From: Maia <maia>
Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2000 17:53:59 -0700

Well, the Alice stories are weird, and did scare me as a child. But I respect you Monica (!), and was curious what might so intrigue you about them. So I read <Alice in Wonderland> for the first time as an adult yesterday...

What I found most interesting was that my recollection of Alice (the character) was quite different from how I read her as an adult; I remember that as a child I felt that Alice was rather besieged and overwhelmed, but reading the book now, she seems rather competent, assertive, even a decent role model for girls. E.g. "Stuff and nonsense!" said Alice loudly... and (in response to "Hold your tongue!"), "I won't!" Loudly? When Alice is annoyed by the squeaking pen of the Lizard, she removes it. When she wants to adventure, she changes and experiments with her body as necessary to get herself where she wants to go. This is not a mild little girl, with quaint, polite Victorian mannerisms. All the which makes me wonder, is the besieged Alice I remember born of illustrations I saw, or (more likely) of Disney? I must have seen the movie - I owned the record, and I do remember a harsh, frightening voice of the card queen. Hmm....

Per Disney: The removal of the dream sequence from the movie must take something away; because as a dream is perfectly recognizable - the mad following of events that make no sense, the rules (and bodies) that are ever changing, and the sense that nothing is impossible if it is hard enough willed. as fiction, well...? I don't think it works. But as dream exploration, as an expression of dream space, it is quite fascinating.

About the author: I found this, the final, paragraph particularly interesting: "Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the aftertime, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood; and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago; and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child life, and the happy summer days." If that is not a comment by author on author's self, as well as what the author hopes for his audience, I would be surprised. Taken together with the story itself, I would not expect the author to be sexless, boring, or unadventurous himself - if this is not a clear advocation for vigor in imagination and experience, then what is?

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 Wed 04 Oct 2000 07:53:59 PM CDT