For long children’s literature has been used as a didactic medium to instruct the children around the world rules of what is right and wrong. While usually set in the world of fiction and fantasies the stories tend to teach them of the ideal individual that they are expected to be in future and a structure that they are to strive towards being, very much like the conduct literature of the 18th century. However the stories that were read out to the easily influenced minds of the children also had a much more serious, even sinister, purpose than just entertainment. Children’s Literature became moral lessons that would assign proper mannerisms that are appropriate to the societal norms and behavior that was expected from these young children who were to fit into the community as they grew up. Characteristics were assigned to each identity and were divided on the basis of gender and the family the child had born into. The boys were expected to be noble, educated and be gentlemen. The girls had a bigger set of rules when it came to “fitting into a role”. From an early age they were expected to prepare themselves to be a good wife. Education took a backseat as household skills and looking the “appropriate, virginal kind” of beautiful became priorities. There were characteristics such as that of silence and passivity that they were to adopt.
The content of most children’s literature involved around the upper-class. The stories of the fantastical lives of kings and queens, princes and princesses, dukes and knights are guised under the intentions of promoting heroic and noble characteristics. While praising and creating wonder around the luxurious lives of the said heroes and respected characters belonging to the upper-class, the lower classes get put under the bad light as their position in the society becomes degrading. The part they play in the successful running of a society is never shown and the jobs done by them are looked down upon. The upper class inherited wealth, were educated and enjoyed extravagant and expensive life style and were shown as charismatic leaders. The lower class were always poor, usually uneducated, hardworking, but people who did a lot of work with little recognition. They come across as crass, rugged, slow and unsophisticated. Hence the idea of a superior or inferior social status gets seeded inside the young minds and the preference is given to the prince than a farmer boy to be the “hero” as the prince’s nobility and money become evidences of his superior character in the minds of the young readers. The children hence get conditioned to think according to pre-conceived notions- on heroism and on a more serious note the social position in the society that they are supposed to want to be a part of.
During the 1800s, England was undergoing the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution was a time of many new inventions and discoveries. It was also the beginning of economic and social changes. Improvements in the manufacturing led to urbanization, which then caused over-crowded cities and cheap labor. This created a strong divide between the lower, middle and upper classes. Lewis Carroll lived during the Victorian era and his writing was significantly influenced by that time period. .The Victorians were caught on the cusp of a completely new age in which all old beliefs and certainties were dying. With complete dismantling of the religious, economic and most importantly of the social structure the Victorians became very aware of their very human condition-one of loss of belief in stability. “Lewis Carroll” came to be associated with a readiness to believe — in wonderland, innocence, sainthood, fairytales, the fast-fading vision of a golden age and Carroll became the embodiment of the Victorian aspiration towards otherworldliness. Two of his works have been taken to show the themes of social structure and gender roles, namely Alice In the Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
CHAPTER 1
Lewis wrote in a genre that was often called Literary Nonsense. Literary nonsense (or nonsense literature) is a broad categorization of literature that balances elements that make sense with some that do not, with the effect of subverting language conventions or logical reasoning. Even though the most well-known form of literary nonsense is nonsense verse, the genre is present in many forms of literature and has been used most deftly in children’s literature. The effect of nonsense is often caused by an excess of meaning, rather than a lack of it. Its humor is derived from its “nonsensical nature, rather than wit or the “joke” of a punch line”. The novel Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll was written in 1865. It is considered as a novel of the “literary nonsense” genre, but one could analyze it and find much more than that. The class system in Victorian England was classified from inequalities in areas such as wealth, working and living conditions, education, religion, culture and life span. The working class in this era was men and women who did physical labor and got paid weekly. The Middle Class included men who did clean work and were paid monthly. The upper class didn’t work and their money came from inheritance and investments. Lewis Carroll tries to comment upon wealth and status and reflects Victorian England and its class structures in his works. Each character in the books represents a level of social class that England had in the Victorian Era.
While reading Alice in Wonderland under Marxist criticism, one could argue that Lewis Carroll included characters that illustrate the dehumanization of the lower class and inequality of the social class in England during the 19th century. Queen Victoria was the monarch at the time this book was published and some would see that the characters in this book draw upon her, her court, and her times. The bourgeoisie in Alice in Wonderland is obviously in the form of the Queen of Hearts. She is the person in power, and in a lot of adaptations, she over powers her husband. In the Disney version, her husband is this tiny little man who doesn’t really have any say in anything. In the Tim Burton version, The Queen of Hearts beheads her husband before the story even starts because she wanted to be the only important person.
Queen of Hearts (Queen Victoria), her king, the Duchess and the White Rabbit represent the elite or aristocrat level of society. They were all considered high enough in the social order to be invited to play croquet or to be invited into the Queen of Heart’s company. Characters like the Mad Hatter and the March Hare could be seen as the “commoners” or the middle class, along with the Dormouse, and other creatures that Alice meets along the way. The servants or the lower class are people such as the footmen, the royal gardeners who paint the white roses red, the Duchess’ cook and the hookah-smoking caterpillar. The Queen’s servants and soldiers are all cards that do whatever she desires. They are even physically dehumanized as cards with human heads. They also only have the mind set of meeting the Queens needs and requests. The Queen of hearts can so be looked upon as an illustration of the dehumanization of the lower class. The White Rabbit is an example of a character that is illustrated as a member of the lower class in the story. Mr. White Rabbit often quoted saying, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” Throughout the story the white rabbit is constantly shown for a brief moment, but always in a frantic hurry. This demonstrates the working life of someone in the lower class and the hard labor that they went through every day for little pay or purpose. And finally, the Cheshire cat could possibly be seen as the underclass, the lowest of the lows. It is a very shady character that sneaks around and knows all the information about the characters in Wonderland and, but is literally a wild and shifty animal and it also doesn’t exactly belong anywhere in society.
One can conclude that Alice is from the upper class by the way the author portrays her speaking, dressing, and acting. Alice’s reacts to his hurrying by assuming he is headed to a party, proving that she is a member of the upper class. Someone from the upper class would most likely never be in a hurry, especially for anything except a party.
contd…
SAMBARGIRL 