8. Explanations
lthough
Carroll invented Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for the entertainment
of children, many scholars have discovered various underlying influences in
his work. The books have been explained from all kinds of viewpoints, like drug
use, Freudian influences, mathematics, political satire, sex and pedophilia,
nonsense, etc. The books have always been a favourite subject for analysis,
as the story lends itself to various interpretations.
On this page you can find some texts that deal about those underlying meanings that Carroll is supposed to have added (consciously or not) in the Alice books. Whatever you believe of it is up to you.
Please mind that these texts were not written by me personally. References to the author and publication details can be found on the page itself.
- A Case of Mistaken Identity -- About the mix-up between the Knave of Hearts and Knave of Clubs
- Capitalism in Through the Looking Glass
- Victorian Hunger and Malnutrition in Alice in Wonderland
- Pig and Pepper and social theory
- Prejudice and Perception in Alice in Wonderland
- Opium as a Possible Influence upon the Alice Books
- Drug influences in the books
- Victorian Growth and Self-Discovery in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- Secrecy and Autonomy in Lewis Carroll
- To stop a Bandersnatch
- Lewis Carroll: Sense within Nonsense -- about a possible meaning behind 'The Walrus and the Carpenter'
- An Analysis of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- The Liddell Riddle -- about the missing pages in Dodgsons diary and his break with the Liddell family
- The influence of Lewis Carroll's life on his work
- Just good friends? -- was there something wrong about the relationship between Dodgson and Alice Liddell?
- Tony Goldschmidt and the Freudian Influence
- Migraine Hallucinations Said May Have Inspired 'Alice' Tales
- "Lewis Carroll": A Myth in the Making -- about the tendency to create a myth around the name "Lewis Carroll", in stead on focussing on who Charles Dodgson really was.
- The Man Who Loved Little Girls -- should we really frown upon Dodgson's nude photographs of children?
- The truth about "Alice" -- how Alice in Wonderland can be seen as a political satire about the Wars of the Roses
- A short list of other possible explanations
Carroll himself wrote the following to a friend in America, when being asked about the meaning of 'The Hunting of the Snark':
"I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense. Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them; so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer means. So, whatever good meanings are in the book, I'm glad to accept as the meaning of the book." (source: Collingwood, "The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll")
This comment is applicable to many books, including Carroll's own 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass'.
"If any one of them can explain it," said Alice, "I'll give him sixpence. I don't believe there's an atom of meaning in it."
