Alice in Wonderland' - Reinforcing Victorian Gender Stereotypes
Alice in Wonderland' - Reinforcing Victorian Gender Stereotypes
"For you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible" (Wonderland 8).
Carroll's Alice's Adventures through Wonderland does not reinforce Victorian stereotypes about women. While some may, and have, interpreted it as projecting the Victorian ideal of girlhood, a critical reading of the narrative reinforces the argument that it rebels against that ideal. Alice is not the demure, pleasant and obedient ideal of Victorian girlhood which some, such as Auerbach have identified her as (p. 63). She is, more accurately, a rebellious spirit who rejects the Victorian world, as evidenced in her descent into fantasy, and engages in the continued questioning of the virtues of her day, as is clear from her argumentative spirit and her refusal to accept things at face-value. Indeed, as this essay will argue, Alice's Adventures Through Wonderland rebel against, rather than reinforce and affirm, Victorian female stereotypes.
From the outset Alice's rebellion is evident, albeit subtly stated. She is bored with having to sit on a riverbank on a lazy summer afternoon, watching her sister read a book that contains no pictures to stir Alice's imagination. Everything about this scene seems so self contained and stagnant that Alice herself is lulled into a kind of paralysis. Languidly she contemplates "whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies" (Wonderland 11). While fleeting and brief, this scene is expressive of Alice's discontent with her life, the life which society has assigned to girls. Reading, picking daisies and fashioning daisy chains may be socially prescribed activities for Victorian girls but they are hardly ones which stimulate or interest Alice. Instead, they push her into a deep lethargy and listlessness from which only the white Rabbit can rouse her out of.
The fantasy world into which the White Rabbit leads Alice excites her imagination in ways that her Victorian world could never have. Her decision to follow the White Rabbit into a world beyond her own and the very fact that the Rabbit stimulates her into action and arouses her curiously are highly significant occurrences. In the first place, her decision to follow the Rabbit evidences her rejection of her stagnant and boring Victorian reality. In the second place, the fact that she exhibits both action and curiosity is expressive of the potential which resides within the female and which is suppressed by societal norms, expectations and male domination. In other words, Alice's decision to follow the rabbit, her actions and thoughts may be interpreted as Carroll's way of exposing the suppressed potential of the female sex and his belief that they are just as capable of action and thought as are the males. It is within the context of the stated interpretation that Alice's Adventures through Wonderland emerges as a treatise against traditional female stereotypes rather than as a narrative which supports and reinforces them.
Proceeding from the above stated, Alice emerges as a figure who rebels against Victorian societal norms and her Wonderland is as an invigorating alternate reality to Victorian society. Importantly, her rebellion is conscious and her alternate reality is one of her choice. This may be established through reference to the following introductory poem:
Alice! A childish story take
And with a gentle hand
Lay it where Childhood's dreams are twined
In memory's mystic band
Like pilgrim's whither'd wreath of flowers
Pluck'd in a far off land (Wonderland 8)
The poem, whose concluding stanza is quoted in the above, communicates an image of an idyllic Eden-like world; a world of flowers, dreams, peace and gentleness and, accordingly, almost tailor-made to fit the Victorian conceptualization of the ideal female. What is interesting to note here is not just that this image conflicts with the macabre and sadistic world of Alice's Wonderland but that Alice chooses to leave that world and enter into wonderland. She leaves the mind-numbing safety of the river banks and the socially acceptable, and utterly secure, pursuit of daisy picking, to enter a world in which rulers are constantly threatening to decapitate their servants and where Alice's survival is continually in question. Not only does Alice do so willingly and consciously but, significantly, through her wits, intelligence and action, she survives the dangers of the alternate world. If anything, this evidences the potential of the female to embark upon dangerous adventures and to survive those adventures through their own capacities. Indeed, as Rackin argues in "Alice Becomes an I," Alice in Wonderland is about the growth of the female consciousness and the plot derives from a demonstration of the female's innate capacities for intelligence and action (p. 6). Since these are potentials and capacities which Victorian society refused to acknowledge the female as possessing, Carroll's determined exposition of their presence, not in an adult and mature woman in familiar surroundings, but in a young girl in an unfamiliar environment, may be interpreted as an unveiling of the falsity of Victorian society, its norms and beliefs. In other words, Carroll does not promote Victorian stereotypes but, rather, undermines and attacks them.
In the final analysis, and as this essay has tried to argue, Alice's Adventures Through Wonderland exposes Victorian society for its refusal to acknowledge reality. A patriarchal and male-dominated society, it adheres to stereotypical images of females as weak in both body and mind, as inherently incapable of thinking and acting. Indeed, it is a society which has relegated females to the role of submissive, inactive and unthinkingly obedient beings. Carroll's story does not simply present an alternate image of females but presents that alternate image within the context of an alternate reality. In so doing, it communicates the message that reality is ultimately a human creation and not something which is absolute and etched in stone. Through the stated, Carroll effectively disrupts Victorian notions of girlhood and, as such, forces a reconsideration of popular female stereotypes. Are females incapable of action and thought or, if given the opportunity, will they prove differently as did Alice?
Works Cited
Auerbach, Nina. "Alice in Wonderland: A Curious Child." Victorian Studies 17.1 (1973): 31-47.
Rackin, Donald. "Alice Becomes an I." Victorians Institute Journal (1987): 1-16.
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