Victorian Childhood and Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Introduction

The children's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, written in 1865 by Charles Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, may well be the most popular and widely imitated book in the history of the English language. It has inspired numerous screen adaptations and stage plays, and has served as the basis for many fictional stories loosely based on Alice's adventures. Whether because of the 1951 Disney version, the 2010 Tim Burton film, or the sheer power of the novel itself, the characters have become archetypal in the modern world. Who has not heard of the Mad Hatter, or used the phrase "grinned like a Cheshire Cat"? The sheer paradigm of imagination expressed in the pages — a juxtaposition of humor and satire — makes Carroll's book suitable for children on one level and for adults on another.

As a novel written during the Victorian Period of England, much of the nonsense in the book is grounded in common occurrences of Carroll's life. The songs in the book are burlesques of popular poems and street songs, all familiar to a child in England. Similarly, Carroll's deeply platonic fondness for young females is expressed in the representation of Alice. Alice is a child struggling to survive in the confusing and sometimes hypocritical world of adults. She falls into "Wonderland" — a rather cynical representation of England — and meets a number of creatures that mirror adult stereotypes. As Alice travels through Wonderland, symbolic of her struggle to grow up, she continually tries to become more aware of the adult world while clinging to the comforting imagination of childhood. It is through her journey through Wonderland, and her confrontation with the Queen of Hearts, that Alice learns about the dual nature of expectations and self. Childhood in Victorian England was fraught with expectations quite different from what modern developmental psychology describes. Yet the ever-present theme of "journey," so popular in legends and myths, provides the basis for Alice's actualization and her ability to reason as an adult and see the world in a new light.

The World of Victorian England

Great Britain in the Victorian Era was a modern empire like no other before it. Technology had advanced to the point where Britain ruled the seas and the land, and with colonies and resources worldwide, much of the economic prosperity of the entire world flowed through it. The entire focus of the Victorian empire was trade — importing and exporting, using the colonies to prosper, and maintaining Britain's expected dominance over all she surveyed. Between this and the massive increase in railways, there was a need for more financing, more complex fiscal transactions, and thus more banks. Between 1852 and 1957, "the deposits in a set of five London banks grew from £17.7 million to over £40 [million] and the typical amount of bills of exchange in circulation increased to 200 million from just 66 million" (Houston, 71). This boom occurred all over England. As the importing of goods flourished, so did stock speculation, which meant that some won heavily while others became destitute — and resentful.

Charles Dickens, perhaps the epitome of Victorian literature, described the economic victories as "happy strokes of calculation and combination" or "gigantic combinations of skill and capital," and he almost always couples the two terms, implying that each presupposes the other. Combined with the divergent social nature of the very wealthy, the upper middle class, and the rest of England (approximately 85%), one can see that the very nature of life — and especially childhood — was experienced quite differently depending on one's station (Novak, 36–61).

This era, so prosperous and wonderful for many, allowed the middle and upper classes the opportunity to read, write, and experience art as never before. However, the massive population increase and rapid urbanization caused by the industrial revolution drew large numbers of skilled and unskilled individuals to cities where they were paid wages barely at subsistence level. The resulting conditions of abject poverty and despair not only gave rise to drastic political theories but were reflected in much of the literature of the time — whether tragic or fantastic — all as a response to social and cultural conditions (Daniels).

Childhood in the Victorian England of Lewis Carroll

The concept of childhood is a relatively modern idea. Prior to the eighteenth century, children were widely seen as "little adults," dressed in adult clothing simply made in a smaller size. Economic and social class determined what a child could do — the further down the economic ladder, the quicker one had to grow up. As the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries evolved, however, childhood became a marketable category as social and cultural changes created a new market for services such as schools, playgrounds, parks, toys, and specialized clothing. The irony of the Victorian Era is that sociologists trace the origins of the modern institution of childhood to this very period — alongside a simultaneous increase in child labor, which amounted to little more than slavery. It was the emerging conception of what childhood should be that led religious and social activists — including Charles Dickens — to advocate for the Factory Acts of 1802–1878, which continually restricted how children could be employed (Cunningham, 85–92, 106–14). There was, however, an underlying fascination with childhood among the growing literary classes in England. This fascination often manifested as an idealized relationship between adult and child, mentor and pupil. Just as the Romantic poets saw only the good and ideal in nature and pined for it, so too did the idea of the Romantic child — fresh, untouched, and like a tabula rasa, completely ready to be molded — influence Carroll (Thacker and Webb, 13; Ackerman, 31).

Yet there was a seed of contradiction in Carroll's world. In upper and wealthier middle-class families, children were raised by servants or nannies, often women brought in from the lower classes to work in the household. In other parts of the Empire, children were frequently sent home to England for boarding school, parting them from their parents until late adolescence. Children in poorer families, even under the best of circumstances, had to help with household expenses. Until mandatory schooling became law in the late 1800s, there was little childhood playtime once a child was old enough to walk, talk, and communicate cogently (Mitchell, 146–49).

