Alice In Wonderland As A Social Satire

The Victorian society is known for its valuation of social conformity. Coming from an upper-middle class, Alice has great confidence in her social status, education, and politeness, which contributes to the Victorian virtue of good manners. The tension of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland arises when Alice’s fixed perspective of the real world comes into contact with the mad, illogical world of Wonderland. In the real world, Alice feels comfortable with her identity and has a strong sense that her environment is comprised of clear, logical, and consistent rules. After entering Wonderland, Alice’s fixed sense of order clashes with the madness she finds in Wonderland. Wonderland challenges her perceptions of good manners by constantly assaulting

When she is insecure about the situation, she tries to recite information she holds to be true to gain comfort. During the fall through the rabbit-hole, “‘I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time?’ she [says] aloud. ‘I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think’”(8). Alice then goes on about the latitude and longitude, “Alice had not the slightest idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but she thought they were nice grand words to say”(8). Despite not knowing the meaning of the words, she attempts to use what she has learned and memorized in lessons to show she is intelligent and the same old Alice. At the bottom of the well there is a small bottle on the table that she isn’t sure what to do with it, “‘No, I'll look first,’ she [says], ‘and see whether it's marked 'poison' or not’, for she [has] read several nice little stories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts, and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them” (10). Her discomfort with her inability to predict outcomes reveals how strongly she relies on the knowledge she learned to guide her. In the garden, “Alice [is] rather doubtful whether she ought to lie down on her face like the three gardeners, but she could not remember ever having heard of such a rule at processions (63).

In front a house, Alice tries to have a conversation with the footman, “He [is] looking up into the sky all the time he [is] speaking, and this Alice [thinks] decidedly uncivil” (46). The creatures of Wonderland represent the uncivilized brutes with no manners and are unable to govern themselves and are in need of behavioral instructions and moral guidance. At the tea party, the March Hare encourages Alice to have some wine: “‘I don’t see any wine,’ she [remarks]. ‘There isn’t any,’ [says] the March Hare. ‘Then it [isn’t] very civil of you to offer it," [says] Alice angrily. (55) In response to the disrespectful behaviour of the Wonderland creatures Alice encounters, she tries to impose her supposed politeness to correct their crude behaviour attempting to civilize them. While Alice is nursing the baby after the Duchess left, the baby grunts in respond to her: "Don’t grunt," said Alice; "that's not at all a proper way of expressing yourself" (49). Although it is just a baby, Alice intends to enforce appropriate manners upon it. At the tea table, the Hatter's made some personal remarks about Alice’s hair, “‘You should learn not to make personal remarks,’ Alice [says] with some severity: ‘it's very rude’” (55). Alice to such a degree that although she knows that Wonderland and all of the creatures that reside in it are nonsensical and almost fantasy-like,