The books > Why is Alice not cautious?

[Guest]

I'm studying and analyzing Alice for auditions at my school. As I'm reading the books and the movie script a question always pops into my head: shes a seven year old girl...why isn't she terrified or cautious? She eats and drinks the things so willingly. I understand she checked the bottle for poison but it's just so...naive! Could anyone explain this in depth? It'd really help with my characterization.

[Edit by webmaster] clarified title and moved to appropriate subforum

[Treacle]

If reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland isn't teaching you what you need to know, try "Resources" here at Lenny's web site as a place to begin.

At the literary level, Lewis Carroll is referring, directly and indirectly, to the fact that children's books and stories of the time were almost entirely instructional and cautionary, a tradition going back to 1600. (There is, of course, a large book on this subject that covers 1600 to 1900. The book measures children's literature as before Alice and after Alice.)

[jenny2write]

Also, it is a story, and it is very unrealistic, so it is part of that general theme of an unrealistic story.

[angelica]

If you think of it, she is only seven years old. Not much older. She did check the bottle for poison, but i guess that was her only worry because that didn't hurt her in any kind of way. She did just also kept saying "curiouser and curiouser" so maybe, she just took the chance.
We are all mad in some way
-A