Moonflute by Audrey Wood, illustrated by Don Wood, 1980, 1986.
One night, a little girl named Firen can’t sleep. It’s a hot summer night, the moon is full, and Firen feels like the moon has taken away her sleep, so she must go out into the night and look for it.
Outside, Firen raises up her hands to the moon and asks for her sleep back. The magical moon sends her a moonbeam, and when Firen touches it, she realizes that it’s solid. It’s actually a flute. When Firen plays the flute, it makes magical music that doesn’t sound like any normal flute, and it brings all sorts of wonderful smells of things that Firen loves. As she continues to play, she feels light and tingly, and she realizes that she is rising into the air!
Firen flies over the countryside, looking for her sleep. As she journeys through the night, she sees various animals and wonders if they have her sleep. She sees cats in a patch of catnip, whales playing in the ocean, and bats and monkeys in a jungle.
When Firen sees a couple of monkeys soothing a baby monkey to sleep, she thinks about her own parents and uses the flute to return home. Is the moonflute helping her find her sleep at home with her parents, or has she actually been asleep all the time?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
This book follows the “It was all a dream” theme, where the main character experiences something fantastic, but they were dreaming all the time. While Firen was wondering where her sleep was, she apparently fell asleep. It isn’t definite that’s what happened, but it’s implied when her parents go to her room, and she’s in bed, without the flute. If readers would like to think of it differently, that Firen really did have her flying adventures, it’s possible to read it that way, too.
The pictures really make this book! The illustrations are oil paintings, and they are beautiful and ethereal. Firen witnesses some stunning scenes, like whales leaping in the ocean, with everything bathed in glowing moonlight.
I was intrigued by the name “Firen” because I don’t think I’ve heard it before, and I like unusual names. I couldn’t find much information about the name online, so it seems like it isn’t very common. I thought at first that it might be a modern, invented name, although one name site says that it has Arabic origins.
This is the second book in the Aviary Hall Trilogy. Each of the books in the series could be read independently of each other, but this book in particular makes more sense if you have read both the first book, which is The Summer Birds, and the third book, Charlotte Sometimes before reading this one. People in this book directly reference events in The Summer Birds, something with Charlotte Sometimes does not. Although Charlotte Sometimes was written and published after this book, it actually takes place during the autumn before this story and it does inadvertently contain a spoiler for Charlotte Sometimes because Charlotte appears at the beginning of the book. It’s just my own preference that it’s better to read this book after Charlotte Sometimes because it makes Charlotte Sometimes more suspenseful. Like Charlotte Sometimes, this book also involves time travel, and the characters do some research on the subject of time and how it works.
At the beginning of the story, Emma Makepeace is upset because her older sister, Charlotte, will be leaving early for the new term at her boarding school after Christmas. At this point, Charlotte has already had her first term at boarding school (which is where and when Charlotte Sometimes takes place, although there are no references to the events of that story here), and she has been invited to visit one of her new friends from boarding school before they return to the school together. All through Charlotte’s first term at boarding school, Emma has been lonely without her and has been finding life at their home, Aviary Hall, increasingly difficult.
The girls are orphans (although the books never explain what happened to their parents) who live with their grandfather and his housekeeper. Between the two of them, Charlotte is the more serious and responsible and Emma is the more mischievous and thoughtless. Up to this point in their lives, Charlotte has acted the part of the caring older sister, trying to teach Emma to behave herself and covering for her when she doesn’t. Charlotte has realized that their grandfather has little patience for misbehaving children and that Emma pushes the limits, so she has frequently intervened and smoothed things over when Emma tries his patience.
Emma has often thought of Charlotte as a kind of spoilsport for trying to act grown-up and mature, but during Charlotte’s absence at boarding school during the previous term, Emma has suddenly come to see how much Charlotte has been helping her and saving her from the consequences of her own actions and the realities of their home life. Without Charlotte there to be the motherly big sister, providing some warmth and affection and acting as a buffer between Emma and the adults, the grandfather has become more impatient with Emma’s immaturity. Both he and the housekeeper have been more direct with Emma about her behavior and bad habits, and there’s no one there to shield Emma from it. Emma is lonely for Charlotte’s company and feels picked on by the adults, so when Charlotte cuts her time with Emma short after her first visit home to go visit one of her school friends, Emma is angry and resentful. Charlotte is tempted to back out of her friend’s invitation for Emma’s sake, but she feels like she can’t, and their grandfather tells her that she must go ahead with the visit.
