“I’ve a right to think”
A Reading of Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a Reflection of Early Feminism in the Victorian Era
’’Jag har rätt att tänka’’
En analys av karaktären Alice ur Alices äventyr i underlandet som en spegling av tidig feminism under den viktorianska epoken
Josephine A. Flottrong
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences: English: English III: Degree Project 15hp
Supervisor: Anna Linzie Examiner: Marinette Grimbeek Autumn 2019
Abstract
In this essay I claim that Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a character who reflects the early feminist movement in the 19th century. By reading Alice in terms of a resemblance to the early feminist activists and the first modern feminist text A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft, I explore the idea of Alice’s characteristics being comparable to those values and thoughts which the feminist movement expressed. The text portrays Alice taking on challenges which oblige her to stand up for her rights as a young woman in regard to education, equality, and emancipation. Therefore, in this essay, the different scenarios and actions where Alice is characterized as having prominent feminist values are sorted into those three topics. Even if my reading suggests Alice as reflecting early feminism, Alice has also been seen as an anti-feminist character. My reading acknowledges this analysis but contends that she can in fact be read as a reflection of the progressing feminist movement which started in the late 18th century and continued throughout the Victorian age.
Keywords:
Alice’s adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, the Victorian era, early feminism, education, equality, emancipation
Sammanfattning
I denna uppsats presenterar jag Alice i Alice i underlandet som en karaktär som speglar den tidiga feministiska rörelsen under 1800-talet. Genom att använda mig av olika feministiska studier och de tankar som Mary Wollstonecraft uttryckte i den första moderna feministiska texten Till försvar för kvinnans rättigheter, utforskar jag idén att Alice kan läsas som en representant för de värderingar och tankar som den tidiga feministiska rörelsen uttryckte. Alice möter utmaningar som kräver att hon står upp för sina rättigheter som ung kvinna vad gäller utbildning, jämlikhet och frigörelse. Därför sorteras de olika delarna av texten där Alice som karaktär uppvisar feministiska egenskaper i dessa tre ämnen. Alice har ibland setts som en anti-
feministisk karaktär. Min analys tar hänsyn till detta, men hävdar att hon faktiskt kan läsas som en återspegling av den starka feministiska rörelsen som började i slutet av 1700-talet och fortsatte under den viktorianska epoken.
Nyckelord:
Alice Äventyr i Underlandet, Lewis Carroll, den viktorianska epoken, tidig feminism, utbildning, jämställdhet, frigörelse
Introduction
Written by Lewis Carroll and first published in 1865, Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland is a beloved children’s novel that has been read by both children and adults and made its way to the movie screen and various adaptations. In the text, we follow a young girl called Alice as she falls down a rabbit hole into the mad world of Wonderland.
In Wonderland Alice encounters many different creatures and characters who challenge her, by enforcing the values of the Victorian patriarchal society of the time.
The feminist movement began in the late 18th century and continued to develop in the 19th century alongside Victorian ideals of femininity.As this essay addresses the way in which Alice can be seen as a literary reflection of the early feminist movement, it is important to mention that modern feminist thoughts are not taken into account and that thoughts and ideas from the feminists of that time are used to interpret Alice as a potentially “feminist” character.
In using fictional characters to comment on society in general and gender in particular, Carroll’s text is not unique. Fiction has often been used as a tool for questioning gender norms, not least in Victorian society (see for instance Bermejo), where authors could create a fantasy or imaginary world where they could create a world of their own with their own norms and social structures. However, what
separates Carroll from the other authors is that he wrote children’s literature and his works are nowadays classed as literary nonsense.
According to An Anatomy of Literary Nonsense, nonsense texts “set up a playful framework of themes and motives which appeal to the reader’s imagination’’ (Tigges 5). One of the key assumptions of my analysis is that Carroll’s text, while not a
realistic piece of literature, can still reflect the real world. In the nonsensical genre worlds do not always have to be logical but can instead be full of absurd ideas (Tigges 8). It is furthermore stated by Tigges that “the nonsense world is a world of fantasy which shies clear of reality yet indicates its existence’’ (23). The unrealistic nature of Alice’s Adventures of Wonderland can be seen through the talking animals, the quick growing and shrinking which Alice experiences, or the way the world changes around her as she moves through it. Even though Alice is a fictional character in a fictional
world the novel to a certain extent offers a reflection of reality through Alice’s communication with her sister and her comparisons with the real world to
Wonderland. Thus, Alice allows for a realistic feminist reading, even though the text is considered as nonsense literature.
