For my project I decided to pick a fun novel and relate it to something that we have done in the class. Thus began my journey into the world of Alice in Wonderland and all the craziness that takes place there. After debating what I would do for some time I finally decided to do the manifestation of the different archetypes in Alice because I thought that would be very interesting. Each of us has aspects of the different archetypes in us, although we have a dominant archetype. In Alice in Wonderland I found that Alice’s major archetypes were the orphan, the innocent and the altruist. Digging deeper we can see that she is an unwilling hero who gets pulled into the nonsensical world of wonderland through mere curiosity. However, she emerges as a stronger and more knowledgeable person after surviving the craziness of Wonderland. Alice is in essence thrown into the crazy, topsy-turvy world of Wonderland and must find her way home. Thus begins her journey with its trials and triumphs into and through the world of nonsense that is Wonderland.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson completed the novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll on February 10, 1863. The novel’s name is often shortened to Alice in Wonderland. Carroll wrote many works of fiction and poetry and many of them are signed with this name instead of his real name. Carroll was born in January 1932 and was the eldest son of the Reverend Charles Dodgson and lived a fairly middle-class life. Throughout his life he was a brilliant academic, especially in Mathematics, and attended an affluent boarding school where he also excelled. Later he went on to get his Masters and became an ordained deacon and a dean at Christ Church College where he taught mathematics. He was also a very good amateur portrait photographer and had a love for photographing young girls. In April 1856 he met the three daughters of his friend Henry George Liddell and attempted to photograph them. He took a special interest in Alice Pleasance Liddell and she became the “Alice” in his novel Alice in Wonderland. In 1862 while on a trip with the three Liddell girls he told the Alice in Wonderland story for the first time and Alice Liddell asked him to write the story out for her. This led to him writing the novel and its subsequent publication for the first time 1865. [1] The novel appealed to people of all ages and had many keen readers including Queen Victoria and Oscar Wilde. It has been translated into 125 languages and there are numerous editions and adaptations of the work.[2] This is a timeless classic and it is still interesting to the masses because there was a film made about this book as recently as earlier this year and it enjoyed good box office success.
Alice in Wonderland is a tale about a young girl named Alice who after following her curiosity falls down a rabbit hole and falls into the fantasy world of Wonderland which has a reality very different from her own. It is in stark contrast to her Victorian upbringing and she must adapt and undergo change in order to survive the craziness. She meets many strange creatures such as the March hare, the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit and the Cheshire cat on her travels through this world in her quest to find a way home. On her travels she also meets her main nemesis and the antagonist in this novel, the Queen of Hearts. Alice always seems to say the wrong things and is perceived by the inhabitants of Wonderland to be quite strange and even mad. She learns, changes and grows throughout her travels, and in the end she finally morphs into a strong-willed person who defeats the Queen of Hearts and returns home.
The various characters in Alice in Wonderland play a big role in the development of the story. However, the most important characters are Alice, the Queen of Hearts, the Mad Hatter, the caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat. These various characters help to shape the story and are either helpers or hindrances to Alice. For example, the Queen of Hearts is the antagonist and villain in this story, and helps to shape Alice as she must overcome the trials put forth by her. The Caterpillar is a great helper for Alice because it cheers her up when she is down and even tells her about the mushroom that can help her to control her size by eating different sides of it. If we were to look at this novel symbolically as one in which Alice changing sizes is about her becoming a woman then we would see that this action by the caterpillar is very important. It helps her to get one step closer to her womanhood and how to control it. In the literal sense however, her learning how to use the mushroom helped her to get through many of the trials in order to get home.
The orphan archetype is very prevalent throughout the literature and media that we interact with on a daily basis. Some well-known examples of orphans include Oliver Twist, Orphan Annie, Harry Potter, Cinderella and Tom Sawyer. The positive aspects of this archetype embody the qualities of resilience, empathy and being realistic and a survivor. The negative qualities include being suspicious, negative, cynical and a whiner. Alice embodies the positive aspects of the orphan archetype. She is pulled into the bizarre world of Wonderland and becomes a physical orphan as everything that she is familiar with is cut off from her. Her sister is nowhere to be found, and we can feel her loneliness when she breaks down and cries after she cannot figure out how to get through the door in the room she is in. Her size changes and her naivete work against her as she is not accustomed to making such decisions in her life. However, she shows great resilience and is a survivor because she figures out Wonderland in her own way, and in the end realizes that the cards are only paper and she can indeed conquer them.
The innocent archetype is prevalent around us and is most often seen in children especially girls. Society values and expects innocence in children. This is an archetype that revolves around being morally good, trustworthy, optimistic and trusting. However, with these come negative attributes such as being gullible and naïve. Alice is a young woman raised in a Victorian society with morals and good character and seems to be quite wealthy. We can see this from the way she looks down at Mabel when she says: “I must be Mabel after all, and I shall have to go and live in that poky little, house and have next to no toys to play with, and oh, ever so many lessons to learn.”[3] She lives a very sheltered life and is governed by the rules of her class and does not know much about the real world which is one of the major negative attributes of the innocent archetype. This leads to a great shock for her when she enters the nonsensical world of Wonderland. However, she is very optimistic that she will get home and even comforts herself by reciting some of her lessons to gain a sense of normality.
