Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, written by Lewis Carroll, serve together as a bildungsroman that comments on how unavoidable growing up is. This theme is tremendously significant to Dodgson’s life as he was well known for having a number of child-friends who grew away. Numerous references to time seem to mark the passage and suspension of it, an oxymoronic situation that echoes adolescence. Also, many death jokes are made, reminding the reader of the inevitable, and suggesting the death of Alice’s childhood. Caroll uses Eden situations, making Alice his Eve who is led to temptation by the characters and situations she encounters. She begins as a child but being placed in these situations, she ultimately loses her innocence. Through the acquisition of knowledge, she becomes fully prepared for the adult reality outside the garden.

The theme is suitable for Dodgson, who was always making child-friends because he was always losing the older ones to adulthood. Once he succeeded in making such a friend, they would “reach puberty, grow up, and generally grow away” (Gordon 5). In Through the Looking-Glass there is a scene where Alice picks rushes, but “the rushes had begun to fade, and to lose all their scent and beauty, from the very moment that she picked them” (Carroll 257). It is very likely that “these dream rushes [are] symbols of his child-friends” who all grow up and eventually cease correspondence with him (Gardner 257). The Alice books strive to trap that period of time into a story which, unlike brief and fleeting childhood, lasts forever.

The books contain numerous references to time. Most conspicuously, the White Rabbit with his pocket watch constantly frets “Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting!” (Carroll 29). He serves as “Carroll’s comic expression of . . . preoccupation with the passage of time” (Gordon 5). Although several characters appear in multiple noncontiguous chapters, he is the only character that seems to follow Alice throughout the entire book from the very beginning by luring her into Wonderland to the very last chapter of Wonderland where he is an official of the court. He scampers through the work, reminding Alice of the brevity of her childhood and that she must sooner or later give into adulthood.

Another episode alluding to time is the Mad Tea Party. Since the Hatter “murdered the time” at the Queen’s concert, “‘it is always six o’clock’”(Carroll 99). Unlike the White Rabbit, time is not passing for the Hatter, only standing completely still. Within the same novel, Carroll makes time forever a concern for one character and for another makes time stand still. This irony seems to suggest that he wishes to keep Alice’s childhood frozen in time (as in the Mad Tea Party), but still recognizes the inevitability of time passage. The Hatter, March Hare and Dormouse are utterly ridiculous characters, while the White Rabbit is one of the only characters that hardly seems to have any foolishness about him at all aside from his ability to speak, even though he is a rabbit. Likewise, the idea of time not progressing is as ridiculous as the Mad Tea Party, but the ultimate passage of time matches the Rabbit’s near-rationality.

Through the Looking Glass displays a more direct reference to the passage of Alice’s childhood. Here her quest for queenhood drives her through the entire tale, taking the place of the White Rabbit in Adventures in Wonderland. Here the inevitable passage of time is more directly related to Alice who strives to grow from a pawn to a queen by making it across the chessboard; however, it is interesting to note that all along this journey she makes stops at each square where she meets this new world of nonsensical characters. After all, a pawn cannot simply glide across the board to where it wishes as the queen can. It is required by the rules of chess that the piece move no more than one square at a time with the exception of the first move where it has the choice of moving two squares, and can only progress forward. In fact, Carroll adheres strongly to the rules of chess: the queen can move any number of spaces in any direction, the king “sleeps” by not moving much of the time, and without him the game cannot continue. Lastly, if a pawn (Alice) reaches the opposite end of a chessboard, she can become a queen.

All time, of course, leads to death. This death is not always that of the body, but is sometimes the death of innocence and childhood. Alice does not physically die, but she encounters death in her adventures. As early as falling down the rabbit-hole, Alice says that “‘after such a fall as this’” she “‘wouldn’t say anything about it, even if [she] fell off the top of the house!’ (which was very likely true)” (Carroll 27). Gardener makes mention that this “is the first death joke in the Alice books. There are many more to come” (Gardner 27). Next, she takes care to make sure the bottle she drinks is not poison “for she had read several nice little stories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts, and other unpleasant things because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them” (Carroll 31). At the Mad Tea Party, the Hatter recalls that he was “‘murdering the time’” at a recital, and that because of it the Queen orders “‘Off with his head!’” (Carroll 99).

