‘Alice in Wonderland’ changed literature forever, by not trying to teach kids, just entertain them
The delights of nonsense
On July 4, 1862, a little-known math tutor at Oxford, Charles Dodgson, went on a boat trip with his friend, Reverend Robinson Duckworth, Alice Liddell and her two sisters. The next day, under the pen name Lewis Carroll, he began writing the story he made up for the girls — what he first called the “fairy-tale of ‘Alice’s Adventures Under Ground.’”
As Alice fell down, down, down the rabbit hole, so too have Carroll lovers after her, trying to explain just how Wonderland made such huge waves in children’s literature. How does a world with a disappearing cat, hysterical turtle, and smoking caterpillar capture and hold readers’ imaginations, young and old from now and then? It might seem obvious, but at the time, Carroll’s creation broke the rules in unprecedented new ways.
They departed from prior children’s books, which served as strict moral compasses in Western puritanical society, eventually adding more engaging characters and illustrations as the years passed. But by the time Carroll started recording his tale, children had a genre to call their own, and literary nonsense was just taking off. The scene was set for Alice.
Written during the first Golden Age of Children’s Literature, Carroll’s classic is an absurd yet magnificently perceptive form of entertainment unlike anything that came before or even after it.
Before 1865, the year Alice went to press, children did not read books with stammering rabbits or curious girls who were unafraid to speak their minds:
`No, no!’ said the Queen. `Sentence first — verdict afterwards.’
`Stuff and nonsense!’ said Alice loudly. `The idea of having the sentence first!’
`Hold your tongue!’ said the Queen, turning purple.
`I won’t!’ said Alice.
This kind of rubbish certainly did not exist in the didactic or purely instructional books — on spelling, schooling, good manners, etc. — of the 17th century. The only adventures children were reading about in the 1670s featured Christian pilgrimages to the Celestial City. The most popular novel of the time, The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), by Puritan John Bunyan, “was either forced upon children or more probably actually enjoyed by them in lieu of anything better.”
Another illustrated collection of short stories wasn’t even exclusive to children. Published in 1687, Winter-Evenings Entertainments’ title page read, “Excellently accommodated for the fancies of old or young.”
Books — even fables, fairytales, and knight-in-shining-armor stories — were not intended solely for the amusement of boys and girls. This all began to change as people, most notably Jean-Jacques Rousseau, started thinking about childhood in a new way. Rousseau rejected the Puritan belief that humans are born in sin. As Émile, or On Education (1762) illuminates, he saw individuals as innately good, and children as innocent. The fictitious boy Émile learns through observing and interacting with the corrupt world around him; he follows his instincts and grows from experience, like Alice.
Thus, by the mid-18th century, a romanticized portrayal of childhood — full of unbridled action, creative expression, innocent inferences, and good intentions — began seeping into children’s literature.
Authors and publishers dusted their stories with stylistic sprinkles, because children were no longer seen as having to depend on religion or etiquette guides to make sense of the world. As writers realized the power of entertainment, preachy, elbows-off-the-table books became less dry. Books entered a new, more fantastical phase: “instruction with delight.”
Publishers paired history, religion, morals, and social conventions with illustrations and catchy nursery rhymes. “Bah, bah, black sheep,” “Hickory dickory dock,” and “London Bridge is falling down” filled the pages of Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book (1744). John Newbery, known as “The Father of Children’s Literature,” came out with his first book, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book (1744). The little, pretty edition was bound in colorful paper and came with a ball for boys and pincushion for girls — a clever way of expanding the children’s book market. Teaching young readers through amusing and playful techniques became more popular, and thanks in large part to Newbery, children’s books had potential to be commercial hits.
By the end of the 18th century, this hybrid of storytelling, education, and entertainment became known as a “moral tale.” As stories grew longer and more sophisticated, like Maria Edgeworth’s “Purple Jar” (1796), writers introduced “psychologically complex characters put in situations in which there wasn’t always a clear moral path to be taken.”
A milestone for authors like Carroll, these types of tales gave characters, and in turn young readers, the ability to learn by doing and not by being told by a parent, preacher, or pedagogue. Alice embodied that shift:
“[S]he had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,’ it is
almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later. However, this bottle was NOT marked `poison,’ so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice…she very soon finished it off.”
Unlike the familiar middle-class abodes or charming villages in which most moral tales were set, Alice swims in a pool of tears and plays croquet with flamingos and hedgehogs. At the same time, she sticks up for herself, tries her best to use sound judgment and never gives up — values moral tales would encompass. Wonderland, though, perfectly satirizes the instructive narrative, all the while epitomizing an emerging genre of the time called “nonsense literature.”
In a February 1869 letter to Alexander Macmillan, Carroll wrote, “The only point I really care for in the whole matter (and it is a source of very real pleasure to me) is that the book should be enjoyed by children — and the more in number, the better.”
Carroll’s peculiar creation twists logic and language, but still makes sense. Its non-human characters act like people and contradict each other; however, its riddles and juxtapositions deconstruct the truth without destroying it.
Alice’s Adventures fit neatly, but not conventionally, into the fantasy and literary nonsense space. On the surface, Wonderland is a paradise of puns, paradoxes and anthropomorphism. Underneath, it is deeply honest in its portrayal of childhood and adulthood. But what unites Carroll’s wordplay and analytical anomalies with truth and appreciation is Alice.
“Who in the world am I? Ah, THAT’S the great puzzle!”
Wearing a simple, traditional knee-length puff-sleeve dress with a pinafore on top and and ankle-strap shoes, Alice is more complex and daring than her apparel. She talks to herself (typical of a creative child), is startled by her changing height (a parody of puberty), fumbles through strange, increasingly grown-up encounters (the joys of maturation), and remains honest and curious all the while. She is courageous in the act of growing up.
“Why, they’re only a pack of cards, after all. I needn’t be afraid of them!”
“Her continual attempts to puzzle out the bizarre, amoral and counterintuitive regulations of Wonderland” are brave and familiar to anyone who is lost, confused, afraid, or fed up, suggests author Amanda Craig. Alice is all of us figuring out how to stay sane in a mad world.
Like Peter Pan, Edmund Pevensie, Charlie Bucket, and Harry Potter, Alice is an ordinary child going on an extraordinary adventure, always returning with her readers in a more curious, clearer state of mind.