Since the novel is nonsensical rather than realistic, Alice’s adventures are not characterized by ordinary encounters with ordinary characters. The male characters who express patriarchal views are usually animals, for instance. Even if they are non- human my analysis of them, as coded male, is supported by the use of male pronouns which is presented through dialog and descriptions in the novel. However, in relation to those views and the Victorian construction of girls and women that they represent, Alice and her actions and interactions can be read as a reflection of real-world early feminism.
Others who have read Alice as a reflection of feminism are Flair Donglai Shi and Christopher Forss. Alice has both been read as a feminist character and also as a reflection of anti-feminism. Shi states in her article “Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland as an Anti-Feminist Text: Historical, Psychoanalytical and Postcolonial Perspectives’’ that Alice cannot be seen as a symbol for feminism because she is stuck in the domestic mindset. But there are also quite a few critics who claim that Alice is in fact a symbol of feminism. Christopher Forss, for instance, writes that “Alice progressively develops into a feminist heroine’’ (Forss 1). My reading of Alice as a reflection of feminism finds support in Forss’ analysis of her as a feminist character.
However, where Forss focuses more on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a feminist bildungsroman and how Alice develops into an inspiration for feminists, I will look upon Alice’s feminist traits from a more historical perspective taking into account the ongoing feminist movement in the late 18th century and the following Victorian time and the feminist activists who were active before and after the publication of the novel.
The aim of this essay is to argue by using scenarios from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that Alice’s actions and interactions address certain key concerns such as education, equality and emancipation. An historical approach is used to read into the character of Alice as a reflection of feminism, but my approach also agrees with Tysons description of “feminist criticism examines the ways in which literature reinforces or undermines the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women’’ (81). Furthermore, I show how Alice’s actions and her
interactions with other characters can be linked to the feminist movement in
Victorian society before and after the publication of the novel. Even though the term feminist was not used during the 19th century, I will in this essay use the terms feminist and feminism out of convenience to address the movements fighting for women’s rights.
Alice: A Victorian Girl
The Victorian era began in 1837 with Queen Victoria’s succession of the English throne. It was a time best described as devoted to values such as “earnestness, moral responsibility, domestic propriety’’ and Victoria was a queen who “represented the domestic fidelity her citizens embraced’’ (Greenblatt et al. 1943). However, not everyone was content with her, especially the women fighting for women’s rights, since “Queen Victoria was completely against the suffragette movement’’ (Bermejo 15). Women during this time belonged to their home were they needed to fulfill their roles as wife and mother and where completely dependent on their husbands
(Bermejo 15). The ideals of Victorian society put pressure on both girls and boys and
“it can be stated that Victorian education made children, precisely young girls, very aware that the strict gaze of society would determine if they would be considered socially acceptable or outcasts depending on the attainment of specific attitudes and behaviours.” (Bermejo 16). Girls were from a young age forced to live their lives in the domestic sphere where their purpose in society would be to find a husband and then being provided for by him.
