11/5/13

A-Z of Alice in Wonderland

A-Z of Alice in Wonderland

On the eve of Tim Burton's 3D take on Wonderland, Kevin Jackson reveals his cultural historyofaVictorianclassic Sunday,21February2010 AisforAliceLiddell Howitallbegan:onJuly4,1862,ayoungOxforddon,CharlesLutwidgeDodgson,wentfor an agreeable fivemile boat trip on the Thames from Folly Bridge to Godstow. With him were the three daughters of the Dean of Christ Church, Henry George Liddell: Lorina Charlotte (b. 1849, aged 13), Alice Pleasance (b. 1852, aged 10) and Edith Mary (b.1853, age8)Towhileawaythesunnyafternoonstrip,Dodgsonbegantomakeupfancifulstories aboutalittlegirlcalledAlice.Thechildrenwereenthralled,andAliceinparticularwantedto hear these stories again, so in November 1864, Dodgson presented her with a self illustrated manuscript of about15,500 words, entitled Alices Adventures Under Ground. (Incidentally, Dodgson often denied that the Alice of his imagination was based on Miss Liddell. He has seldom been believed.) What Alice did not know at this time was that her older friend was already busy expanding his yarn to about 27,500 words. It was this larger text,declaredtobebyoneLewisCarrollandreentitledAlicesAdventuresinWonderland, that was eventually published with illustrations by John Tenniel, first in 1865 (with such slovenlyreproductionsofTennielsworkthathedemandedareprint)andmoretriumphantly in 1866. It was a dazzling success, as was the sequel Dodgson/Carroll published in 1871, Through the LookingGlass, and What Alice Found There. (In many of the popular adaptationsoftheAlicefable,elementsofthesecondbookarestitchedintothenarrativeof thefirst.) Alice Liddell lived until 1934: a respectable age, and quite long enough to realise that her fictionalcounterparthadbecomeanimmortal. BisforMaryHiltonBabcock Who? A good question. Whether or not the fictional Alice was a version of Alice Liddell, it hasalwaysbeenclearthatthegirlinTennielsillustrationsbearsverylittleresemblanceto Carrollsyoungfriend.Formanyyears,itwasassumedthattherealmodelforTennielsgirl wasMaryHiltonBabcock,anotherofCarrollsfavourites.Carrollcertainlysenttheartistone of his photographs of Mary, asking him to use it as his model. but in later years he would tellpeoplethatTennielsAlicewasacreatureofpureinvention. CisforCarroll Apartfromtheimmenseandlargelyunwelcomefloodofattentionthatwashedoverhimon the publication of Alice, Dodgson/Carroll did not lead a life of great incident: he never marriednor,asfarasweknow,hadanyloversonlytravelledabroadonce,in1867,when hemadeatriptoRussiaandspentmostofhislifeinthecomfortableifsometimestedious tranquillity of Christ Church. He was born in 1832 his home town was Daresbury, near Runcorn in Cheshire. Educated throughout his childhood by private tutors, he was sent to Rugby in 1846, and shy and sensitive found the experience painful. In 1851 he