The wanderer archetype is not one that is as dominant around us as some of the others such as the altruist and the magician but we can still see its manifestation in Alice. Many of the positive aspects of this archetype such as being a divergent thinker, a pioneer and individualistic are not seen in Alice. However, after looking a bit deeper I see that she is autonomous because she goes on her journey through Wonderland and encounters many things that she cannot comprehend but somehow manages to figure them out. One major negative characteristic that I see in her from this archetype is the having trouble fitting in aspect. From early on in the story we see this because she constantly talks about her cat Dinah oblivious to the fact that the mouse and other animals are afraid of cats. Even when they tell her she often forgets and speaks about the cat again. Also as she goes through the world she does not fit in with the characters there and they sometimes get upset with her. An example of this is at the mad tea party where she is totally out of her element as the Mad Hatter constantly gives her riddles that she cannot solve and tells her stories that she does not understand. One riddle that he gave her, Why is a raven like a writing desk?, especially irritated her because he did not know the answer either. Even as the novel was drawing to a close she still did not fit in because at the trial the King and Queen of Hearts asked her to leave because she was too tall. So we can see that the madness of Wonderland is hard for her to grasp and that makes her travels there a bit difficult.
The altruist archetype is all around us and people view it in many ways. This is one of my dominant archetypes and I view it from the positive side where it is a simple matter of helping people without expecting payment in return. Others view it as being a sucker but I think it is quite a noble archetype. It values the qualities of caring for others, conscientiousness, being willing to sacrifice and being generous. Alice embodies several of these through her travels in Wonderland as she helped or tried to help many of the creatures. For example, she tries to help the White Rabbit find the Duchess’s gloves and fan and even though it does not quite go as planned, she was still willing to put herself out there in order to find the items. Later on Alice meets three playing cards painting white roses in the garden and she meets her main antagonist there. There she saves the three cards lives from the Queen by hiding them in a flower pot to escape their faith of “Off with their heads.” That represented her putting herself out there and being willing to sacrifice although as she realized there was no reason to be afraid of the Queen and her soldiers as they were just a cards. But as the saying goes it is the thought that counts and in this case the action that counts. Another great example of Alice’s altruism can be found at the end of the novel as she testifies to help save the Knave of Hearts from the Queen. She testifies at the trial and even comments on the ridiculousness of some of the testimony given against him. She argues with the King and Queen about the absurdity of the trial. These actions show us what a great altruist she is.
The warrior archetype is present all around us in popular culture and in life and some aspects of it can be seen in Alice. For example, although she is not assertive, because social class does not encourage that in females, she does speak her mind at the end of the novel about the absurdity of the door mouse’s testimony and she argues with the King and Queen. She was disciplined and tough-minded enough to get through the craziness of the world of Wonderland and in the end she emerges a winner because she finally realizes that they are just a pack of cards and calls them out on it. When they try to swarm her she easily flicks them away. So in the end she conquers her antagonist and soon after she is woken up from her dream by her sister and is thrust back into reality. I found it interesting with the contrast between her and the Queen of Hearts. They can both be seen as warriors and while Alice embodies the positive aspects of this archetype the Queen embodies the negative aspects. The Queen is ruthless and inflexible as she always uses her famous “Off with their heads” to bend the creatures into submission. It is either deal with the preposterousness of the Queen and her demands or face a deadly fate.
The magician archetype has become very popular in our culture as a result of the Harry Potter series of novels and other media and literature. This was the hardest archetype to identify in Alice and it is one of the least dominant in her. The best example I could find for this archetype was to take the characteristic of power and apply it to the last conflict in the novel: the trial of the Knave of Hearts who was accused of stealing the Queen’s tarts. Alice’s statement to the Queen: “Who cares for you? You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”[4] shows us how powerful she has become. She changed throughout the novel because in the beginning she was naïve and soft-spoken but as it drew to a close she had had enough of the absurdity of Wonderland and attempted to inject reason and sensibleness into the world. In a sense she finally triumphed in wonderland while maintaining her identity and she refusing to conform to madness around her.
It was very interesting to see the manifestation of these archetypes in Alice. Each of them helped me to understand the conflicts that Alice was experiencing and why she was acting the way that she was. For example, the orphan archetype helped me to understand why she felt so alone when she couldn’t figure out how to get through the door and why she started to cry. Archetypes help us to empathize with characters and see their points of view and where they are coming from. For example, we see the altruist archetype all around us in heroes and even in real life with people giving back to others who are less fortunate.
This novel was very interesting to read again. I read it as a young girl and now that I have read it again I see why it is a timeless classic and I can now understand the absurdity of it. On the surface it just seems like a children’s book but if we dig a bit deeper we can see that it is a story about a girl blossoming into a woman and the trials she faces as she tries to navigate the craziness of the adult world. It is very confusing for her and she must struggle to not lose her identity among the madness. In the end we see that she has gained control over body and mind and has found a way to maintain her identity while navigating the treacherous adult world.
[1] Rackin, Donald. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass: Nonsense, Sense, and Meaning. New York: Twayne, 1991. Print.
[2] Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 4 Dec. 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderland>.
[3] Carroll, Lewis, John Tenniel and Martin Gardner. The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-glass. New York: Norton, 2000. Print.
[4] Carroll, Lewis, John Tenniel and Martin Gardner. The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-glass. New York: Norton, 2000. Print.
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