This is not the last time the Queen’s obsession with the removal of heads is mentioned. Once in the Queen’s croquet grounds she orders almost every person present to be beheaded. She even condemns Alice, but the King asks her to “consider . . . she is only a child”(Carroll 109). The fact that the Queen has to be reminded that condemning a child would be inappropriate demonstrates that death “is no respecter of age” (Rice 222). This is true of physical death because children can befall accidents just as easily as adults, but is also true of growing up. For all children die as a matter of routine, for all children grow up.

Humpty Dumpty has a conversation with Alice concerning death. Alice reports that she is “‘seven years and six months’” old, and notes that“‘one can’t help growing older’” (Carroll 266). To this, Humpty replies that “‘One can’t perhaps, but two can. With proper assistance, you might have left off at seven’” (Carroll 266). Indeed, “this is one of the subtlest, grimmest, easiest-to-miss quips in the Alice books,” for it deals directly with Alice’s death, a grisly thought to have about a seven-and-a-half-year-old (Gardner 266). Regardless, she is indeed dying at the very moment of that conversation by growing up as her childhood perishes.

The most literal death reference comes up in a conversation Alice has with the Gnat in Looking Glass. He describes a bread-and-butterfly that lives off weak tea with cream in it. Alice, who is aware that weak tea with cream does not naturally occur in a garden, poses the question, “Supposing it couldn’t find any, ‘”(Carroll 223). To this the Gnat replies “‘Then it would die, of course.’ ‘But that must happen very often,’ Alice remarked thoughtfully. ‘It always happens,’ said the Gnat.” (Carroll 223). This is a universal truth, for death in all its forms always happens.

Many of the poems contained in the books concern death as well. The mouse’s tale/tail, an example of emblematic verse, tells of a mouse that is faced with a Fury who will “condemn [the mouse] to death” (Carroll 51). How Doth the Little Crocodile speaks of a friendly-looking crocodile who opens his mouth and “welcomes little fishes in/With gently smiling jaws” (Carroll 38). Perhaps one of the best-known poems by Carroll, Jabberwocky deals with the slaying of a monster. Though she finds it difficult to understand at first, Alice knows that “somebody killed something: that’s clear, at any rate” (Carroll, 197). Another well-known poem dealing with death in these books is The Walrus and the Carpenter. Very fitting to this theme, the Walrus and Carpenter lead several naive little oysters to their death. The oldest oyster knew better than to go along with the pair, therefore only the young oysters dies.

Like the White Rabbit’s presence that constantly alludes to the passing of time, these many references to death keep the reader from forgetting the ultimate end. For Carroll’s intended audience, this was the ever-impending threat of the end of childhood. Many of these jokes are very subtle. Despite the perpetual death hints, one would hardly consider Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass morbid books, because of this subtlety. The books only mention death as a casual part of life that is only as lamentable as growing up.

All this death is ultimately the choice of God. As God was the power at the center of Eden, both Wonderland and Looking-glass Land have a highest power governing them. Though different, these two monarchs represent different sides of God. Specifically, the Queen of Hearts is the power of Wonderland, and “stands prominently at the center of the punning world of Wonderland, and a spirit of love is expected” (Rackin 27). However, despite her title, Rackin quotes one of Carroll’s diaries in saying the queen is “a blind and aimless Fury” (Rackin 27). This presents almost an oxymoron, because a queen with a loving title is anything but that at times. Such is also true of the God of the Old Testament. He is the father of love, and yet still distributes wrathful punishments. The Gryphon tells Alice that the Queen’s orders of execution are never carried out, “‘It’s all her fancy, that: they never executes nobody, you know’” (Carroll 125). This seems to reflect that Carroll, though an ordained deacon, “was orthodox in all respects save his inability to believe in eternal damnation” (Gardner 10). Even though we all die physically, it seems that no one ever really dies as there’s always a heaven afterwards.

The deity-figure in Looking-glass Land is the Red King. The king is red, just like the Queen of Hearts, suggesting the love of God. Upon finding the king sleeping, Tweedledee tells Alice that she is “only a sort of thing of his dream,” and that if he woke up, she’d “be nowhere” (Carroll 239). This is an example of Bishop Berkeley’s philosophy in which “all material objects, including ourselves are only in the mind of God” (Gardner 238). Therefore, according to the Looking-glass Land is the Red King’s dream, and the world including Eden is God’s dream.

