Alice In Wonderland: Community And Solitude Within A Victorian Society
An essay discussing the way community and solitude within a Victorian society are represented in Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”
Ellie Walsh
Primarily, the bizarre plotline and maddening characters in “Alice in Wonderland” cause the novel to be categorised as a story of nonsense, and indeed, for children at least, this may be the key function of the book; to be a fun and experimental tale of madness. However, it can be argued that the nonsense in the story only thinly veils some of the most relevant themes of Victorian society, particularly ones concerned with community, and the way the individual is required to behave in order to successfully integrate into a very rigid type of social order. Perhaps Carroll’s perception of society …show more content…
From this point in the story she remains largely solitary; she moves from one group of creatures to another, all of whom are separate from each other. There is a distinct lack of community in Wonderland; although many of the creatures have heard of one another, they have formed no socially coherent society, and exist in small and often dysfunctional groups that are independent of one another. Communal rules and shared understandings appear to have dissolved, and this creates a distinctly hostile atmosphere in the setting, which is characterised by the Duchess’s comment; “If everybody minded their own business . . . the world would go round a great deal faster than it does” …show more content…
He clearly does not create a society in Wonderland in which the environment is responsible for the break down of social cohesion; the disjointed effect seems to be naturally in place, despite the fact that the characters, as individuals, have everything they need for a functional society. For example, one of the major hardships of Victorian life was the persistent lack of food. Grocery prices were extremely high and diseases born of malnutrition and even starvation were commonplace. In Wonderland there is a distinct preoccupation with food; it is what causes Alice to grow and shrink, so its importance is significant within the story, as Alice’s physical shape is so sharply affected by her consumption. Alice is described as having “a great interest in questions of eating and drinking” (P65), and yet Wonderland is never short of food. Alice often finds herself consuming cake, (“the pebbles were all turning into little cakes” P38), a fare of luxury in Victorian society, and she helps herself to bread and butter at the tea party without ever actually eating it, suggesting that she is able to consider consumption a luxury and past-time rather than a sought-after necessity. This effect would leave the Victorian reader with an impression of Wonderland as a place of excessive richness, which starkly emphasises the fact
Ellie Walsh
Primarily, the bizarre plotline and maddening characters in “Alice in Wonderland” cause the novel to be categorised as a story of nonsense, and indeed, for children at least, this may be the key function of the book; to be a fun and experimental tale of madness. However, it can be argued that the nonsense in the story only thinly veils some of the most relevant themes of Victorian society, particularly ones concerned with community, and the way the individual is required to behave in order to successfully integrate into a very rigid type of social order. Perhaps Carroll’s perception of society …show more content…
From this point in the story she remains largely solitary; she moves from one group of creatures to another, all of whom are separate from each other. There is a distinct lack of community in Wonderland; although many of the creatures have heard of one another, they have formed no socially coherent society, and exist in small and often dysfunctional groups that are independent of one another. Communal rules and shared understandings appear to have dissolved, and this creates a distinctly hostile atmosphere in the setting, which is characterised by the Duchess’s comment; “If everybody minded their own business . . . the world would go round a great deal faster than it does” …show more content…
He clearly does not create a society in Wonderland in which the environment is responsible for the break down of social cohesion; the disjointed effect seems to be naturally in place, despite the fact that the characters, as individuals, have everything they need for a functional society. For example, one of the major hardships of Victorian life was the persistent lack of food. Grocery prices were extremely high and diseases born of malnutrition and even starvation were commonplace. In Wonderland there is a distinct preoccupation with food; it is what causes Alice to grow and shrink, so its importance is significant within the story, as Alice’s physical shape is so sharply affected by her consumption. Alice is described as having “a great interest in questions of eating and drinking” (P65), and yet Wonderland is never short of food. Alice often finds herself consuming cake, (“the pebbles were all turning into little cakes” P38), a fare of luxury in Victorian society, and she helps herself to bread and butter at the tea party without ever actually eating it, suggesting that she is able to consider consumption a luxury and past-time rather than a sought-after necessity. This effect would leave the Victorian reader with an impression of Wonderland as a place of excessive richness, which starkly emphasises the fact