The books > is alice in wonderland about north america? think about it.

[anonymouse]

is alice in wonderland about north america? think about it. in it, a little girl goes to the other side of the world from england....to probably north america. from my experiences with north america, it's very much like this. it's like this a lot. i lived in both english countries and north american countries...and i think this is what the story is about.

[Beautiful Soup]

Regular visitors to this forum will understand why I respond to this notion with a degree of antipathy

[The Queen of Hearts]

Regular visitors to this forum will understand why I respond to this notion with a degree of antipathy

Indeed. I think it far more likely Alice might be in New Zealand or Australia if she were to be in any country at all.

[Treacle]

I came away from Alice's Adventures under Ground , an earlier, more explanatory version of AAiW, feeling that it was probably clear to Alice's first readers that Wonderland was a frontier border land between England and either Scotland or Wales, sometime in the past. That's the last time I thought about that, since LC left "Marchioness of Mock Turtles" and the other march/marsh words out in the final version, AAiW.

Or, as LC wrote in AAiW:

"Explain all that," said the Mock Turtle.

"No, no! The adventures first," said the Gryphon in an impatient tone: "explanations take such a dreadful time."

History gets short shrift in AAiW, as in the Edwin and Morcar recitation, and Alice's sense of geography isn't very good either. I guess LC doesn't think such things are crucial to the storytelling.

Does it matter where Wonderland is, other than in Alice's mind?
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7/3/15

Thanks for starting this thread, Anonymouse. It's a more than fair question. No author can anticipate what his readers will think about some writing 150 years after its publication.

If North America works for you as the location of Wonderland, LC probably wouldn't have denied that notion. He probably wouldn't have confirmed it, either. (Enjoy!)

[Treacle]

I thought about it.

What if instead of being a land on the border of Scotland or Wales, it was in British America, when Montreal was the capitol? That could account for the French mouse, the marquis and marchioness of Mock Turtles aka the King and Queen of Hearts, the wooded areas and, at the trial, the White Rabbit wearing the livery of the King and Queen of Hearts as a member of that court.

I'm not saying that C. L. Dodgson was taught about North America as part of the earlier history of England, or that there's anything to support the suggestion.