Shortly after her fall through the rabbit-hole, Alice sees through a tiny door “the loveliest garden you ever saw” (Carroll 30). Of course, the original garden was Eden, which had “various trees [growing] that were delightful to look at” (Genesis 2:9). Carroll’s garden is “for most everyone in Carroll’s original audience, the Garden of Eden” where Alice grows to near-maturity and ultimately loses her innocence (Rackin 27).

Similarly, one of the first features of Looking-glass Land that Alice pursues is the garden. Once there, she is told by the speaking greenery that there “‘is one other flower in the garden that can move about like you’” (Carroll 204). Although this other “flower” is the Red Queen, it cannot be denied that such a situation is familiar to that of Eve who has only one human companion in the garden of Eden with her. While in Looking-Glass Land, the Gnat tells Alice about a “wood . . . where things have no names” (Carroll 226). Upon entering the wood, she meets a fawn there and cannot remember what it is called, and neither can the fawn, but says “I’ll tell you, if you’ll come a little further on . . . I can’t remember here” (Carroll 227). The Bible says that God made a wood of animals and “brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each would be its name” (Genesis 2:19). Because Alice has no Adam, she does not know what these things are called, and Looking-Glass Land again becomes the Garden of Eden.

Carroll wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass to be books where Victorian children could escape the ever-present morals in most books for children during his day. This is obvious by the negative light shed upon the Duchess, who finds morals in everything, even if they are irrelevant or downright silly; Alice notes “‘How fond she is of finding morals in things!’” (Carroll 121). Even still, he adds parts to his story that almost present morals, but he does so subtly without stating directly what these morals are. Just like the Eden of the Bible, Alice’s Eden also has its suggestive temptations.

Early on in the tale, Alice recites a parody of the Isaac Watts poem “Against Idleness and Mischief” which begins “How doth the little busy bee” and comments that because the bee is so busy with her work, she is never prone to mischief, “For Satan finds some mischief still/For idle hands to do” (Watts). Alice’s version, however, comments on a crafty crocodile: “How cheerfully he seems to grin/How neatly spreads his claws,/And welcomes little fishes in,/With gently smiling jaws!” (Carroll 38). The fish is a symbol for Christians, and Alice’s rendering warns the reader that a good Christian must be careful not to trust “gently smiling jaws,” or he’ll meet the same fate as the fishes do with the crocodile (Carroll 38). Though a parody, Alice’s version seems to set a similar example as the original, that one must be mindful of what the devil can do to her. Despite this, Alice doesn’t seem to follow the advice of the poem.

Probably the most familiar embodiment of “gently smiling jaws” from these books is the Cheshire Cat. The Cat sits in a tree, and though he is rather practical, gives Alice advice or knowledge that she does not feel she needs. For example, Alice asks if he would “‘tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? . . . I don’t much care where’” to which the Cat replies “‘then it doesn’t matter which way you go’” (Carroll 88). The one piece of advice he gives her that she can use is that “‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad. . . . you must be, or you wouldn’t have come here” (Carroll 89). This brings a new dimension to how Alice sees Wonderland. It is no longer mad while she is sane. She is no more sane than the creatures of her Eden. The Cat, therefore, stands as an embodiment of Satan, who talks to a female while sitting in a tree and eventually leads her to a new understanding of her world. Also, since Sir John Tenniel, the illustrator, worked closely with Carroll, it is interesting to notice that in the illustration of this scene, the Cat’s tail hangs from the branch and is kinked in such a way that it almost resembles the tail of a striped serpent.

