Alice's Journey to Find Her Identity

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story of a young girl’s journey down the rabbit hole into a fantasy world where there seems to be no logic. Throughout Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice experiences a variety of bizarre physical changes, causing her to realize she is not only trying to figure out Wonderland but also trying to determine her own identity. After Alice arrives in Wonderland the narrator states, “For this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people” (Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 12). This quotation is the first instance that shows Alice is unsure of her identity. The changes in size that take place when she eats or drinks are the physical signs of her loss of identity. The question of why Alice is unsure of her identity relates to Alice’s developing stage from childhood to adulthood. Carroll explains Alice's confusion about her own identity and her position between childhood and adulthood by contrasting her logical with the inhabitants of Wonderland.
After Alice had drank from the bottle, causing her to shrink to only ten inches tall, and eaten the cake, causing her to grow to more that nine feet tall she said to herself,
“Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, That’s the greatest puzzle!” (Alice 14).
It is at this point that Alice realizes it is not just Wonderland that she is trying to figure out but also her identity in a world that challenges her perspective of herself. As she continues on her journey through Wonderland she has several encounters with characters that question her identity such as, the White Rabbit, who mistakes her for his servant Mary Ann, the Caterpillar, who asks her the question ‘Who are