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A-Z of Alice in Wonderland

matriculated at Christ Church, and showed such early academic promise that he was soon appointed to the colleges mathematical lectureship, a post he held for 26 years. He published about a dozen studies in mathematics work that is now regarded by mathematicians, when regarded at all, as solid rather than outstanding. Always fond of wordplay and storytelling, he began his official literary career in 1856 with a poem, Solitudeinthesameyear,hetookupaphotography,andisnowrecognisedasagifted, even remarkable pioneer in the art. He published the only other work for which he is popularly remembered, The Hunting of the Snark, in 1876. After a brief illness, he died in 1898. Perhaps a life of outward tedium was the necessary condition for gestating a unique formoffantasy? DisforGillesDeleuze The eccentric and still modish French philosopher devoted a good part of his 1969 book LogiquedusenstoAlice.ThelittleEnglishgirlhasbeenwellknownandlikedinFranceever sincethepublicationofHenriBuesAdventuresdAliceaupaysdesmerveillesin1869. EisforWilliamEmpson Though many twentyfirst century readers have come to feel, not without justice, that psychoanalytic readings of literature are dogmatic, daft or simply irrelevant, there have been some glorious exceptions, and one of them is William Empsons witty and searching essay The Child as Swain in Some Versions of Pastoral (1935). (This essay influenced JonathanMillersfilmseebelow.): FisforFreud In 1960, the American philosopher and journalist Martin Gardner published The Annotated Alice,aneditionofthetwobookswhich,amongotherthings,explainedthewealthofpuns, allusionsandotherjokesthatwouldhavebeenobvioustoawellinformedVictorianreader. At that time, the sum of psychoanalytic literature on the book was already large and growingrapidly.ThiswaspartlybecauseCarrollwassuchaninterestingcaseforshrinkage (was he a paedophile? Well, no, if by paedophile we mean someone who molests or otherwise illtreats children for sexual kicks) partly because Wonderland in particular is such a remarkable representation of the nonAristotelean logic of dreams and partly because the books are dense with happenings that almost scream out to be read as symbolic. In his notes, Gardner lists seven major Freudian essays on Alice, as well as a shortstorybyRobertBloch,incidentallytheauthorofPsycho,whichpokescruelfunatsuch interpretations. GisforGilbertAdairandalsoforMartinGardner The novelist and essayist, poet, critic, translator and screenwriter made his fictional debutwithAliceThroughtheNeedlesEye,abeautifullyjudgedandaffectionatepasticheof Carrollsstyleandstorytellingineffect,athirdepisodeofAlicesadventures. Gardner, an American philosopher and journalist, edited The Annotated Alice (1960), which uneartheddozensofhiddenjokes,parodiesandgamesthatwouldhavebeenfairlyobvious to adult Victorians, and sometimes to their children, but had become obscured by the passageoftime. HisforHuxley AldousHuxleywrotethefirstdraftofthescreenplayforDisneysanimatedversionofAlice in Wonderland (1951) Walt is said to have turned it down on first reading, saying that he could only understand one word in three. H is also for Aldouss nephew Francis Huxley, anthropologist, expert on shamanism, and author of The Raven and the Writing Desk, a philosophicalfantasiaonthemesfromCarroll. IisforAlicesInferno

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A-Z of Alice in Wonderland

AconceptalbumbytheSpanishGothmetalbandForeverSlave[sic],whichimaginesAlices lifeafterbothherparentshavedied. JisforJeffersonAirplane The bands psychedelic anthem White Rabbit, written and performed (with a voice that could strip the paint off a battleship) by Grace Slick, brought out the affinities between Carrolls imagined world and the drug experience (One pill makes you larger/ One pill makes you small) in such unambiguous terms that even the most addled hippies got the point.MsSlicksreadingofAliceasametaphorforatriponLysergicAcidwascorroborated by the LSD guru Timothy Leary in The Politics of Ecstasy. Leary is hardly read nowadays, but the song, though frankly rather silly, is still a potent sliver of West Coast psychedelia. ThereisafinecoverversionbyPattiSmith. KisforKafka Kafkas fables are usually regarded as glum and terrifying, and Carrolls as merely charming. Yet the affinities between their fictional worlds have long been plain enough to theunprejudicedeye.ThetrialoftheJackofHeartsshowsthesamenightmarelogicasThe Trial the hidden forces of The Castle echo the deep structure of a chess game in Looking Glass... LisforLostGirls Finallypublished,aftermanyyearsofhardlabour,in2009,thislargescalegraphicnovelby Alan Moore grand master of the form and his wife Melinda Gebbie imagines a time just beforethebeginningofWorldWarOne,inwhichatriooffamousgirlsWendyfromPeter Pan, Dorothy from the Oz books, and Alice all gather in an exclusive hotel. And so the sexualgamesbegin....Despitethebestattemptsoflocalradiointerviewersandtheliketo whip up some bogus outrage, this gentle exercise in period erotica was greeted, on the whole,withadmiration. MisforJonathanMiller Thoughitcausedoutrageatthetimeofitsfirstbroadcast,whentheangriercriticswroteas ifJonathanMillerhaddefiledanationaltreasure,thismodestlybudgeted1966BBCversion of the tale has grown in stature with the years. For one thing, it is very beautiful indeed theblackandwhitecinematography,bythelateDickBush,rivalsthebestworkcomingout of France and Italy in the midsixties. And what a cast! Peter Cook! Peter Sellers! Alan Bennett!JohnGielgud!MichaelRedgrave!EricIdle(prePython)!Thetitlerolewasplayedby the then 13yearold Anne Marie Mallick, an enigmatic beauty who never seems to have actedagainandthesoundtrackhintingatIndiascrucialoffstagepartintheVictorianage wasbythegreatsitarmasterRaviShankar.Simply,aquiet,neglectedmasterpiece. NisforNabokov Vladimir Nabokov translated Carrolls work into Russian, changing Alice into Anya. ThoughreferencestotheAlicestoriesarescatteredthroughouthisfiction,hefirmlydenied thatCarrollwasaninfluenceonLolita.Sure,Vladimir,webelieveyou. OisforOz L Frank Baum was happy to admit that Carrolls work was a major influence on his stories about the land of Oz (beginning with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900), particularly in his inventionofDorothy,ayoungfemaleprotagonistwhocanplaytheroleofsurrogateforthe reader.Hecomplained,though,thatCarrollsstorieswereincoherent.Well,yes.... PisforDennisPotter Somewhat upstaged by the playwrights more successful (Singing Detective) or scandalous