Emma is in a state of emotional turmoil through most of the story, adjusting to Charlotte’s absence, the new expectations of the adults in her life for her to mature and improve her behavior, and her own resentment about these things. While all this is happening, something else strange happens. Emma begins having strange dreams about flying. They remind her of the children’s flying adventures from two years previously, as described in The Summer Birds. It has been so long since she last flew that she struggles to remember how in her dreams, and when she wakes up, her muscles feel sore from the effort. However, at first, she can’t remember what happened in her dreams.
At school, when the new term begins, Emma is made head girl because she is the eldest girl in the class. A boy called Bobby Fumpkins is made head boy because he is the eldest boy. Emma is embarrassed and uncomfortable about being the head of the class in partnership with Bobby. She hates Bobby because he is fat, awkward, and spoiled. Before his mother gave birth to Bobby’s younger sister, who is still a baby, she babied Bobby more than she really should have at this age. Their family also has their own tv set, something most of the other children’s families don’t have at this time, and which Bobby bragged about when they got it. For these reasons, most of the other children in the class don’t like Bobby, either, and they’ve teased him mercilessly for years. They think he’s a sissy and a baby because of his mother’s attention and because he’s milder-mannered than they are and never stands up to them. Because of his awkwardness, they like to call him Jemima Puddle-Duck after a character from a children’s book by Beatrix Potter. Bobby tells himself that his classmates mean all this teasing good-naturedly, but they don’t really. Emma is particularly adamant within herself that she genuinely hates Bobby.
However, like it or not, Emma’s life has become intertwined with Bobby’s. Their teacher expects the two of them to work together at school during the day, and at night, she gradually begins to realize that he is sharing in her same dream of flying. Other children at school tease Emma about being friends with Bobby, particularly one girl who really wants to cause trouble for Emma because, as the next eldest, she would be next in line for the head girl position herself. Emma denies being Bobby’s friend, partly because he still gets on her nerves and partly because she’s still lonely without Charlotte and is worried by being shunned by the other children at school. However, she gradually begins to feel guilty about the way she and others have been treating Bobby, and she begins to feel the impulse to try to be nicer to him.
As her relationship with Bobby improves, Emma begins remembering more of their shared dream, and the two of them talk about the dream together. Bobby was one of the children at school who shared in their flying adventures two years before, and the two of them discuss their past adventures with each other and how they compare to the dream they’re now having. There are a few things that they begin to notice that are different from their past flying adventures. One is that they both have the feeling that someone is watching them. It seems to be a stern or hostile presence, a pair of eyes that belong to some unknown person, but they don’t know who it is. They also begin to notice that it looks like plants are growing backward as they fly over the countryside. That is, grown plants seem to be returning to small plants and seeds. They gradually notice that the land seems to be going back in time. Eventually, they start seeing dinosaurs in their dreams, and it looks like they might be going back to the beginning of the world. What will happen to Emma and Bobby in their dream when they eventually reach the beginning of everything?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction and Spoilers
I’ve already explained my reasoning about the reading order of the books. The Summer Birds is the first book in the trilogy, and you really have to read it before you read this book because the characters directly reference events from that story. Actually, I thought that was a really interesting choice, to have Emma and Bobby talking openly with each other about the summer when they learned to fly. They just accept that event as a common event in their lives that they shared and that everyone who shared it with them openly acknowledges. Sometimes, in children’s fantasy stories, the characters later downplay magical events, feeling like they were dreams they had or games of pretend they played because they seem too strange to have really happened, but no, in this book, the characters all know what happened to them and just accept it as a part of their lives. I thought it was interesting that this book acts as a bridge between the theme of flying and the themed of time travel in Charlotte Sometimes, although I still think that Charlotte Sometimes keeps more of its suspense if you don’t know that Charlotte safely returns to her own time before you read it.
