lewis Carroll’s Alice has never been out of print in the 158 years since its publication. It appears on the Guardian’s list of the 100 best English novels and on the Observer’s 100 Greatest World Novels list. In Penguin Classics’ survey of its readers, Alice appeared as #42 among the 100 favorite novels, and on the BBC’s 2003 “Big Read” list, Alice came in at #30 among favorite books of the British nation. The novel has been translated into 174 languages—including Latin and Esperanto. There have been no fewer than eighteen film or television adaptations of the book or its sequel, Through the Looking Glass, as well as at least two video games, two ballets and an opera, and Alice has appeared in popular music from, among others, Tom Waits and Jefferson Airplane. The novel’s popular and critical success make it an easy choice for book #16 on my alphabetical list of “The 100 Most Lovable Books in the English Language.”
The story of the novel’s inception is well known. It is told in the poem “All in the Golden Afternoon,” which Carroll included as the preface to the novel. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who published under the pen name “Lewis Carroll,” was an Oxford professor of mathematics and logic at Christ Church College. The Dean of the college, Dodgson’s friend Henry Liddell, had three daughters—thirteen-year-old Lorina Charlotte, ten-year old Alice Pleasance, and eight-year old Edith Mary—and on July 4, 1862, Dodgson and the Reverend Robinson Duckworth were rowing the girls on the Thames when the three demanded a story. And Dodgson responded with the story of Alice’s adventures underground. Two years later, having written out the story and personally illustrated it, he presented Alice with the handwritten copy of the text. Having decided to publish the book, Dodgson obtained the services of Punch cartoonist John Tenniel to create the 42 iconic illustrations so ineluctably identified with the novel.
What could catapult this simple, intimate hand-made gift into the worldwide sensation that Alice in Wonderlandbecame? I think there are three chief reasons for its popularity. The first is the way that it turned on its head the children’s book industry. Prior to Alice, children’s books were seen as a means to teach some moral or practical lesson. The popular Peter Parley books would teach children about geography or nature with a large dose of moral didacticism. Mary Martha Sherwood’s The History of the Fairchild Family, an overtly religious text aimed at inculcating middle-class values, was the most popular children’s literature in England. Then along came Alice, whose chief goal is the expression on a kind of nihilistic literary nonsense, with anthropomorphic animals and mad tea parties. Dodgson even deliberately undercuts the classic didacticism of children’s publications: He parodies the famous Isaac Watts rhyme “How doth the Little Busy Bee,” an exhortation to hard work, with “How doth the little crocodile,” which praises deception and vanity. What could be more entertaining?
The second reason, and growing out of the first, is the character of Alice herself, who seems much more like a typical rebellious little schoolgirl than the goody-goody characters in those didactic children’s stories. Alice gets annoyed, angry, and especially curiouser and curiouser at the things she sees and hears and experiences in Wonderland. And she’s not afraid to let the grownups know about her feelings and opinions, or to call a spade a spade when she sees something that seems absurd. This is particularly true in the scenes with the Queen of Hearts, the irrational tyrant of Wonderland, whose response to anything that mildly displeases her, like Alice, is “Off with her head!” When she is called as a witness in the trial of the Knave of Hearts, Alice calls the Queen’s judgment “Stuff and nonsense!” And it is. How different is this from the behavior of the children in, say, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, in which children are to be seen and not heard, and in which the children of the family know that they should never speak among adults until they are spoken to—no matter how important what they have to say is!
The Queen is the chief authority figure in the book, but everybody in Wonderland is an adult in relation to Alice, and she defies their authority whenever she is so inclined. In the mad tea party scene, the March Hare insists that Alice “Take some more tea,” to which she replies “I’ve had nothing yet…so I can’t take more.”
“‘You mean you can’t take less,’ said the Hatter: ‘it’s very easy to take more than nothing.’
‘Nobody asked your opinion,’ said Alice.”
In addition to showing Alice’s disregard for the admonishments of the adult Hatter, this exchange also illustrates the third and, I should think, the most important reason the novel has remained popular, especially among admirers of language: Dodgson, a student of logic, was fascinated by language and its uses—logical or il-. This is nowhere more manifest than in the mad tea party, where the above exchange plays on the different connotations of the word “more.” More pertinent still is the following conversation:
“‘You should say what you mean,’ the March Hare went on.
‘I do,’ Alice hastily replied; ‘at least—at least I mean what I say—that’s the same thing, you know.’
‘Not the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter. ‘You might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see”!’
‘You might just as well say,’ added the March Hare, ‘that “I like what I get” is the same things as “I get what I like”!’
‘You might just as well say,’ added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, ‘that “I breathe when I sleep” is the same thing as “I sleep when I breathe”!’
Dodgson loved these kinds of logical quirks, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland abounds in them. This is part of the absurdity that pervades the book, which is the source of fun and entertainment for the mind. Revisit Alice if you can. It’s good for the brain. Remember what the Dormouse said: “Feed your head.”