Character description of Alice
Alice is the main character of the story “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and the sequel “Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there”.
She is a seven-year-old English girl (in ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ she is exactly seven years old, in ‘Through the Looking-Glass’ she is seven and a half) with lots of imagination and is fond of showing off her knowledge. Alice is polite, well raised and interested in others, although she sometimes makes the wrong remarks and upsets the creatures in Wonderland. She is easily put off by abruptness and rudeness of others.
In Through the Looking-Glass, she is 6 months older and more sure of her identity.
In the article ‘Alice on Stage’, Carroll gives the following description of her:
“Loving, first, loving and gentle: loving as a dog (forgive the prosaic simile, but I know no earthy love so pure and perfect), and gentle as a fawn; then courteous – courteous to all, high or low, grand or grotesque, King or Caterpillar, even as though she were herself a King’s daughter, and her clothing of wrought gold: then trustful, ready to accept the wildest impossibilities with all that utter trust that only dreamers know; and lastly, curious – wildly curious, and with the eager enjoyment of Life that comes only in the happy hours of childhood, when all is new and fair, and when Sin and Sorrow are but names – empty words signifying nothing!”
The character of Alice is based on a real girl, called Alice Liddell, who was one of the author’s child-friends.
The illustrations of Alice by John Tenniel are not based on Alice Liddell. Carroll sent Tenniel a photograph of Mary Hilton Badcock, another child-friend, who was the daughter of the Dean of Ripon. He recommended her as a model, but whether Tenniel accepted this advice remains a matter of dispute
The name of one of the three little sisters in the Treacle Well refers to Alice: ‘Lacie’ is a transformation of the letters from the word ‘Alice’.
Famous Alice quote:
“Curiouser and curiouser!”