I still think that Charlotte Sometimes is the best book in the trilogy. It is the best known, and unlike this book, it can be read independently of the others in the trilogy. It doesn’t reference either of the other two books at all. There are no references to Charlotte having participated in any previous magical adventures in that story. That may be partly because she is among strangers at her new boarding school who wouldn’t know anything about her flying adventures, but even her private thoughts don’t give any hint to that. What I think that The Summer Birds and Emma in Winter add to Charlotte Sometimes are some further insights into Charlotte and Emma’s personalities and the relationship between them. I still think that Charlotte Sometimes is the best book in the trilogy. It is the best known, and unlike this book, it can be read independently of the others in the trilogy. It doesn’t reference either of the other two books at all. There are no references to Charlotte having participated in any previous magical adventures in that story. That may be partly because she is among strangers at her new boarding school who wouldn’t know anything about her flying adventures, but even her private thoughts don’t give any hint to that earlier adventure. What I think that The Summer Birds and Emma in Winter add to Charlotte Sometimes are some further insights into Charlotte and Emma’s personalities and the relationship between them. Emma in Winter also adds some thoughts about the nature of time and time travel, which add some further insights into Charlotte’s time travel experiences.
Emma and Bobby do some research about time in her grandfather’s study, a room where Emma is usually forbidden to go. One of the theories they find is that time moves in a coiled pattern, like a spring, and that the coils of the spring can be pushed together so different points on the coils can touch each other. This theory really relates better to Charlotte Sometimes than to Emma in Winter, but what is more relevant to this story is the idea that human thought can be the force that pushes the coils together and makes them touch. This is also a part of Charlotte Sometimes, and I explain in my review of that story about how Charlotte and Clare having many similarities and being in a similar state of mind as well as sharing the same physical space at different times allowed them to switch places with each other. However, the emphasis in Emma in Winter is Emma and Bobby realizing that their own thoughts and feelings influence their dreams and, therefore, their time travel.
This story is rather metaphysical and a little difficult to follow during the dream phases. I noticed that some other reviewers seemed confused about the point of the time traveling. I found it a little confusing, too, but it seems like this is a coming-of-age story, like the other books in the trilogy. The Summer Birds focused on Charlotte and how her more mature outlook helped the other children make an important decision that would alter their lives forever. Charlotte Sometimes raises the question about what defines a person’s identity and how a person’s identity can be tied to someone else’s even when they’re separate people. Emma in Winter focuses on emotional understanding.
Both Emma and Bobby are going through major changes in their lives, particularly ones that require them to become more mature than they once were. Bobby has been somewhat spoiled and coddled by his mother, but he’s no longer the center of attention at home, now that he has a little sister. At first, Bobby finds it hard to cope with his mother no longer giving him the attention she used to give him, but it does give him the opportunity to become more independent and mature. Emma despises Bobby for being babyish because he was spoiled and overprotected by his mother when he was younger, but the truth is that Emma is also babyish. She’s not accustomed to being accountable for her own behavior and bad habits because Charlotte usually takes responsibility for her and shields her from some of the reactions of the adults and other people.
When Charlotte goes away to boarding school, Emma is left on her own for the first time to deal with the consequences of her actions and other people’s reactions to them. It’s a bit of a shock for her at first, and she realizes that she hasn’t fully appreciated what Charlotte was doing for her for the whole time. She also comes to the disquieting realization that, even thought she feels like the adults are picking on her over her behavior, she doesn’t like the way she behaves, either. She comes to feel guilty about the way she treats Bobby, and when she draws some nasty pictures of her teacher, she is startled to realize how much she has hurt her teacher’s feelings and how badly she feels about doing that. For the first time in her life, Emma has to face her own behavior and see how her behavior truly affects other people. She is shocked and troubled when she realizes that she doesn’t like what she sees and it’s her own fault. Only Emma can decide how nice or how mean she is and who she really wants to be.
The children’s time traveling adventures that they have while dreaming lead them to explore their relationship with each other. Emma realizes that she has to be nice to Bobby and learn to get along with him for them to be able to function with each other in the dream. Their final dream together is confusing and rather surreal, but it also involves the two of them confronting aspects of themselves, their lives with other people, and their own behavior.
