Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations Alice’s Adventures in The General Prologue The Old Man and the Wonderland to the Canterbury Sea The Adventures of Tales On the Road Huckleberry Finn The Grapes of Wrath One Flew Over the All Quiet on the Great Expectations Cuckoo’s Nest Western Front The Great Gatsby One Hundred Years of Animal Farm Gulliver’s Travels Solitude As You Like It Hamlet Othello The Ballad of the The Handmaid’s Tale Paradise Lost Sad Café Heart of Darkness The Pardoner’s Tale Beloved I Know Why the A Passage to India Beowulf Caged Bird Sings Persuasion Billy Budd, Benito The Interpretation of Portnoy’s Complaint Cereno, Bartleby Dreams A Portrait of the Artist the Scrivener, and Invisible Man as a Young Man Other Tales The Joy Luck Club Pride and Prejudice Black Boy Julius Caesar Ragtime The Bluest Eye The Jungle The Red Badge of Brave New World King Lear Courage Cat on a Hot Tin Long Day’s Journey The Rime of the Roof Into Night Ancient Mariner The Catcher in the Rye Lord of the Flies Romeo & Juliet Catch-22 The Lord of the Rings The Rubáiyát of Omar Cat’s Cradle Love in the Time of Khayyám The Color Purple Cholera The Scarlet Letter Crime and Punishment Macbeth A Scholarly Look at The Crucible The Man Without The Diary of Darkness at Noon Qualities Anne Frank David Copperfield The Merchant of A Separate Peace Death of a Salesman Venice Silas Marner The Death of The Metamorphosis Slaughterhouse-Five Artemio Cruz A Midsummer Night’s Song of Myself The Divine Comedy Dream Song of Solomon Don Quixote Miss Lonelyhearts The Sonnets of Dracula Moby-Dick William Shakespeare Dubliners My Ántonia Sophie’s Choice Emerson’s Essays Native Son The Sound and the Emma Night Fury Fahrenheit 451 1984 The Stranger A Farewell to Arms The Odyssey A Streetcar Named Frankenstein Oedipus Rex Desire Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations Sula Tess of the Waiting for Godot The Sun Also D’Urbervilles Walden Rises Their Eyes Were The Waste Land The Tale of Genji Watching God White Noise A Tale of Two Cities Things Fall Apart Wuthering Heights The Tales of Poe To Kill a Mockingbird Young Goodman The Tempest Ulysses Brown Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations Lewis Carroll’s ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND Edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom Sterling Professor of the Humanities Yale University Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ©2006 Infobase Publishing Introduction © 2006 by Harold Bloom All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information contact: Chelsea House An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s adventures in wonderland / Harold Bloom, editor. p. cm. — (Bloom’s modern critical interpretations) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7910-8586-4 1. Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898. Alice’s adventures in Wonderland. 2. Fantasy fiction, English—History and criticism. 3. Children’s stories, English—History and criticism. 4. Alice (Fictitious character : Carroll) I. Bloom, Harold. II. Title: Alice’s adventures in wonderland. III. Series. PR4611.A73L49 2006 823’.8—dc22 2006015134 Chelsea House books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Chelsea House on the World Wide Web at http://www.chelseahouse.com Contributing Editor: Mei Chin Cover designed by Keith Trego Cover photo © Images.com/CORBIS Printed in the United States of America Bang EJB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper. All links and web addresses were checked and verified to be correct at the time of publication. Because of the dynamic nature of the web, some addresses and links may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. Contents Editor’s Note vii Introduction 1 Harold Bloom A Note on Humpty Dumpty 13 J.B. Priestley Escape into the Garden 19 Florence Becker Lennon Alice in Wonderland: The Child as Swain 39 William Empson The Balance of Brillig 69 Elizabeth Sewell Through the Looking-glass 81 Alexander L. Taylor From “The Character of Dodgson as Revealed in the Writings of Carroll” 105 Phyllis Greenacre Poetry 123 Richard Kelly Love and Death in Carroll’s Alices 135 Donald Rackin vi Contents Toward a Definition of Alice’s Genre: The Folktale and Fairy-Tale Connections 155 Nina Demurova The Unreal Alice 171 Karoline Leach Alice’s Identity 193 Hugh Haughton Introducing Alice 205 Will Brooker Afterthought 219 Harold Bloom Chronology 221 Contributors 225 Bibliography 229 Acknowledgments 235 Index 237 Editor’s Note My Introduction meditates upon Lewis Carroll’s enigmatic allegory, with its implicit principle that Wonderland is the realm in which time has been slain. The English novelist J.B. Priestley finds in Humpty Dumpty “the air of a solemn literary man” or would-be literary critic, while Florence Becker Lennon interprets Wonderland as Carroll’s refuge from academic and clerical inanities. William Empson, one of the best modern critics, shrewdly analyzes Carroll’s Alice as the “swain” of pastoral tradition, after which Elizabeth Sewell examines Nonsense as Carroll’s literary mode, in which there is no emotion. Carroll’s Looking Glass world is judged by Alexander L. Taylor to be a new realm of morality, while Phyllis Greenacre delves into the mask of Carroll to uncover hidden aspects of Dodgson’s personality. Wonderland’s remarkable poetry is characterized by Richard Kelly as parodistic sublimity, after which Donald Rackin quests for the dark linkage between love and death in both chronicles of Alice. Carroll’s genre evades every definition, though Nina Demurova gallantly brings together Shakespearean dialogue and folk literature in an illuminating way. In an original venture, Karoline Leach suggests that Carroll (Dodgson) never proposed to Alice Liddell, but actually was deeply attracted to the girl’s mother. In any case, I agree with Hugh Haughton’s contention that that the identity of Carroll’s Alice transcends any idea of order available in Dodgson’s social world. vii viii Editor’s Note In this volume’s final essay, Will Brooker emphasizes the elegiac aspect of Carroll’s Alice, which certainly is a crucial element in the tonality of Carroll’s art. My Afterthought itself is a brief elegy for Carroll’s popularity, which currently is fading among the children of the world, who pass from J.K. Rowling to Stephen King, in our Age of Information and the Screens: television, cinema, and computer. HAROLD BLOOM Introduction I “And yet what a dear little puppy it was!” said Alice, as she leant against a buttercup to rest herself, and fanned herself with one of the leaves. “I should have liked teaching it tricks very much, if— if I’d only been the right size to do it! Oh dear! I’d nearly forgotten that I’ve got to grow up again!” Whatever the process is of renewing one’s experience of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, and The Hunting of the Snark, the sensation is neither that of rereading nor of reading as though for the first time. Lewis Carroll is Shakespearean to the degree that his writing has become a kind of Scripture for us. Take, quite at random, the sublimely outrageous chapter 6, “Pig and Pepper,” of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alice enters a large, smoky kitchen and discovers an atmosphere permeated with pepper, a sneezing duchess, and a howling and sneezing baby, as well as a cook stirring a cauldron of soup, and a large, grinning Cheshire Cat. Carroll’s prevalent phantasmagoria heightens (if that is possible) as the cook commences to throw everything within her reach (fire-irons, saucepans, dishes) at the Duchess and her howling imp, while the Duchess cries out, “Chop off her head!” and sings a sort of lullaby to her baby, thoughtfully shaking it (violently) at the end of each line: 1