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A-Z of Alice in Wonderland

pieces (Brimstone and Treacle), Dreamchild is still well worth seeking out. Directed by Gavin Millar, the screenplay drew both on the reallife Alice, seen here as an 80yearold ladyonavisittoNewYork,andonCarrollscreation. QisfortheQueenofHearts A surprisingly cheeky note: Victorian adults who read Wonderland with their children would have seen at once that Tenniels portrait of the Queen described by Carroll as a Fury was based on Queen Victoria. Later dramatizations and adaptations of the tales often conflate the Queen of Hearts with the Red Queen of LookingGlass, though they are very differentcharacters. RisforJohnRuskin DodgsonbecameagoodfriendofthegreatVictorianartcritic,whotaughtAliceLiddellhow todrawthefigureofRuskincanbemadeoutintheoldcongereel,whotaughttheMock Turtle Drawling, Stretching and Fainting in Coils. There are a number of curious parallels between their lives: for example, Ruskin also composed a fable, The King of the Golden River,attherequestofayounggirlRuskinstalewasmoderatelysuccessful,andhasnever beenoutofprint,butithasneverhadsuchavastanddevotedaudienceasAlice. SisfortheSurrealists At an epoch when, in the definitively united kingdom, all thought was considered so shockingthatitmightwellhavehesitatedtoformitself,whathadbecomeofhumanliberty? ItrestedinitsentiretywithinthefrailhandsofAlice:LouisAragon.TheSurrealistsadored AliceAndreBretoncitedherinvariousmanifestoes,andallmannerofSurrealworksallude to her. One latterday Surrealist, Jan Svankmeyer, made a wellreceived animated film of Alice. TisforBryanTalbot Talbots recent (2007) graphic novel Alice in Sunderland has been acclaimed as one of the outstanding works of its kind. Impossible to summarise in a few words, it begins with a slobbish everyman character following a White Rabbit into a deserted theatre, and includes a number of fascinating speculations on the links between Dodgson and the NorthEast of England. UisforUnsukChin The Korean composer of the opera Alice (premiered in Germany in 2007), with a English language libretto by the AsianAnerican playwright David Henry Hwang (best known for his playMButterfly) VisforVirginiaAstley TheEnglishsingerhascomposedandperformedanumberofsongsthatalludetotheAlice books her CD From Gardens Where We Feel Secure includes sound recordings made close tothesiteswhereDodgsonimaginedhisalternativereality. WisfortheWachowskiBrothersandalsoforTomWaits As they have freely admitted (or boasted) in interviews, the Wachowski brothers scattered references to Alice throughout their Matrix film trilogy, beginning with the injunction to followtheWhiteRabbit.TomWaitswrotethesongsfora2002stageversionofAlice XisforXrated Alan Moores erotic fantasia on themes by Carroll is far from being the first attempt to sex upCarrollssuperficiallysexlesstales.Therehavebeencountlesspornographicversions,of whichAliceinWonderland:AMusicalPorno(1976)isprobablythemostnotorious.

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A-Z of Alice in Wonderland

YisforYuWatase The manga artist who created Alice 19th, which includes a rather frightening version of WonderlandintowhichAlicesoldersisterisbanished,andbeginswiththeappearanceofa White Rabbit called Nyozeka. This is one of many manga Alices, since the little English girl hasbeenBiginJapaneversincethefirstJapanesetranslationwaspublishedin1908. ZisforZadieSmithandalsoforRogerZelazny whohaswrittenanelegantintroductiontoarecentreissueofCarroll.Zelaznywasamajor science fiction writer, whose novel Sign of Chaos includes chapters set in a simulacrum of Wonderland. The influence of Alice on science fiction is vast and profound it includes an episodeofStarTrekentitledShoreLeaveandmany,manynovelsandshortstoriesjust one of the reasons why, as W.H. Auden once said, the Fourth of July is an important a day forliteratureasitisfortheUnitedStates. TimBurton's'AliceinWonderland'isonreleasefrom5March

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