When they move all the way back in time as far as they can go, they’re confronted by a vision of their teacher, not as she actually is, but as Emma drew her in a mean drawing. Emma has to remind herself and tell the figure that it’s only a drawing she made; it’s not reality. They also see visions of other people in their lives and even of themselves at their worst and most frightening, but they have to hold on to the reality of themselves, as they are now, the people they’re becoming, not who they used to be or how other people see them. I took it to mean that neither of them can go backward in their lives anymore, to their old habits and who they were or how they were as younger children, but they have to accept the changes taking place in their lives and in themselves to return to the real world, their own time, and the lives they have ahead of them. They discover that the key to traveling through time is thinking, so they have to think themselves out of their time travel dreams, focusing on their real selves and the real lives, accepting and even loving themselves as they are. Change has been coming for both of them, but they have to make the decision to face it and embrace it and to let go of their past selves to move on in time and in their lives.
Marianne has been looking forward to her birthday because her parents have promised her that when she is ten years old, she will be old enough to have riding lessons. She and her family live in town, so she doesn’t have easy access to horses, like children in the country do. Her special birthday present is going to have her first lesson at the local riding stable. Her birthday is wonderful, and the riding lesson goes very well, even if some of the more spectacular things that she had imagined before didn’t happen. Marianne would be perfectly happy except, at the end of the lesson, she is more tired than usual and feels achy. By lunchtime, she is feeling definitely ill, and she has a fever.
Marianne’s birthday illness quickly turns into the worst illness she’s ever had. Because of her illness, Marianne has to be confined to her bed for weeks, and she loses track of time. About three weeks after her illness began, she begins to feel a little more like herself and has more awareness of time and what’s happening around her. When she was at her worst, it was hard for her to be interested in anything or focus on anything, but now, she can think clearly enough to be bored and look for something to entertain herself. Marianne’s mother allows her to look through her grandmother’s old workbox, which mostly contains old needlework tools and an array of buttons, ribbons, beads, and other odds and ends that are interesting to look through and sort.
Among the things in the workbox, Marianne finds an old pencil. She immediately likes the look of the stubby old pencil and has the sense that it would be fun to use for drawing, so she picks up her drawing book and begins to draw a picture of a house with a fence around it and some flowers. Marianne’s drawing isn’t particularly great, not as good as what she pictured in her mind’s eye when she started it, but it is the start of something very special.
Although she is starting to feel better, Marianne’s doctor tells her that she is going to miss the whole rest of this term at school. He prescribes strict bed rest for her for the next six weeks. The doctor doesn’t actually say what’s wrong with Marianne, but he tells her that if she doesn’t rest, she could harm herself in a way that would last for the whole rest of her life. Even though she’s bored and says she’d rather be harmed or permanently ill than have to spend more weeks in bed, her doctor is firm with her that this is the way things are. He’ll see that she follows his instructions and recovers whether she likes it or not. Her condition is not contagious, so she can have visitors, but she must remain in bed and rest.
Marianne is sure that these weeks of bed rest are going to be horrible and boring, but soon, something strange begins to happen. She starts having dreams about the house that she drew with that special pencil. When she finds herself in the country with the house, the house is a little misshapen, and it unnerves her. The house is located on an empty, windy prairie, and Marianne can’t even get into the house because she didn’t draw a door handle on the door or put anyone inside the house who could let her inside.
Marianne realizes that she could easily remedy these things by adding more to her drawing, so when she wakes up, she adds a knocker and handle to the door. She also draws a boy looking out one of the windows of the house. The boy seems a little sad when she draws him, but she isn’t sure how to fix his expression, so she just leaves it. Although Marianne isn’t sure whether she’ll ever dream of the house again, she does. In her next dream, the door has the knocker and handle, just like she drew, and there is a sad-looking boy at one of the windows of the house. Marianne waves to the boy and asks him to let her into the house, but he can’t. The boy is upstairs in the house, and there aren’t any stairs down to the ground floor. Marianne asks the boy how he got up there without any stairs, but he says he doesn’t know. Marianne insists that she needs to get into the house, and the boy says that he needs to get out. Marianne gets angry at the boy and the situation, which seems impossible. However, this is not the end of the dreams, and the boy isn’t just a figment of her imagination.
