From: Maia <maia>
Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2000 08:23:38 -0700

Sure, Mike, that's fine.

Amy - yes and yes. I agree that Alice's semi-control of Wonderland is very similar to the state some folks experience in dreams (depending on how lucid you are in that state); that's part of why I found interesting, because it reflects both the madness and the power of the dream state. I also agree that Alice (the character) seems to be in the "I know" stage of girlhood, as opposed to the
"I don't know's" that follow shortly thereafter. (Which makes me wonder if Carol Gilligan or other Stone Center folks and friends have studied the dreams of girls who are in the "I don't know" stages - and if so, whether the dreams reflect the blandness that girls learn to externalize, or whether perhaps dreams are one of the places to where girls identities and independence go when they go underground? Does anyone have a reference? )

So, was Carroll reflecting the Alice that was or the Alice that could be - was he reinforcing her Alice-ness in spite of the mores and manners of the time - was he empowering her to remain Alice? And even if not, could the book be used that way now, for either girls or post/adolescents?
(Monica?) Do any of you professors out there have feedback on how post?olescents feel about Alice? It seems that she could be very interesting for girls who are just discovering themselves outside of the strictures of their parent's and k realities...

Maia

-maia at littlefolktales.org www.littlefolktales.org the Spirited Review: www.littlefolktales.org/reviews

To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish: these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. - CS Lewis

To be obsessed with an appearance of maturity, to reject the child and the adolescent in all their passion and compassion, these things mark an individual who has rejected his or her own soul and root. - Maia
Received on Sat 07 Oct 2000 10:23:38 AM CDT