However, there were also women and men that challenged the thought of women belonging in the domestic sphere and challenged the Victorian gender norms. In 1792 less than a century prior to the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Mary Wollstonecraft had written A Vindication for the Rights of Women, a text
considered to be the first feminist publication, where she challenged current thoughts about women and their rights in a male-dominated society. Wollstonecraft wrote
“men endeavor to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment’’ (3). Furthermore, she describes how women “are treated as a kind of subordinate beings, and not as a part of the human species’’ (2). But due to the texts revolutionary nature it “took more than a century before her [Wollstonecraft’s] ideas were put into effect’’ (Remy-Hébert 3). Two Victorian women who took inspiration from Wollstonecraft’s words to fight for women’s rights and rebelled against
patriarchy were Emmeline Pankhurst and Millicent Fawcett, two main figures for the
suffrage movement, and Barbara Bodichon who was the “leader in the movement for the education and political rights of women’’ (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Fawcett was famous for forming the NUWS (National Union of Women’s Suffrage), which was known for being the largest suffrage organization in the United Kingdom (Remy- Hébert 5). Pankhurst and her two daughters became founders of the WSPU
(Woman’s Social and Political Movement). The WSPU suffragettes were responsible for the arson campaign in which “suffragettes in all parts of Great Britain began destroying property’’ (5). Some of the key demands voiced by advocates of women’s rights were that women and girls should have access to education, be allowed to speak their minds, and be seen as equals to men in regard to salary and
representation in public environments. Through these, Alice can be read in relation to the constant struggle of feminist activists and their resistance to oppression through her actions and interactions as a strong-minded individual. By identifying key passages related to these topics, the following analysis will examine Alice’s actions and interactions in relation to these central issues for early feminism in the Victorian era.
Alice, who is portrayed as a young girl of seven years, would already have begun her education and encountered the mindset of domestication. Even though it seems that most issues addressed by feminists concerned adult women, these issues were highly relevant for girls the same age as Alice because they are on their way to become adults in Victorian patriarchal society. Alice, in a certain sense, represents the stage before womanhood when a girl might still be “saved” from Victorian gender norms.
Education
Already while falling down the rabbit hole, Alice gives us a taste of her knowledge and her own education. She utilizes her lessons to find some kind of safety in this new world and to make sense of her new circumstances. “ ‘I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time?’ she said aloud. ‘I must be getting somewhere near the center of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think –”(Carroll 13).
Education was important for Victorian women fighting for women’s rights, especially since in the 19th century there were traditionalists who thought that “women should not study” (Patu and Shrupp 27). By constantly proclaiming and reassuring herself of her knowledge and speaking it out aloud, Alice defines herself as worthy of education.
With the knowledge she possesses she can understand not only Wonderland but also
the real world, for instance when she imagines herself asking “ ‘Please, Ma’am, is this New Zealand or Australia?’ “ (Carroll 14) if she were to arrive on the other side of the earth. And even though Alice sometimes gets her facts wrong or is not quite sure (“
‘How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads
downwards! The Antipathies, I think –‘ “(Carroll 14)) she still expresses a willingness to learn and indicates that she has tried to take notice of the contents of her lessons.
This reliance on learning and knowledge can be interpreted as an indication that the character Alice responds to the “terrifying fear that they [women] can acquire
knowledge and thus threaten the patriarchal society’’ (Forss 18). Through Alice’s constant display of knowledge, which may or may not be accurate, and with her humorous approach such as thinking the people on the other side of the earth walk up-side-down or wondering if “cats eat bats?’’ (Carroll 14), she challenges the belief that women were not able to learn and undermines the gender norms of patriarchal society in her independent use of knowledge, showing her enjoyment to learn things and express herself.
A great example of education in the Victorian period can be read in Alice’s meeting with the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon. These two characters are animals, but also male1, and even though they might not be human they still enforce
patriarchal power. When Alice and the Gryphon arrive at the Mock Turtle he asks them to sit down and starts telling his story about his school time under the sea. As he tells his story, Alice starts to interrupt and ask questions. As the Mock Turtle tells about his master who was a turtle whom they called Tortoise, Alice asks him “Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn’t one?’’ (115). To this the Mock Turtle answers
“We called him Tortoise because he taught us,’’ and then rudely remarks to Alice that
“really you are very dull!’’ (116). This becomes the general motif in Alice’s encounter with the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle. They tell Alice that she “ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question’’ (116), “you are a simpleton.’’ (117) and
“then yours wasn’t a really good school’’ (116). These two male characters harshly criticize her knowledge and her education, and as we noticed before when Alice was falling down the rabbit-hole she is quite proud of her knowledge and likes to display it. When they call her and her education stupid, they are not only insulting Alice’s education but also the rights for girls to learn something.
1 We know that the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle are male by the use of pronouns: the Gryphon is “sighing in his turn” (Carroll 118) and the Mock Turtle is “sighing as if his heart would break” (114).