Marianne’s mother hires a temporary governess to tutor Marianne at home so she doesn’t fall too far behind in school. Marianne doesn’t like the idea of the governess at first, but Miss Chesterfield turns out to be friendly, and her visits and lessons add variety to Marianne’s days. When Marianne asks Miss Chesterfield about her career as a governess, she learns that, unlike governesses in books, Miss Chesterfield doesn’t live with her clients. Instead, she tutors different children in their homes, visiting each for a couple hours at a time. All of the children she tutors are children who are behind in their studies or who are studying special subjects that aren’t covered at their school or whose circumstances prevent them for going to school for a time, like Marianne. One of the other children being tutored by Miss Chesterfield is a boy named Mark, who has been left partially paralyzed from a severe illness and can’t walk. Marianne asks Miss Chesterfield if Mark will be able to walk again someday, and she says that it’s likely he will if he takes care of himself in the next couple of months and does what his doctor says.
However, as with Marianne, obeying the doctor’s orders isn’t easy for Mark. While Marianne wishes that she could just be up and about instead of resting like she should, Mark is just the opposite. He loves being at home with his books, and he has trouble pushing himself to start getting up and moving again, which is what his condition really requires. Mark needs to do physical therapy to strengthen his body and retrain his muscles, but it’s difficult and painful. Marianne is sympathetic to Mark because she knows what it’s like to be ordered to do something she doesn’t want to do even though it’s for her own good. She wishes that the two of them could switch places for a time so he could do at least some of her bed resting for her, and she could have the chance to get up and move around. Miss Chesterfield says that she thinks the two of them are better off being themselves and doing what each of them needs to do.
Marianne continues to feel the urge to draw in her spare time. She discovers that she’s unable to erase anything that she’s drawn, but she can continue to add to the picture. She adds more to the background so the house won’t seem to be in such an empty void, and on the opposite page in her drawing book, she draws the interior of the house, adding the stairs that the boy said were missing. This time, when Marianne dreams of the house, she finds herself in the interior, which is mostly empty because she hasn’t drawn furniture yet. She explores the house and finds the boy sitting on a window seat, looking outside, like he did before. The boy has noticed that the world outside the house has changed since Marianne drew hills and a tree. The two of them talk about their situation, trying to understand how they came to be in the house, and Marianne tells the boy that, now that there are stairs, he can go outside. The boy tells her that he still can’t because he can’t walk. He explains to Marianne about how he’s been ill for a long time, and he has special exercises he’s supposed to do to help his muscles, but it still isn’t definite whether he’ll be able to walk again or not. That’s when Marianne realizes that she’s talking to Mark, the same Mark that Miss Chesterfield told her about.
The two children could be dream companions for each other, but Marianne becomes more temperamental the longer she’s cooped up. One day, in a fit of anger because Mark made Miss Chesterfield late to see her and ruined her special surprise present for Miss Chesterfield’s birthday, Marianne turns the house in her drawing into a prison and the rocks outside into monsters that watch the house. Marianne thinks it would be a fitting punishment for Mark to be a prisoner in their dream house, but the problem with that is that Marianne still goes to the house when she’s asleep, too. Whenever she’s there, she’s also in a scary prison, surrounded by rock monsters.
