The Alice Books and the Contested Ground of the Natural World

Book excerpt: Though popular opinion would have us see Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There as whimsical, nonsensical, and thoroughly enjoyable stories told mostly for children; contemporary research has shown us there is a vastly greater depth to the stories than would been seen at first glance. Building on the now popular idea amongst Alice enthusiasts, that the Alice books - at heart - were intended for adults as well as children, Laura White takes current research in a new, fascinating direction. During the Victorian era of the book’s original publication, ideas about nature and our relation to nature were changing drastically. The Alice Books and the Contested Ground of the Natural World argues that Lewis Carroll used the book’s charm, wit, and often puzzling conclusions to counter the emerging tendencies of the time which favored Darwinism and theories of evolution and challenged the then-conventional thinking of the relationship between mankind and nature. Though a scientist and ardent student of nature himself, Carroll used his famously playful language, fantastic worlds and brilliant, often impossible characters to support more the traditional, Christian ideology of the time in which mankind holds absolute sovereignty over animals and nature.