In the Victorian era there were high aspirations from feminists that women should be allowed to choose and partake in higher education (Digby 197).
However, where progress towards equal education takes two steps forward, it also seems to take one step back. Such was the case in the 19th century when more and more women gathered in feminist assemblies. While women where fighting for equal rights “at the same time, among male intellectuals, an increasingly ’antifeminist’
mood began to spread’’ (Patu and Shrupp 27). Paul Julius Mobius, a psychiatrist who studied neurology, was an active member of the ‘antifeminist’ movement and argued in his work On the Physiological Idiocy of Woman that women where too stupid to learn and that educating women was a waste of time. He presented this as “One further proof of the fact that women should not study.’’ (27). This can indirectly be related to the Mock Turtle and Gryphon calling Alice’s school stupid and in general degrading education for girls due to it being seen as a waste of time to educate something which should not learn and should not be able to continue onto higher education.
Equality
For a long time, women were considered a less intellectual than men and not entirely a part of humankind, therefore it was not required to treat women as equals (Patu and Shrupp 11). In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, there are in particular two events which address the topic of equality. At these two points she shows sovereignty of her decisions and is not afraid to question male authority.
The first encounter is that with the Cheshire Cat. After Alice leaves the Duchess’s house she walks through the woods and is faced with a fork in the road. As she questions which direction to go, the Duchess’s Cheshire Cat appears. The cat starts challenging Alice when she asks him where to go. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” (Carroll 76) is the response he gives Alice when she says that she does not care where she ends up. Because the Cheshire Cat does not give Alice a direction to go, he encourages her to make her own decision about her way through Wonderland.
According to Bermejo, the Cheshire Cat challenges the Victorian “fear of women’s freedom’’ (15), since he more or less encourages Alice to claim her own freedom. At a time when women were thought to be dependent on men, “the Cheshire Cat basically
challenges and encourages Alice to take her own decisions, which she increasingly does’’ (Forss 20).
Wollstonecraft claimed that “the woman who strengthens her body and exercises her mind will become the friend, and not the humble dependent of her husband’’ (25). Alice exercising her mind and not just being a follower makes her independent, and paves the way for intellectual relationships with the other sex. This kind of friendship development can be seen in the way that the Cat asked Alice “Do you play croquet with the queen to-day?“ (Carroll 77) and then adds “You’ll see me there,’’ (78). He shows a friendly approach to Alice in inviting her to the Queen’s garden and later when they speak in the garden and Alice must rush to catch a runaway hedgehog she proclaims that she “went back for a little more conversation with her friend’’ (104). She also specifically introduces the Cheshire cat as her friend to the king: “It’s a friend of mine - a Cheshire Cat’’ (102). This is the only character that Alice calls her friend among the Wonderland creatures, and it is also the only character who, instead of insulting her or treating her as a weak unknowing girl, encourages her to think and make her own decisions.
Where the Cheshire Cat forces Alice to think for herself and supports her independence, the characters at the March Hare’s tea party are quite different. There she is attacked by three male characters2. When she first arrives at the tea party she is faced with the Hatter, March Hare, and Dormouse calling out to her that there is no space for her at the table, even though Alice exclaims that “There’s plenty of room!”
(Carroll 81). She sits down at the table without waiting for an invitation or being asked to sit down and the March Hare then states that “It wasn’t very civil of you to sit down without being invited’’ (81). Alice takes her own initiative in sitting down with the male participants of the tea party, showing that she does not need a man’s invitation to take action.
Alice shows herself not being dependent on a man to tell her what to do, but instead follows her own instinct and acts as an equal to the male characters. In the Victorian era “women were subject to fathers, husbands, brothers even adult sons’’
(March) and were expected to behave submissively. By placing herself at the table she shows herself not as a subject but as a thinking individual, challenging the mindset
2 We know that they are male because later in court the Hatter talks about himself as being “a poor man’’
(135), the March Hare is addressed with male pronouns (“He denies it’’ 135) and so is the dormouse (“And he got up’’ 133).
that women could not be counted as important as men. Furthermore, the patriarchal ideology of the Victorian age was that of “ “great men” - outstanding male
individuals’’ (March), and for a woman to place herself amongst those men was unthinkable. Alice however breaks this gender norm and puts herself alongside the male characters at the table, showing herself not being pushed away by the men but instead doing as she pleases.
