The Themes
| Changing Identity | Death | Social Class Distinctions |
| Rule and Misrule | Language | Meaning in Dreams, Nonsense and Puzzles |
Social Class distinctions –
‘He took me for
his housemaid. How surprised he’ll be when he finds out who I am’. – Alice’s
thoughts when called to as if she were a maid.
There is a distinct Englishness in the social class distinctions that are
found in the Alice stories. ‘Alice’ is a typical upper
class little girl based on a real Alice, one Alice Liddell, daughter of the
Dean of Christ Church College, Oxford. Here was a girl whose world revolved
around tea parties, parlour games, school governesses, croquet on the lawn,
collecting flowers and even meeting visiting royalty.
The Alice of the story is very much aware of her status. However, when she begins to doubt that she is ‘Alice’ she becomes fearful that she will become someone of lower class. Indeed ‘Alice’ is even more frightened of turning into ‘Mable’, the child who lives in “that poky little house” with next to “no toys to play with”, than of her experiences encountering talking Cheshire Cats or an insane Hatters.
The tale is a dream created from a real society that was the real Alice’s waking world. This world was a world of deference: respect for her school governess, honour to representatives of the law and above all loyalty to the crown and the monarchy. All this though is turned upside down in her dream landscape. The social norms and mores disappear and are replaced by something both frightening and appealing. One way of visualizing the essence of Alice’s dream version of her society is to imagine the kind of paintings Salvador Dali might have created had he ever been asked to illustrate a Jane Austen novel.
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