Another character that suggests Satan is Humpty Dumpty. He sits up high, and speaks down to Alice, full of pride as he is. For example, Alice says things that are merely benign, but he interprets them to mean that she places herself below him. Besides constantly referring to his close relationship to the king, Alice asks for him to clarify himself by saying “I beg your pardon?” which Humpty takes as an apology: “I’m not offended” (Carroll 267). In the Victorian time period, offering two fingers for shaking is a sign that the other person is one’s social inferior. Humpty does this, and proceeds to comment that Alice is “so exactly like other people” (Carroll 276). Just after her departure, Humpty falls off the wall and his fall “suggests the fall of Lucifer and the fall of man” (Gardner 276). After all, prior to his fall, Humpty was close to the king, just as Lucifer was, but as we all know, “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men/Couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

In her essay, Auerbach comments that “Like Milton’s Eve, Alice is a creature of curiosity and appetite” (Auerbach 49). Throughout all of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice is constantly eating and drinking things. The first time she consumes some Wonderland nourishment, she is invited only by a “paper label with the words ‘DRINK ME’ beautifully printed on it in large letters” (Carroll 31). Only checking to make sure that it is not marked poison, she drinks the liquid, and it causes her to shrink. However, after that initial meal she no longer is distrustful of any Wonderland food. The same is true of Eve, who consumes the apple, and even though it is not poison, it causes her fall. Unlike Eve, Alice eats and drinks several things before the end of her fall. It is important to note that with all the shrinking and growing she does, Alice ultimately ends up larger in comparison to her company than at the opening of the tale. The foods not only cause her fall, but also cause her to grow, linking these two concepts of growth and the fall. It seems as though these very delicacies cause her to grow so large that Wonderland becomes a home no longer suitable for her. Alice here is similar to Eve who “fell through eating” (Auerbach 49).

The mushroom the Caterpillar sits upon causes growth. The Caterpillar himself informs her that “‘One side [of the mushroom] will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter’” (Carroll 73). Because of this meal, Alice gains “an immense length of neck” that she finds can “bend about easily in any direction, like a serpent” (Carroll 74). She then speaks to a pigeon who believes her to be a serpent there to steal her eggs. Therefore she tells him “I-I’m a little girl . . . I have tasted eggs . . . but little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you know, ” and the pigeon decides that “ if they do, why, then they’re a kind of serpent” (Carroll, 76). The suggestion of Alice being a serpent is very important, for because of eating the mushroom “she deteriorates, becomes a fallen Eve, a serpent” (Blake 133). Alice becomes little more than a serpent in the trees like Lucifer who visits Eve in the form of a serpent.

Aside from her growing and shrinking, Alice’s tolerance with regard to other characters offers a means by which to track Alice’s growth. Like many adolescents, Alice wonders at the beginning of Adventures in Wonderland “‘ “Who in the world am I?” Ah, that’s the great puzzle!’” (Carroll 37). Here she begins listing the little girls she might have been changed to, but can’t seem to find one that quite suits her situation. She then says that she’ll not come back up the hole until the person bidding her to return above tells her who she is, but she does “‘wish they would put their heads down! I am so very tired of being all alone’” (Carroll 39). This whole situation represents adolescence where the individual struggles to find out who they are and feels very isolated. Adolescence, however, is part of growing up.

At the beginning of her journeys through Wonderland and Looking-Glass Land, Alice tries to accept all foolishness as acceptable, as it is being done by those who are older than she. This is akin to a child who accepts whatever adults do as acceptable, for a child does not have the experience to accurately distinguish right from wrong, or in this case foolishness from practicality. She is very patient with these silly situations and behaves just as politely as she has always been taught.

For example, in Adventures in Wonderland, she participates in the Caucus race the animals have by the seashore, where the participants “[begin] running when they [like], and [leave] off when they [like]” (Carroll 48). The race has no point, yet Alice participates and treats the situation as perfectly acceptable. Similarly, when the White Rabbit passes by and orders “Mary Ann! . . . Fetch me my gloves this moment!” though she is not Mary Ann, (obviously the Rabbit’s housekeeper), she still goes to his house to retrieve his gloves (Carroll 59).

In Through the Looking Glass, the first set of characters she meets are the flowers, who constantly insult her. The Rose says “‘It’s my opinion that you never think at all” and a Violet chimes in “I never saw anybody that looked stupider” (Carroll 203). Despite this, Alice changes the subject and asks, “‘Are there any more people in the garden beside me?’ . . . not choosing to notice the Rose’s last remark” (Carroll 203-4). She changes the subject several times in this chapter, and each change is to ignore the latest rude comment the flowers have made toward her.