Alice being a typical Victorian female character can be seen in the way she communicates with the other characters. Wollstonecraft wrote that “Gentleness, docility, and a spaniel-like affection are, on this ground, consistently recommended as the cardinal values of the sex’’ (32), and in the beginning of the novel Alice displays some of these characteristics, or at least tries to remember her manners as a Victorian girl. But the way the characters interact with each other and talk to Alice makes Alice drop her own etiquette and the presumptions of what a female should be like, for example at the tea party with the Hatter, March Hare, and Dormouse. The three characters bicker and argue around the table and it is complete madness, while Alice tries to keep her calm, but to be able to partake around the table she has to throw her own etiquette aside and instead expresses herself as an equal to the male characters.
Before women were reconsidered and revalued as equal to men, they were seen as equals to animals (Patu and Shrupp 11). At the table however, the male characters, who bicker and fight, are literally and figuratively the animals that verbally attack Alice, although she is trying to hold a civil conversation. At the tea party, it is not Alice, as a young girl, who acts like an animal, but rather the males who both are and act like animals: by throwing around food, making a mess and not least in the way the March Hare and the Hatter treat the Dormouse.
Alice also shows poise when she tells the Hatter that “Nobody asked your opinion“ (Carroll 89), when he remarks on Alice saying that she cannot have any more tea because she did not have any from the beginning. She shows that even though the Hatter is a man, she does not need to defer to him and can speak her mind. The seven-year old Alice speaks her mind and does not bend to expected gender norms, which seems to madden the Hatter. This can be seen when Alice receives the strange question: “Did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?’’ (91), she tells the Hatter “Really, now you ask me’’ (91). Before she can think about it or even answer the question the Hatter interrupts her saying “Then you shouldn’t talk,” (91). Alice responds to this rude remark by standing up and leaving
the tea party. This shows that she will not put up with this bullying by the Hatter and that she is independent enough to move away from the ideas of traditionalists and strive for her own right of speech.
In relation to the famous tea party passage, a significant observation is that most of the main male characters are portrayed as animals while none of the main female characters are portrayed as animals. Women were seen as equal to animals because “women’s bodies have been seen to intrude upon their rationality’’ (Adams &
Donovan 1). The main female characters, apart from Alice, are the Queen of Hearts and the Duchess who engage in some kind of extended conversation with Alice or contribute to the story as a whole. This is quite interesting to see because, as mentioned above, women were earlier seen as not belonging to the human species but rather could be compared to animals. This is why the early liberal feminists, such as Wollstonecraft, wanted to establish that “woman are intellectual and have rational minds -like men and unlike animals.’’ (Adams & Donovan 2) However, in this story, the male characters who challenge Alice are almost all animals, except the Hatter3. As women are the oppressed sex, it seems rather unusual that Alice is the human, and that so few male characters are represented as human. As humans are commonly thought to be the most intellectual being, and animals intellectually inferior to humans, Alice as a human can be seen as more intellectual than the animal
characters. She shows that she is not like an animal but should be seen as a human like the males, but the males she encounters in Wonderland are all animals either by their actions or appearance.
Emancipation
Throughout Alice’s journey through Wonderland we can see her breaking free of traditional gender roles. Even though she at the beginning tries to follow the
Victorian standards for a young girl, she soon throws these aside to embrace her own will and mind. Through looking at how Alice communicates with different characters, this section discusses Alice’s emancipation and breaking away from the Victorian gender norms.
When first communicating with other Wonderland creatures, Alice is careful
3 It is true that the mad Hatter is also human, however as it says in his name he is ‘mad’ and not sane, which in its own way can mean that even though he is human he is incapable of rational thought. Alice is the
representative of sanity and shows intellect and a capability of a rational mindset.
about how she addresses them and acts towards them. Forss examines this aspect of Alice’s development in a very convincing manner in his study of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a ‘Bildungsroman’: “Alice in the beginning of the novel is very careful of what she does and says’’ (13). She encounters a mouse and to get its attention she calls out “O Mouse!” (28) and then further on the narrator of the story tells us that
“Alice thought this must be the right way to of speaking to a mouse’’ (28). Alice is very aware of how to address this mouse and not to offend it, but this does not make the mouse unique. Alice keeps up this kind of etiquette with all Wonderland characters.
