Here's the back story: Carroll, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was a math teacher at Christ Church (which surprisingly isn't a church but a college). One day, Dodgson, a friend named Robinson Duckworth, and three girls Lorina, Alice, and Edith, daughters of the dean of Christ Church, went rowing up the Thames (could they get anymore British?). When they stopped to picnic, Dodgson began a fantastical story in which Alice is transported into a world of pure imagination (maybe she got a golden ticket? ;) ) by following a rabbit down his hole. At Alice's insistence, Dodgson finishes the story, writes it all down with illustrations, and gives it to her for Christmas in 1864. Others read it an convinced Dodgson to publish it, which he did under his pen name, Lewis Carroll. The rest is history.
When you know the historical context of the book, you realize just how forward thinking Carroll was for his day. Just recently, laws had been enacted to keep most children from child labor in factories, but little else had been done in terms of caring for children. At the time, children were told to "be seen but not heard." School for children was pretty dull and matter-of-fact. There was a lot of recitation and mind-numbing lectures. Carroll's novel tells a story of fun, excitement, and of a child just being a child - something quite rare. He twists and parodies many of the classic poems and lessons the children of the day had to memorize to show the silliness that he thought it was. Throughout the book characters that Alice meets act in strange and unconventional ways, ways that she at first thinks are silly and childish. Eventually, she starts to think that maybe being childish is the only way to be, especially in a place like Wonderland. Wonderland, I believe is Carroll's idea of a perfect childhood. Anything you can imagine can happen. It exists solely to not make sense. It's pure fun, and nothing serious. Most children's books of the day were for education or religious purposes. For Carroll to write a fantasy book for children was going against the grain of thought. And while Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a children's book, as an adult, knowing the context in which it was written, and having a "notes" section in the back to explain the poem Alice is reciting incorrectly, I found it is much more than that. I believe Carroll wrote this book to also speak to the adults of the day for several reasons. One, I believe he wanted them to think back on their own childhoods and remember what it was like to dream and create worlds of fancy in their heads. I think he wanted to sway the adults' thinking of children in general. He wanted children not to be small adults, but their own beings, ones more carefree, more imaginative, and more fun that what the adults of the day had made them. I also think he wanted to draw to light the absurdity of the recitations that children learned. Most of all, I think he wanted to tell the world to just let kids be kids.
This novel was, in a word, delightful. I found myself smiling constantly at the trouble and hilarity Alice found herself. The characters, often based on actual people Carroll knew (the Do-Do was actually Carroll himself) made the story really come to life with their wit and unconventional wisdom. Definitely pick up a copy of this great work of art and let me know what you thought of it. Happy reading!
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