Identity In Alice's Adventure In Wonderland

In the Victorian age, children’s condition was a problem. treated as miniature adults, they were often required to work, were severely chastised, or were ignored. Exactly in that period Charles Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carrol wrote “Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland”, a novel that tells of a girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world. It is first of all a children’s book as it has a child protagonist; however it appeals to adult readers with its advanced logical reasoning, witty puns and trenchant satire of Victorian society. So we can consider it as a drastic reaction against the impassive didacticism of British upbringing. Indeed throughout the course of her journey in Wonderland Alice goes through a variety

This because she is a capricious protagonist who can be perceived as utterly, unstable and unreliable. In one passage she cries and feels pity for herself, and in the following she expresses maternal compassion and care for others. Alice’s constant changes in size are puzzling for her. She seems to struggle in order to comprehend her identity, but the various oscillations in size and in life phases cause considerable confusion on her. The concept of identity can be also associated to an adolescent’s socio-emotional development. Alice’s encounters with the other characters in Wonderland push her to ponder about her own identity. For example in the Chapter II, after having experienced dramatic transformations in size by eating and drinking, she meets the White Rabbit in the hall. She asks herself, “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 great puzzle!”. It is however true that Alice has created these events and these characters in her dream world and they don’t necessarily symbolize her emotional condition. They can simply be figments of her imagination and constitute a natural response to her confusion about adulthood and growing up. The