Cоntents intrоductiоn chapter I. The life and work of Lewis Carroll

Literary elements

On the following pages you can find texts about literary elements in the ‘Alice’ books, which may come in handy when you have to write a school paper or something the like.
The purpose of these pages is not to replace the joy of reading and analysing the books yourself, but they are meant to be a helpful guideline to create your own understanding of the stories.

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  Themes and motives
  
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  Moral
  
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  Setting
  
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  Conflict and resolution, protagonists and antagonists
  
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  Character descriptions
  
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    Alice
    
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    Caterpillar
    
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    Cheshire Cat
    
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    Jabberwock
    
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    Mad Hatter
    
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    Queen of Hearts
    
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    White Rabbit
    

Below you can find several articles with all kinds of explanations for interpretations of the books. Please mind that these texts were not written by me. References to the author and publication details can be found on the page itself. The articles are reproduced on my site with permission from the authors.

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  Science-Fiction and Fantasy Books by Lewis Carroll
  
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  An Analysis of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
  
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  To stop a Bandersnatch
  

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  “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.
  
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  The Man Who Loved Little Girls should we really frown upon Dodgson’s nude photographs of children?
  
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  The Liddell Riddle about the missing pages in Dodgsons diary and his break with the Liddell family
  

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  The Duck and the Dodo: References in the Alice books to friends and family
  
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  The influence of Lewis Carroll’s life on his work
  

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  Tenniel’s illustrations
  
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  A Case of Mistaken Identity about the mix up between the Knave of Hearts and Knave of Clubs
  

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  The Jabberwocky
  

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  Drug influences in the books
  

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  The truth about “Alice” how Alice in Wonderland can be seen as a political satire about the Wars of the Roses
  

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  Lewis Carroll and the Search for Non Being
  

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  Alice’s adventures in algebra: Wonderland solved
  

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  Diluted and ineffectual violence in the ‘Alice’ books 
  