It takes Marianne an embarrassingly long time to realize that everything she adds to her drawing changes the environment of the dreams that both she and Mark share, and even when she realizes that’s the case, Mark has a difficult time accepting it. It seems like, when the kids are in the dream world, they have some trouble remembering the waking world and making connections between the two, although Marianne has more memory of her waking life than Mark does, probably because Mark is more seriously ill. While Marianne has control of the special pencil and more ability to alter the world of their dreams, she can’t change everything, and the two children will have to work together to overcome their obstacles and escape the house. The house is useful for them during their recovery, but they quickly realize that it’s also a dangerous place, and they can’t stay there forever. Although Marianne didn’t draw a way for the rocks with the eyes to move, they are moving, and they’re getting closer all the time.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). In 1988, the story was made into a movie called Paperhouse. Paperhouse is a much darker version of the original story, though. There was a much earlier television mini-series from 1972 based on the book called Escape Into Night, which was much more faithful to the original story, although in that version, Marianne had a broken leg from a riding accident instead of being ill. All six episodes of Escape Into Night are currently on YouTube. I don’t know of any other way to watch it if you live in the US. There are dvds available on Amazon, but they’re region coded. For sci-fi fans, I swear that the rock monsters in Escape Into Night also sound like Daleks from the original Doctor Who. The book was originally published in Britain, and the movie versions are also British. There is also a sequel to this book called Marianne and Mark, where the two children from this book meet as teenagers in real life instead of in the dream world.
My Reaction and Spoilers
To begin with, I’d like to explain that, while the concept of a drawing coming to life somewhat reminds me of Harold and the Purple Crayon, this is definitely a more serious book with greater depth. The children in the story are dealing with some serious and frightening problems, both in the real world and the dream world.
I love the way that the pictures in the book alternate between Marianne’s drawings and the children’s “real” experiences. First, we get to see what Marianne draws, and then, we get to see how her drawing comes to life in the children’s dreams. Marianne’s drawings are child-like, with crooked houses, misplaced windows, and stick figures. The dream drawings are as misshapen as Marianne’s drawings, but at the same time, they are more three-dimensional, as the children perceive them when they’re inside them in their dreams.
The book never explains exactly why Marianne is sick or what might happen to her if she doesn’t rest, although I have a couple of ideas. There are illnesses which can leave people severely weakened for long periods of time, and they have to rest or suffer lasting organ damage. When my aunt was young, she was extremely ill with valley fever. That’s probably not the illness Marianne has because valley fever comes from a fungus found in the soil in certain parts of the Americas, but I don’t think it’s found where Marianne lives in Britain. I mention it because I think that it’s similar in severity to Marianne’s illness. Most people who get valley fever don’t have it severely. In fact, most long-term residents of the area where I live have had it at some point in their lives, and it’s often mistaken for a mild flu. However, once in a while, someone has a much more serious case, like my aunt did. My aunt had to spend weeks at home, resting, and a tutor came to the house to help her with her schoolwork until she recovered enough to return to school. Even then, she had certain restrictions. Valley fever is hard on the lungs, so she couldn’t over-exert herself. For a period after she returned to school, she still tired quickly from ordinary activities, she could not take physical education classes, and she even had to use the elevator at her school (which was reserved only for those who needed it) instead of taking the stairs to classes like most of the other students. If my aunt had pushed herself too hard before she had fully built back her strength and stamina, she might have damaged her lungs permanently. I think that the doctor in this book is warning Marianne that her condition is similar, that she might cause herself some form of lasting organ damage if she doesn’t rest and let herself fully recover.
In Marianne’s case, I suspect that Marianne’s illness could potentially damage her heart because her doctor is concerned that she not get angry or over-excited, but that’s just a guess. Illnesses like that are relatively uncommon, but they do happen in real life. Depending on the condition she has, it’s possible that Marianne’s extended bed rest might also be shortened by more modern treatments, if this story happened during the 21st century. It’s difficult to say without knowing what her ailment is, but I think it’s worth pointing out that this story was written during the 1950s, which is also coincidentally the time period when my aunt had her illness in her youth.
In the movie version of the story, Paperhouse, they say that Marianne had glandular fever, but since the book never specifies, some readers have speculated that she might have had rheumatic fever, since the symptoms fit the description of her illness. I tend to think rheumatic fever is more likely because it can potentially cause a risk to the heart, and that seems to be the concern in the book, the reason why Marianne has to rest and be careful to avoid long-term damage to herself until she is fully healed. In Paperhouse, Mark is described as having muscular dystrophy, but the book actually says that Mark has polio. The first polio vaccine was developed by Jonas Salk in the early 1950s, although it took a few years for it to come into widespread use, so it’s plausible that Mark could have caught the disease before he had a chance to be vaccinated.