After Alice’s participation in a Caucus-race she is told to hand out prices to everyone, which she does without question, and then when she is given a price, a thimble from her own pocket, she “thought the whole thing very absurd, but they all looked so grave that she did not dare to laugh; and, as she could not think of anything to say, she simply bowed, and took the thimble, looking as solemn as she could’’ (36). Even though she wants to laugh at the whole situation she does not, because it might offend the creatures there who take the race very seriously.
It is stated that “the basic problem was not only political, economic, and educational. It was how women regarded, and regarded themselves, as members of a society’’ (Abrams et al. 1846). Even though Alice is a young girl, she has the etiquette of a young woman. This could be because in the beginning and the end of the novel we can see Alice is sitting with her older sister, and we can therefore assume that she is imitating her sister’s mannerisms in a way that seems older then her actual age.
Trying to be more like her sister might make her act less of a child and more like a young woman and aspire to the image of what a woman should be like. Alice’s carefulness could be related to the way women were expected to carry themselves in social settings and thought to be “only anxious to inspire love,’’ (Wollstonecraft 2), in terms of her desire not to offend and cause any other negative feelings in the people she meets.
Alice tries to be a typically soft-spoken victorian girl when talking to the animals in the beginning, but later this façade starts to crumble and she addresses them more directly and does not worry about how she might be perceived by them.
For example, when Alice becomes stuck in the White Rabbit’s house and the small creatures send in a small lizard to get her out, she exclaims that “Oh! So Bill’s got to come down the chimney, has he?’’ (Carroll 47). However, instead of being the kind girl who does not want to offend anyone, she decides to kick the little lizard out of the
chimney so that he goes flying into the air.
Although not historically in line with the publication of the novel, Alice’s change in behavior can be read anachronistically into relation with the two major suffrage groups of the Victorian time, the NUWS (National Union of Women’s Suffrage) and the WSPU (Woman’s Social and Political Movement). The NUWS believed in a peaceful approach to protesting and “that by any other kinds of discourse, [e.g. violent protests and hostile demonstrations], women would only represent themselves irresponsible and hysteric’’ (Esmaeil & Reza 43) and “hoped that by smart negotiations, they could convince politicians to give them social rights including suffrage’’ (43). The other group, WSPU had quite another take on
demonstrating. They showed a more militant approach and “believed that they could not achieve their goals by respectable and gradualist tactics’’ (43). Even if these groups used different tactics, they both shared the common goal of female emancipation.
Furthermore, Alice’s ways of separating herself from Victorian gender norms can be seen when she encounters the royal couple. As Alice told the Cheshire Cat earlier, she wanted to join the Queen’s croquet-game, but she has not been invited.
However, she finds herself in the Royal garden and soon is thrown into the mad game of croquet with all kinds of characters. The first time she meets the Queen she is asked who the cards on the ground are. To this she bluntly responds “How should I know?”, and even the narrator tells us that she was “surprised at her own courage’’
(Carroll 96). To this lack of respect, the Queen’s response is to demand that Alice should be executed, but before the Queen can call out her justice Alice interrupts her calling “Nonsense!” (96) to the Queen. For a young girl raised during the reign of Queen Victoria, she does not show the respect to the Queen of Hearts that she should according to etiquette. Even though a female monarch ruled in England during the time of early feminism and the suffrage movement, Queen Victoria was not interested in the feminist movement, on the opposite “she was annoyed by them’’ (Stagl &
Fahrnberger 7). Just like Queen Victoria was annoyed by feminists, the Queen of Hearts shows annoyance with Alice and her openness and desire to express herself.