On the Lewis Carroll section of the Victorian web, you can find many more interesting essays about a.o. the social and political, religious and philosophical, economic, science and technological, and many other themes and contexts in the Alice books.
The moral of the Duchess, “Take care of the sense and the sound will take care of themselves”, is an adaptation of an old English proverb; “Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves”.
“It’s as large as life, and twice as natural!” comes from another common phrase in Carroll’s time; “As large as life and quite as natural”. Apparently Carroll was the first to substitute ‘twice’ for ‘quite’, and this is now the usual phrasing in both England and the U.S. (Gardner, “Annotated Alice” 121 and 287).
Batey (12-15) suggests that Carroll’s brothers Wilfred and Skeffington appear in the story as the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle. They occasionally joined him on boat trips with the Liddell children around 1858-1860, so, like Duckworth, they may have been incorporated into the earlier stories that were invented to amuse the children. Wilfred and Skeffington were both undergraduates at Christ Church like the Gryphon and Mock Turtle, they went to the same school. Skeffington was a less talented student than Wilfred, and called ‘too stupid for Greek and for Latin’ in a poem that appeared in the magazine Carroll used to write to entertain his family members, which may explain why he ‘only took the regular course’. Like Carroll, Wilfred sometimes made drawings to accompany his stories and once drew a gryphon.
The Mock Turtle’s weeping may be based on the fact that marine turtles often appear to weep: it is actually a way of getting rid of the salt in the water. Lewis Carroll had an interest in zoology and was probably aware of this phenomenon.
The Gryphon’s occasional exclamation may be a joke about silent letters. According to Denis Crutch, the letter ‘j’ was being used als ‘i’ in the Old English style. In ‘rrh’ the ‘h’ is silent as in the words ‘myrrh’ and ‘catarrh’. So the sound ‘hjckrrh’ would effectively be ‘hic’, as in a hiccough, or ‘hiccup’ (Carroll, “Elucidating Alice”).
When the Mock Turtle talks about the courses he took, he mentions “French, music and washing extra”. This phrase often appeared at boarding school bills, meaning that there was an extra charge for French and music, and for having one’s laundry done by the school (Gardner, “The Annotated Alice” 128).
The Conger Eel that came to teach ‘Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils’ is a reference to the art critic John Ruskin. He visited the Liddell family on a weekly basis, to teach the children drawing, sketching, and painting in oils (Gardner, “Anniversary edition” 115).
When you read closely, you can discover the date on which ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ took place. The date of the book is 4 May; Alice Liddell’s birthday.
We know that because of Alice’s remarks in chapters 6 and 7:
`the March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won’t be raving mad at least not so mad as it was in March.’
`What day of the month is it?’ he said, turning to Alice: he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear.
Alice considered a little, and then said `The fourth.’
Alice Liddell was born in 1852, so she was ten in 1862 when the story was told, but her age in the story probably is seven. We know that because Through the Looking-Glass appears to take place a half year later (see further on this page) and she’s ‘exactly seven and one half years old’ in that book. The photograph which Carroll pasted at the end of the manuscript was also taken when she was seven (Gardner, “The Annotated Alice”).
Lewis Carroll made up many games to entertain Alice and her siblings. He invented amongst others a variant on the croquet game, called ‘Croquet Castles’.
The Liddell children actually played croquet with royalty. In May 1863, the royal couple visited Oxford. The festivities included a Grand Banquet at Christ Church (could the banquet in “Through the Looking-Glass” perhaps be based on this?), and a Deanery garden party. During their stay the Prince and Princess asked to play croquet with the Liddell children. In his diary, Carroll noted that “the children left at 4 to play croquet with the royal guests”.
As Charles Dodgson was a mathematics professor, he incorporated some mathematical puzzles and jokes into the story.
When Alice is in the hallway, trying to figure out her identity, she tries to recite
the multiplication table:
4 x 5 = 12
4 x 6 = 13
4 x 7 =…
She notices it fails and comments that she’ll “never get to twenty at that rate”.
This could refer to the fact that multiplication tables traditionally stop with the twelves, so if you continue the progression until 4 x 12, you’ll only get to 19 (Gardner, “The Annotated Alice”).
A more complex theory, is that Alice’s calculations are actually valid when you use a number system with a base of respectively 18, 21, 24, and so on (always incrementing the base with 3):
4 x 5 = 12 (base of 18)
4 x 6 = 13 (base of 21)
4 x 7 = 14 (base of 24)
4 x 8 = 15 (base of 27)
4 x 9 = 16 (base of 30)
4 x 10 = 17 (base of 33)
4 x 11 = 18 (base of 36)
4 x 12 = 19 (base of 39)
However, then the system breaks down. In a number system with a base of 42, 4 x 13 is not 20. Therefore, Alice will indeed never get to twenty this way (Taylor).
For another example of possible mathematics in the story, see the section about the Mad Tea Party.
The number 42
The number 42 regularly appears in not only the ‘Alice’ books, but also in Carroll’s other works, like ‘The Hunting of the Snark’. It is not clear whether Carroll attached real significance to this number, or whether it was just a random number that he used as a recurring joke.
Examples of the use of the number 42 in the ‘Alice’ stories:

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  “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” contains 42 illustrations. “Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there” was originally intended to have 42 illustrations as well. It must be noted, however, that initially Carroll commissioned Tenniel to only draw 12 illustrations for “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. Later this became 20, then 24, then 34, and only eventually he decided on 42 illustations (Demakos, “Part II”).
  
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  It is the number of ‘the oldest rule in the book’, according to the King of Hearts.
  
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  Alice’s exclamation that she’ll “never get to twenty at that rate” can be mathematically explained if a number system with a base of 42 is used (see paragraph ‘mathematics in the story’ above).
  
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  The White Queen gives her age as “one hundred and one, five months and a day”. This would be 37,044 days*. Assuming the Red Queen is the same age, the total of their two ages this is 74,088, which is 42 x 42 x 42 (Wakeling).
  * We know the date the story took place: November 4th 1859. Counting back 101 years, 5 months and 1 day means that the White Queen was born on 3 June 1758.
  
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  The number 42 appears in the total of horses and soldiers that the White King sent in Through the Looking-Glass: 4207.
  
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  Lewis Carroll would have been able to calculate the time it takes for a stone, dropped down a rabbit hole that happens to pass through the center of the earth, to reach the other side of the world. It would take… 42 minutes (Wakeling).
  

When Alice repeats poetry, like “How doth the little…”, she crosses her hands in her lap. All Victorian children were taught to cross hands while sitting, and fold them while standing, when repeating lessons. It was supposed to help them concentrate and prevent them from fidgeting (Carroll, “Elucidating Alice”).