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Queen that her perverse sense of
justice is “Stuff and nonsense!”
Her final act, by which time she is
child sized again, is to insist that
the playing cards are just that—
inanimate things—whereupon they
fly into the air. By force of character
she has punctured the illusion.
The coda, featuring Alice’s older
sister, is beautifully judged. It starts
with her dreaming “after a fashion,”
since a fully-fledged dream would
be less subtle than this elusive
mind state. First, she affectionately
imagines Alice herself; then the
weird characters Alice has been
describing pass in front of her.
Finally, she imagines Alice turning
into a “grown woman,” but keeping
the “simple and loving heart” of her
childhood, and passing on the story
of Wonderland to a new generation.The meaning of nonsense
Fantasy conveyed with as much
vividness, wit, and sensitivity as
Carroll’s has immediate impact but
will raise questions about hidden
meanings. Food in the book often
triggers unease—did Carroll suffer
from an eating disorder? Since the
brand of mathematics he taught at
Oxford was conservative, at a time
when more abstract ideas were
taking root, some of the weird logic
may be a satirical sideswipe at the
new math. And since the book was
a gift for the real Alice, it may
contain private references for her.
Carroll’s sources of inspiration
will never be comprehensively
recovered, yet any in-jokes in no
way diminish the universality of
Alice’s adventures, grounded as it
is in the vulnerability of children,
a theme as relevant today as it was
in Carroll’s time.
Carroll brought out a second and
similar book about Alice in 1871:
Through the Looking-Glass, and
What Alice Found There. Here tooare memorable characters (such as
the Walrus and the Carpenter, and
Tweedledum and Tweedledee),
nonsensical songs, and witty
aphorisms that flirt with alternative
logic. As in Wonderland, meaning
is slippery: a word, claims Humpty
Dumpty, “means just what I choose
it to mean.” However, the sequel is
more menacing than the first Alice
story, perhaps reflecting Carroll’s
grief over the loss of his father.The lure of fantasy
A line of influence stretches from
the magical transformations of
Wonderland through J. R. R. Tolkien’s
The Hobbit and C. S. Lewis’s Narnia
series, the whimsical rhyming
world of Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl’s
beloved Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory, and J. K. Rowling’s wizard
stronghold Hogwarts. Although in
the 21st century a new realism has
entered writing for children, with
stories of abandonment,
homelessness, and alienation,
fantasy remains perennially
compelling to young minds. ■DEPICTING REAL LIFE
Lewis Carroll
Born in 1832 in Cheshire,
England, Charles Dodgson
(best known later by his pen
name, Lewis Carroll) was
the son of a clergyman. He
earned a first-class degree in
mathematics from Christ
Church, Oxford, and from
1855 he held a lectureship
there until his death. He was
also ordained as a deacon.
His first published work, in
1856, was a poem on solitude.
Dodgson was well connected,
his friends including the critic
and writer John Ruskin, and
the painter and poet Dante
Gabriel Rossetti. He was a
notable photographer, taking
portraits of the poet Alfred
Tennyson, the actress Ellen
Terry, and many children. He
died in 1898, at 65, as a result
of pneumonia after a severe
case of influenza. By this
time Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland was the most
popular children’s book in
Britain. Queen Victoria was
one of its admirers.Other key works1871 Through the Looking-
Glass, and What Alice
Found There
1876 The Hunting of
the SnarkHumpty Dumpty, as with characters
in Wonderland, has conversations with
Alice that are characterized by riddles,
wordplay, and perverse logic posed
as rationality.US_168-171_Wonderland.indd 171 08/10/2015 13:06