Revising Alice in Wonderland: An Analysis of Alice's Female Subjectivity in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The main points of this thesis are:

Queen Victoria was against the movement to give women the right to vote. She was also opposed to women's rights.

A poem of the time listed the things women should be: passive, meek, charming, graceful, gentle, self-sacrificing, pious and pure.

The main goal for women in Victorian society was to find a wealthy husband.

Alice's Adventures of Wonderland is full of the oppression that women underwent at the time.

Wonderland is run by potentially murderous women. (The Queen of Hearts, the cook and the Duchess.)

The Duchess had a baby but definitely was cruel to it. When the baby turned into a pig Alice was not upset. This would indicate both were rejecting the traditional role of motherhood.

Alice talked back to the Queen and King in the trial and that is not something a regular person would even consider doing in Victorian society. (Of course there were the ones that tried to kill Queen Victoria rather than just talk to her.)

The Queen of Hearts rules her marriage, making the King appear weak and useless. This was also directly opposed to the way things were supposed to be in the 'real' world.

Alice shows her rebellion in the tea-party chapter by sitting down, uninvited, to the party.

Alice's sister is 'fearful and passive.'

Alice seems to be given the chance to break free of society's expectations.

(Here's where I have a problem with this type of approach which is in several of the theses I've read. We have no way at all of knowing what happened to Alice after she woke up. Did the things she learned in Wonderland stay with her and help her to grow up to be a more 'liberated' woman or did she, at seven years of age, just drift back into society's norms? If it's the former then the 'dream' was very beneficial to her. If it was the latter, though, then the whole Wonderland experience would end up being for her 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.)

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