Carroll held a very different view of childhood. He was a professor of mathematics at Oxford, part of Christ Church College — politically conservative and rather snobbish, a skilled photographer (at a time when photography was a new technology), a patron of the theater, and a fan of games and magic. He was, however, quite squeamish about morality, which kept him away from any artistic work that might be considered tainted; he accordingly ignored Shaw, Wilde, and even Ibsen (Irwin, 60–2). His view of children, particularly females, was one of harmony, imaginative development, and the process of using childhood as a slow and optimistic journey toward adulthood — the Romantic child theme. Children were the innocent; they had not yet been corrupted by society, and were therefore free of sin and capable of genuine honesty — a considerable departure from earlier views (Sander, 6–8).

In contrast to the hierarchical template most Victorians held for children, Carroll seemed to believe that one of the central things a child must grapple with on such a journey — and one of the principal themes Alice takes up — is the question of identity. "Who are you?" Alice is frequently asked early in her adventures, and it is a question she at first has great difficulty answering. Her initial erratic changes in size represent her inability to "fit" herself into this world. Her mastery of this process enables her to begin to determine her own destiny — to "fit," by enabling her to walk through the door that leads to the "beautiful garden" she has wanted to enter since the beginning of her adventures (Walker). Reading Alice as a children's book is even more fascinating when one realizes that the majority of children in that time period had no access to books and could not begin to explore the imaginative world of Wonderland. Carroll's choice to use not only a dream sequence but a morality play based on fairy-tale elements could not have been more "anti-Victorian." Instead of appealing to the rational nature of the child's parents, Carroll was appealing to the child's inner self (Leach, 90).

Conclusion

Despite Alice's having matured and grown through her adventures in Wonderland, it was only possible for her to do so through her imagination, since she dreamed it all. As her sister says in the novel's final lines: "Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood and how she would gather about her other children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrow, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days" (127).

Alice seems to have passed a test — not merely a physical one, but one nearly seminal to Victorian sensibility: the ability to think abstractly and to justify one's being, actions, and intentions to those who, for whatever reason, understand less. This is symbolized by Humpty Dumpty and the Victorian penchant for stiffness, for not letting one's emotions show, and for maintaining an even keel. In effect, the passage into Victorian adulthood meant that one would surrender a part of oneself in order to be a proper person within a proper society (Levin, 190–6):

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't — till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'"

"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master — that's all."

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. "They've a temper, some of them — particularly verbs: they're the proudest — adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs — however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That's what I say!" (202).

Carroll implies that Alice will be able to retain her childlike nature throughout her adult life and pass this gift on to her own children, who will likely have the opportunity to spark their imaginations through Alice's stories. This Romantic child is often gently spoofed by Carroll in that Alice's liberal-minded and sometimes brusque sense of the world reminds us that, regardless of the appeal of emulating some of the Wonderland creatures, any sensible child her age would surely see it all as silly adult behavior. When Alice grows up at the end of the book and the adults remain ridiculously childlike, Carroll may be expressing his own doubts about the sanity of Victorian society as a whole (Henkle, 116–17).

Victorian morality was in flux and full of contradiction. Likely because the era was so long — and so prosperous for the empire — there was a schism between children as small adults and children with time to imagine and grow. In Alice, Lewis Carroll was one of the first authors who, through his Victorian spectacles and cynical nature, invited the reader to enter a world of imagination and frivolity — a world in which it is possible to teach and learn, but also to revel in nonsense and fun. Carroll taught the Victorians that they could certainly educate and assimilate their children into society, but that only when a child's imagination was nourished could that child become an appropriate adult in an ever more complex world (Mulderig, 326–9).

Works Cited and Consulted

Ackerman, Ann. "Victorian Ideology and British Children's Literature." Unpublished Dissertation. 1984.

Ayres, Harry Morgan. "Alice's Adventures in Education." In Rackin, Donald, ed. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1969. 229–40.

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Cunningham, Hugh. Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500. London: Longview Press, 1995.

D'Ambrosio, Michael. "'Alice' for Adolescents." The English Journal 59.8 (1970): 1074–85.

Daniels, Barbara. "Poverty and Families in Victorian England." 2003. Hiddenlives.Org.

Henkle, Roger. "The Mad Hatter's World." The Virginia Quarterly Review (1973): 99–117.

Houston, Gail. From Dickens to Dracula: Gothic, Economics, and Victorian Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Irwin, Michael. "Lewis Carroll and the Victorian Stage." Theatre Notebook 60.1 (2006): 63+.

Leach, Elsie. "Alice in Wonderland in Perspective." In Phillips, Robert, ed. Aspects of Alice. London: Victor Gollancz, 1972. 88–92.

Levin, Harry. "Wonderland Revisited." In Phillips, Robert, ed. Aspects of Alice. London: Victor Gollancz, 1972. 175–97.

Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006.

Mulderig, Gerald. "Alice in Wonderland: Subversive Elements in the World of Victorian Children's Fiction." Journal of Popular Culture 11.2 (2004): 320–9.

Novak, Daniel. Realism, Photography, and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Sander, David. The Fantastic Sublime: Romanticism and Transcendence in Nineteenth-Century Fantasy Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.

Thacker, Debora, and Jean Webb. Introducing Children's Literature. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Walker, Stan. "Novels for Students: Alice in Wonderland." 1999.