My parents were both in elementary school during the 1950s, and they remember getting their polio vaccinations and the boosters that they gave to kids in an edible form on sugar cubes. Other people who were young around that time period may have similar memories. Although I never saw a child or young person with polio when I was a kid, probably because all the kids I knew were vaccinated, my parents say that it was a real menace when they were young, and the serious consequences of the disease were a real fear. While my mother was still young, her aunt contracted polio as an adult. Her aunt survived having polio, but there were lasting effects. Even people who recover their strength after having polio while young or relatively young can have it come back on them when they’re older as post-polio syndrome. My mother remembers her aunt before she became ill, but by the time I met my great-aunt, she was an elderly lady in a wheelchair because of the condition. That’s part of the reason why my family believes in the benefit of vaccines in general. We’ve noticed definite improvements between generations because of them.
The characters in the story experience some personal growth from their ordeals. I liked it that, in the beginning of the story, Marianne considers some of the old-fashioned stories she’s read where girls suffer from severe illnesses or ailments that keep them in bed for long period of time. It is a common trope of 19th century and early 20th century books that characters’ lives and personalities are changed by illness because dealing with the illness and the restrictions imposed on them because of it teaches them patience and understanding. (See What Katy Did in the Carr Family series from the late 19th century for an example.) Marianne wonders if she’ll experience the same type of transformation or if she’ll still be the same Marianne she always was after her ordeal is over. Both Marianne and Mark have things they need to learn in order to overcome their respective problems. Miss Chesterfield’s belief that it’s best for them both to learn to manage their problems rather than envying each other is the correct one.
Marianne has to learn about emotional control. During her period of forced rest, Marianne’s temper gets worse because she’s frustrated with her situation, and her doctor warns her that she’s going to have to learn to keep calm because fits of temper are as bad for her health as physical over-exertion. Marianne needs to learn to relax, to not try to push herself or situations to move faster than they need to go, and to keep her temper even when she’s frustrated. When she realizes that the things she draws on paper with the special pencil have real consequences for Mark, who is also struggling through his illness, Marianne also becomes more compassionate and considerate, trying to find creative ways to help Mark through her drawings. It takes some trial and error, but Marianne does become a more thoughtful person. When it’s finally time for Marianne to get out of bed and start to strengthen herself again, she experiences some of what Mark has been struggling with, and it increases her understanding of his situation.
Meanwhile, Mark has to learn to push himself a little harder and to persevere even in the face of hardship. Miss Chesterfield has noticed that, while Mark will work and study hard at things he likes or things that are easy for him, he has a tendency to give up too soon or only make half-hearted efforts at things that are difficult or don’t come naturally to him. While his body is getting the the medical attention it needs, his spirit needs some stirring so he can find the inner strength to keep going with his efforts to restore and improve his physical health. He explains to Marianne how he feels, being physically weak and dealing with the uncertainty of whether or not the exercises he’s been given to do are even going to make a real difference or not. Because his condition is serious, even things that his doctor says are likely to help aren’t completely guaranteed to help. These feelings of uncertainty are a heavy burden for Mark to bear and another obstacle that he has to overcome. He finds it hard to continue making an effort when he knows that it might not make a difference in the long run. He needs to remind himself that, while trying his best may not be enough to help him walk again, doing nothing at all guarantees that he will lose that ability. A chance at improvement is better than no chance at all. Marianne provides support and encouragement for Mark, and seeing the results they experience from their efforts in the dream world encourages the children to do what they need to do in the waking world.
Although the book has fantasy themes, I thought that the descriptions of the children’s struggles in the real world and Marianne’s feelings about her illness were very realistic. Mark and Marianne have to use some different tactics when battling their illnesses because they have different problems. I think the book makes a good point that what’s necessary for one person’s situation isn’t always the same for another’s. Some people need to push themselves a little harder and tackle problems head-on while others need to develop a little more creativity and patience to work around their problems. In the end, Marianne and Mark do both. The children are an inspiration to each other, helping each other every step of the way.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, 1865.