Perhaps the best instance of this patience with ridiculous situations is when Alice holds a conversation with the Caterpillar in Wonderland. He is incredibly contrary to everything she says. For instance, Alice says that “‘I can’t explain myself . . . because I’m not myself, you see,’” and the Caterpillar rudely responds “‘I don’t see’” (Carroll 67). No adult in their right mind would tolerate the Caterpillar’s impertinent remarks like Alice does, and she “felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar’s making such very short remarks” (Carroll 68). Even still, when Alice finally comes to leave, the Caterpillar calls her back, a request that she obediently complies with. This is very like a child, who listens to their elders, regardless of how ridiculous those elders may be.

However, by the end of these books, Alice is much less passive towards the creatures of Wonderland. For example, she stalks off from the Mad Tea Party and remarks “‘At any rate, I’ll never go there again! . . . It’s the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!’” (Carroll 104). She is much more assertive with her opinion, a very adult-like characteristic.

The ending scenes in both books serve as the final step out of childhood. In Through the Looking Glass at the dinner-party, both the Red Queen and White Queen are very hostile towards Alice until finally she reacts. “She really did rise as she spoke, several inches” and then quite violently, she “jumped up and seized the tablecloth with both hands . . . ‘And as for you ,’ she went on, turning fiercely upon the Red Queen . . . ‘I’ll shake you into a kitten, I will!’” (Carroll 335-6). Not only does she assert her reason, but she also is growing throughout this scene, indicating the quick growth so characteristic to adolescence.

Meanwhile, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the very last incident is the pointless trial. Instead of pretending that it is nothing out of the ordinary, she is very vocal with her opinion. She points out that to have the sentence first and verdict afterwards, which is the Queen’s way, is “Stuff and nonsense!” (Carroll 161). Meanwhile, just like the final scene in Looking-glass Land, Alice is growing physically. Carroll tells us that by the time she makes the exclamation of “Stuff and nonsense!”, “she had grown to her full size” (Carroll 161). This is very interesting, because a popular adage of the Victorian time period is that “children should be seen and not heard.” When the Queen orders her to stop speaking, Alice defies her and is no longer only seen, but heard as well. Coupled with Alice’s actual physical growth to “full size,” the Queen’s recognition of Alice’s statement suggests a definite departure from childhood for a Victorian adolescent to the world of adulthood, where all will speak their mind.

With this Alice awakes, shaking off Wonderland and leaving it forever. “Alice as a child enters a realm . . . [and ultimately] unfitted for the garden, Alice destroys it . . . in this loving parody of Genesis . . . Alice is simultaneously Wonderland’s creator and destroyer as well as its victim” (Auerbach 49). By dreaming Wonderland and Looking-glass Land, she has created it; by being so assertive towards its difficulties, she destroys it.

One question remains, and that regards exactly where in the story Alice falls. One might argue it is at the conclusion, where she recognizes the absolute futility of trying to stay a child in a place as silly as these dreamworlds. Another might say that it occurs from the first instance that she eats Wonderland’s food, like Eve who fell when she ate the apple. However, perhaps falling from innocence cannot be marked in one single deed. The fall, like coming of age, occurs in stages. These stages are starts and stops in the fashion that a pawn (Alice) moves across a chessboard (Looking-Glass Land).

Alice actually falls physically at only one point in these two books, and that is at the very beginning of Wonderland where she falls down the rabbit hole. Does this mean that she is no longer a child at that point? No, not yet. The Garden still exists, and Alice is still a girl in it. She then meets temptations and Satan-figures, but she is still in the garden. Alice eats everything that can be eaten in the garden, but is still a child. It is not until Alice no longer accepts the foolishness of the garden that she destroys it. “Children are innocent and immortal, adults are fallen and mortal,” and each of the immortal dreamlands of Wonderland and Looking-glass Land are broken when she awakes and becomes mortal once again (Oates 114). It is at this very point that Alice has fallen, for she has completed her journey and has successfully grown out of her childhood.

In each of these two books, Alice journeys through childhood and the trials and tribulations of adolescence; she wakes up with an adult perspective on these two lands. However, it is sad to realize that just like a childhood dream, Alice can never return to these childhood worlds.

Bibliography available upon request. Copyright Stephanie LeBlanc, 2001.