Confession: I never warmed to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass as a child. I think it’s because it’s surreal and I’ve only ever wanted to read fiction rooted in reality, or at least something close to it. My late husband, Nick, however was very fond of both books and could quote large chunks.
So can my old friend, Susie, who mentioned what a big influence Alice had been on her all her life, when she wrote recently to tell me how much she’d liked my All Booked Up.
Well, as a theatre critic, I’ve seen dozens of Alice stage adaptations over the years. Usually they combine both books always including set piece like The Mad Hatter’s tea party but it’s a very long time since I read either book. Susie’s letter made me realise that it was time I did, so I have now reread Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Published in 1865 by Oxford mathematician, Charles Dodgson, writing under the pseudonym, Lewis Carroll, it broke new ground in several ways. It’s not didactic as children’s books had formerly been. It’s meant to be funny and entertaining rather than telling children how to behave or what to think. And Alice is a girl – yes, I know that’s obvious, but children’s literature was much more likely to feature a boy protagonist at that date. Moreover, she’s a girl with a brain, She’s not just a pretty face.
It’s full of puns: the tortoise who taught us, the lessons which lessen every day, reeling and writhing as classroom subjects and all the others which are somehow now embedded in our national consciousness. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has never been out of print in 159 years so it must have been read, or consumed in adapted form, by hundreds of millions of people.
The poems are interesting. They are all irreverent parodies of very worthy and serious 19th century poems. The trouble is that apart from “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “The Queen of Hearts”, stealer of tarts, 21st century readers don’t recognise them. In fact they’ve become classics in their own right and, for example “You’re Old Father William” is included in most children’s anthologies although half the joke is now lost. It is even set as a comprehension exercise in schools and used to teach poetics. Dodgson would be astonished. For the record, and for nerds, “You Are Old Father William is a send up of Robert Southey’s “The Old Man’s Comforts and How He Gained Them” which was a popular, preachy Victorian poem for children.
Alice uses logic in her attempts to make sense of what’s happening to her as she repeatedly shrinks or grows so she keeps seeing things, quite literally, from different points of view. She tries to be polite, as she’s been brought up to be, but she’s feisty and sometimes speaks her mind.
There are characters in there too who don’t make it into most adaptations. Bill the Lizard is rather engaging, for instance. And as for the famous animals and people, how many 21st century children have heard of the pretentious mock turtle soup and understand the joke that there’s no such thing as a mock turtle? The soup was a classic Victorian dish, invented in the eighteenth century, presumably when green turtles were in short supply. It was usually made with calf’s head and sherry.
Yes, it’s quite fun although, personally, I’d still rather read about something real than about crazy dreams. And I reckon that it’s probably a book every child should read because it is now so deep in our culture. The irony of that point of view is not lost on me, though. Dodgson wrote it to get children away from things adults said they “ought” to read. A century and a half later and we’ve come full circle.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Dark Vineyard by Martin Walker
