Alices Journey to Adulthood

Lewis Carrols Alices Adventures in Wonderland tells the story of a young Victorian girl
taken to a fairy tale land, where nothing she knows makes sense. Alices body changes size
whenever she eats something, and she is continually asked about her identity. The creatures she
meets all seem insane by her typical Victorian standards. Alice's journey to adulthood is a path
that takes her from a confused child changing size and unaware of her true identity to an
assertive girl scolding the immaturity of the Mad Hatter and ends with Alice being brave and
confident enough to confront the Queen of Hearts.
Beginning her journey, Alice falls from the rabbit hole and enters an antechamber. She
sees a beautiful garden, but her body is too big to enter. She starts to cry but berates herself,
saying rather sharply, Come theres no use in crying like that!'" She often scolds herself so
severely that she is brought to tears: "Once she remembered to box her own ears for having
cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself." Alice here is as both an
adult and a child. The adult Alice gives advice, imposes rules, and the child Alice ignores or
rejects rules (Hyland 5734). The narrator of the story says, This curious child was very fond of
pretending to be two people. Alice pretends to be two people because she is trying to find who
she really is, part of the process of growing into adulthood. Later, Alice goes into the White
Rabbits house and grows very tall so that her limbs stick out of the windows of the house. She
remarks, at least theres no room to grow up any more here. Children often think of growing
up with both sadness and excitement. Adulthood means children gain more responsibility and
have to take care of themselves, but this freedom means children also have to make their own
decisions about their time. Alice contemplates, But then shall I never get any older than I am
now? Thatll be a comfort, one waynever to be an old womanbut thenalways to have

lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldnt like that! When Alice becomes small again and comes upon
the Caterpillar, she does not know how to respond to the question of her identity. Alice,
confused by such dizzying transformationsin short, by nothing more or less than the
physiological metamorphoses of girlhoodshe undergoes what modern psychologists would
term an identity crisis (Levin 3). The Caterpillar asks Alice who she is, and she Alice has no
answer. Who in the world am I?" Alice asks herself. The pigeon asks her the same thing, who
are you? The pigeon replies to her statement of Im a little girl by telling her that she is really
not a little girl but a serpent instead. One of the steps to adulthood is questioning who you are in
the world, and as Theme says, the question of why Alice is so confused about her identity has to
do with her developing sense of the difference between childhood and adulthood (2). The
discomfort Alice feels at never being the right size symbolizes the changes that occur when a
child begins to become an adult.
Continuing on her journey, Alice comes to the Mad Tea Party. The Mad Hatter and March
Hare lie, telling her there is no room at the table, but she sits there anyway. In Victorian society,
adults placed an emphasis on manners and good breeding. None of the rules she has been
taught seem to work here. The inhabitants meet her politeness with rudeness and respond to her
questions with answers that make no sense (Themes 2). In Wonderland, however, the Mad
Hatter and March Hare are rude to Alice: indeed, the Hatter's words to Alice are "your hair wants
cutting." Alice reprimands him, saying "you should learn not to make personal remarks" as it is
rude. Here, Alice acts like an adult scolding her child in order to teach him. They [the Mad
Hatter, March Hare, and Dormouse] also break the rules of logic that Alice has been taught to
follow (Themes 2). The Mad Hatter asks Alice a riddle: Why is a raven like a writing-desk?
When Alice gives up, the Mad Hatter says he does not know the answer either. Alice is

confused, wondering why anyone would ask a riddle when there is no answer. Part of being a
child is questioning what adults say, because as Hubbel asserts, We are even imbued with a
natural childish misgiving that possibly she may be wrong, and all the other people so big and
imposing, right (109). Alice's responses at the Tea Party show her continued progression
towards adulthood while reinforcing that she is still a child.
Eventually Alice enters the garden; this journey represents another step along her path
toward adulthood. Entering is an achievement because, as Walker argues, her initial erratic
changes in size could be said to represent her inability to fit herself into this world. Her
mastery of this process enables her to begin to be the master of her own destinyto fit, by
enabling her to walk through the door that leads to the beautiful garden, which she has wanted
to enter since the beginning of the novel (2). Alice hoped entering the garden would fulfill her
desires, but the chaos she finds there makes her frustrated. This parallels a child's journey into
adulthood as children look forward to growing up but have doubts when they are on the brink of
puberty. When the Cheshire Cat asks Alice how she likes the Queen, Alice replies that she does
not, saying "'shes so extremely'" Just then she noticed that the Queen was close behind her,
listening: so she went on likely to win, that its hardly worthwhile finishing the game.
Adults often lie to escape punishments while children are more likely to speak their minds.
Earlier Alice spoke about her cat Dinah to the creatures of Wonderland; her speaking without
thinking inadvertently scared them away. She is starting to grow up because now she thinks
before she speaks. Later, at the trial, the King tells all persons more than a mile high to leave
the court. Alice sticks up for herself saying that she is not a mile high; this also shows that she
is growing up because she is not afraid to contradict the adults. Further on in the trial, she
interrupts the king again because, she had grown so large in the last few minutes that she wasnt

a bit afraid of interrupting him. At the end of the trial, Alice exclaims, Youre nothing but a
pack of cards! and wakes up from her dream. According to one critic, It is significant that the
final words written about Alice before her retreat from Wonderland are: she gave a little scream,
half of fright and half of anger, quite clearly combining the response of the child and the
response of the adult (Hyland 5736). This final scene most clearly represents how Alice has
come to approach adulthood during her experience in Wonderland.
Alice's voyage through Wonderland leads her closer to adulthood. Her ever changing
size and inability to answer questions about her identity reflect her childish lack of knowledge
about herself at the beginning of the story. As her journey progresses, however, Alice comes to
gain a sense of self and be more willing to assert her beliefs and opinions. She learns to stand up
to the idiotic adults who try to impose their opinions on her, and her growth at the trial reflects
that this aspect of her personality has matured. While she has not exactly become an adult,
Alice's adventures certainly bring her nearer to adult life.

Works Cited
Carroll, Lewis. Alices Adventures in Wonderland. London: Macmillan, 1898. Print.
Hubbel, George Shelton. The Sanity of Wonderland. Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed.
Laurie Lanzen Harris. Vol. 2. Gale Research Company, 1927. 109. Print.

Hyland, Peter. The Ambiguous Alice: An Approach to Alice in Wonderland. Jabberwocky. (Autumn
1982). 104-12. The Chelsea House Library of Literary Criticism. Vol. 9. 5733-6. Print.
Levin, Harry. Wonderland Revisited. The Kenyan Review. (Autumn 1965). 591-616. EXPLORING
Novels. Web. 23 Sept. 2005.
Themes and Construction: Alices Adventures in Wonderland. EXPLORING Novels. Web. 23 Sept.
2005.
Walker, Stan. Overview of Alices Adventures in Wonderland. EXPLORING Novels. Web. 23 Sept.
2005.