A special quote also related to the croquet game can be seen as the strongest pro-feminist part in the novel. During the croquet game in the Queen’s gardens Alice is accompanied by the Duchess who is quite talkative. She constantly remarks on Alice’s thinking and wants to tell her the moral of thinking. Alice grows rather sick of
this jabbering and tells the Duchess “I’ve a right to think” (Carroll 110). The notion that Alice proclaims that she, a young girl, has the right to think for herself and to express her thoughts is quite remarkable. As discussed earlier, women at this time were thought to be gentle and soft spoken. Their duty was to attend to their husband and the home without question. It was claimed that “women had a special nature peculiarly fit for her domestic role” (Abrams et al. 1845). A woman did not need to think for herself but should heed the words “man to command and a woman to obey’’
(1845). However, with Alice saying that she has a right to think, she is not letting patriarchal norms command her but makes up a mind of her own. Wollstonecraft points out how cruel patriarchal society was “for denying her [woman] genius and judgement’’ (57) which leads to a situation in which “The mind is left to rust’’ (81), which in her opinion rendered women weak and dependent on their male
counterparts. But Alice declares loud and clear that her mind is thinking, and not rusting. This shows how Alice is not on her way to become a domesticated woman, because her mind is still free to think and to develop new and interesting thoughts for herself without being bound by gender norms and patriarchal judgement.
Conclusion
After following Alice in her journey through Wonderland, we have seen how Alice reflects the early feminist movement in her actions and interactions with other characters. From a feminist perspective, Alice challenges conventional ideas about education, equality, and female emancipation. Wollstonecraft wrote that “few women have emancipated themselves from the galling yoke of sovereign man’’ (35), but Alice, even though a young girl, is shown many times to challenge the sovereignty of
patriarchy and freeing herself from it.
Through my reading, we can see a pattern of Alice encountering patriarchal gender norms. Alice is constantly met with resistance related to the narrow mindset of the Wonderland characters, which Alice has to argue against to receive an equal treatment or prove her point. In every instance that Alice encounters a character or a situation that challenges the Victorian feminist beliefs of women’s right to education, women’s equality to men and women’s emancipation, she has to get her point across by discussions and argumentation. For example, Alice must validate her own
education to two characters that mock it. But throughout her journey, Alice gets her view across and truly brings her strong-minded spirit to show, which reflects the ideas of education, equality and emancipation of the Victorian feminist movement.
My reading suggests a connection between the feminist movement in Victorian England and Alice’s behavior throughout the text. As I have mentioned earlier, it has been suggested that Alice is not a feminist, and that the novel can even be seen as anti- feminist (Shi). What Lewis Carroll’s intention was while writing the story about Alice, whether she is a feminist or not in the author’s mind, we can never know. It might be a coincidence that events from feminist history and the oppression of women in Victorian society fit well with the story of “a Victorian girl’’. But as my analysis suggests, contemporary feminist issues central to early feminism in the late 19th century and in the Victorian era are reflected by Alice throughout the novel. Through placing the text in the context of historical characters, the thoughts of Mary Wollstonecraft, and the suffrage movement in Victorian England, my reading shows that Alice reflects those thoughts and ideas expressed by the real-world women. Alice is faced with significant examples of traditionalist thoughts which are expressed by other characters of Wonderland, and her responses make her readable as a young Victorian feminist.
Based on the connections between Alice and certain ideas and notions central to Victorian feminism, one can see the character of Alice as being a literary reflection of the early feminist movement. As Tyson writes “All feminist activity has as its ultimate goal to change the world by promoting gender equality’’ (91), and through my reading I suggest that Alice in a way does promote gender equality in her own fictional world. While the other characters question her and have a patriarchal mindset, Alice enforces her sense of equality. She talks to both female and male characters as her equals and does not fear to ask questions or engage in
conversations, even though, according to Victorian gender norms, she should not.
From the modern feminist perspective, Alice might fail to make the cut as a feminist.
But in relation to Victorian social structure and feminist ideas in 1865, Alice in my reading can be counted in as a young Victorian feminist.
It is no wonder that Alice is still a role-model and beloved character to many girls and that the amazing world of Lewis Carroll still inspires readers. Alice’s
feminist spirit is still something people can relate to even today, and her expressions of women rights to education, equality, and emancipation are still relevant in modern literature, even though Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was written during the
Victorian period.
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