Westminster Institute of Education

Alice: Growing up in the dream world

Nick Swarbrick

16.08.2010

Westminster Institute of Education

A morning of three parts:

• A look at Alice in Wonderland – the writing, the background, the content

• Alice misunderstood,

• AiW as metaphor (or series of metaphors) for .....

Some notes and further reading will be available at http://nicktomjoe.brookesblogs.net/

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Writing, background, content

• Authorship• Context of writing• Content and structure of story

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So some quick facts

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898) told the story that became Alice in Wonderland in a “golden afternoon” in 1862 to the sisters Lorina, Alice and Edith Liddell. He wrote the story up as Alice’s Adventures Under Ground; it was published as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865.

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Context of writing

• Moral literature for children• Teaching children in Victorian England• The University collegiate system

And not dealing (much) with • Victorian sexuality• What comes after Alice • Or even Through the Looking Glass

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Common themes

• Intertextuality• Parody • Logic/nonsense• What is it like to be a grown-up?

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Content/structure

• The dream sequence begins: Alice follows the White Rabbit and is abandoned under ground: first introductions to the notion of going to see the Queen.

• The sizing elements resolve with the Caterpillar, Alice meets the Duchess; the Mad Hatter.

• The croquet match; meeting and confronting the Queen.

• The sea-side interlude.• The trial finale; Alice confronts the Queen again and,

seeing through the Wonderland power base, leaves for dull reality.

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Some reading

All students numbered 1 move and sit together

All students numbered 2 move and sit together

And so on.

Group 1: The Beginning and End: Dreams

Group 2: The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party: Characters

Group 3: Helpful and unhelpful adults: Caterpillar and Cat

Group 4: Poems: Crocodile and Father William

Group 5: The Queen (croquet and trial)

Three sharings:• One thing in your

reading you like• One thing you

dislike, or which puzzles you

• One thing that connects to your own experience

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Misunderstood?

Misrepresented?

Over-simplified?

Are we surreal?

Or just mad?

Are we an exposition of logic?Or simply

comic?

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Or…

In a world

• Before Freud explores the inner workings of the mind

• Before surrealism gives force to an artistic representation of the irrational

• Before Foucault describes the medicalisation of madness in terms of power

How valid are these questions anyway?

Or is looking at an author’s intentions merely guesswork?

More tea?

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“The concern with audience values is frequently the audience of adult purchasers of books for children.”

(Atkins 2004: 53)

“The Apollonian child, the heir to sunshine and light, the espouser of poetry and beauty…angelic, innocent and untainted…”(Jenks 1996:73)

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Who is Alice?

• Tenniel's Alice• Carroll’s Alice?

• Models of childhood – where does Alice fit?

Find a phrase or section in which Alice is cross, or refuses to do

something.

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“The Apollonian child, the heir to sunshine and light, the espouser of poetry and beauty…angelic, innocent and untainted…”(Jenks 1996:73)

“The child is Dionysian in as much as it loves pleasure, it celebrates self-gratification….” (Jenks 1996:63)

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Where is Alice?

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/42362

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Somewhere?

Nowhere?

Everywhere?

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Woods, cottages?

Single female adventurer?

No bears, no wolves...

http://nicktomjoe.brookesblogs.net/research-and-consultancy/where-is-outside/

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Metaphors for .....

• University life• Ways of dealing with adults• Learning• Sex and drugs (and rock and roll?)

Does he really mean metaphors?

I’m really not sure.

I’m really not enjoying this. What difference is there between metaphor,

allegory and symbol?And I’m really not

real.ZZZZ

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Nick Swarbrick

Westminster Institute of Education

Oxford Brookes University

ntjswarbrick@brookes.ac.uk

http://www.brookes.ac.uk/wie/about/staff/nickswarbrick

http://nicktomjoe.brookesblogs.net/

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Thank you

Life: what is it but a dream?