The beginning of the story is famous. Alice is sitting with her sister (unnamed in the book, but probably based on Lorina because Lorina was older than Alice) by the river, and she is bored by the book that her sister is reading because there are no pictures or conversations. As Alice is sitting there drowsily, she suddenly spots a white rabbit who seems like he’s running late for something. Curious to see where he is going, Alice follows him and falls down a rabbit hole which is like a deep well.
It takes her a long time to fall (causing Alice to wonder if she’ll pop out on the other side of the world eventually), and when she reaches the bottom, she finds herself in a dark hallway with a small door that is too small for her to go through. She manages to shrink herself by drinking from a mysterious bottle that says “Drink Me,” but she forgets the key to the door on the table above her, so she has to make herself bigger by eating cake from a box labeled “Eat Me.” When Alice is big, she cries so much, worrying that she is no longer herself but someone else she would rather not be because so many strange things are happening, that she makes a sea of tears, and when she is small again, she has to swim.
She meets a mouse, who swims to shore with her, where they meet a bunch of other animals (including the Dodo), who all seem somehow familiar to Alice (probably because they’re all parodies of people Dodgson and the Liddells knew – A Lory (type of parrot) argues with Alice and tells her that it’s older than she is and “must know better” than she does – possibly another reference to Alice’s older sister Lorina).
Alice and all of the animals are wet, so they try to dry themselves. The Mouse begins telling a very dry history of England (ha, ha), but that’s not good enough. The Dodo suggests that they have a Caucus-race (Alice’s childish misunderstanding of certain words and concepts leads to some of the jokes and puns in the story) to dry themselves out, and they all start running in a circle. After awhile, they all stop, and since there is no obvious winner, the Dodo decides that everyone has won and that everyone should receive a prize. Alice gives all the animals pieces of candy from her pocket. Alice’s prize is her own thimble, which is the only other thing she has in her pocket.
The Mouse starts to tell a story about why it hates dogs and cats, but it gives up when Alice doesn’t pay attention and becomes confused. Then, Alice makes the mistake of mentioning her pet cat and how it likes to chase mice and birds, and all of the other animals become offended and leave. However, the White Rabbit appears and, apparently mistaking Alice for his maid, asks her to bring him his gloves and fan. Alice goes into his house to look for them. Finding another bottle like the first one, she drinks it and becomes so big that she gets stuck in the house. The White Rabbit and his friend, Bill the Lizard, become alarmed at her large arm sticking out of the window and talk about burning the house down. They throw pebbles at Alice which turn into cakes, and Alice eats them to become smaller.
Alice makes her escape from the house, distracting a puppy much larger than she is by throwing a stick, and meets a caterpillar, who is sitting on a mushroom and smoking a hookah. The Caterpillar asks her to explain herself, but Alice says that she can’t because she isn’t really herself. Alice tells him that she keeps changes sizes and can’t remember things that she thinks she should remember. The Caterpillar asks her to recite the poem about Father William, and Alice recites Carroll’s parody version instead of the original poem. The Caterpillar agrees that Alice said the poem wrong. He asks Alice what size she would like to be and gets offended when Alice says that being only three inches tall is awful because that is the Caterpillar’s height. However, he does tell Alice that one side of the mushroom will make her taller and the other will make her shorter, not explaining which is which. Alice experiments with bits of mushroom until she finally becomes her normal size again. She keeps the mushroom pieces so that she can change size again, if she needs to. (Has anyone ever made a video game version of Alice in Wonderland where the player, as Alice, has to become bigger or smaller to get through different levels? If no one has, I think someone should.)
Alice soon makes herself small again so that she can go into a little house. Alice speaks to the footman of the house, who has just accepted an invitation for the Duchess to join the Queen for croquet. The footman rambles on about how there’s no use in Alice knocking because they’re both on the same side of the door and everyone inside is making too much noise to hear her. Not getting any straight answers about whether or not she’s allowed to go inside, Alice decides that the footman is an idiot and just lets herself in. The Duchess is sitting inside with a baby while her cook makes pepper soup. The Duchess’s cat, the Cheshire Cat, grins at Alice in a strange way. (The Cheshire cat comes from an expression that was popular in the 19th century – “grinning like a Cheshire cat” – although the origins of the phrase are uncertain. The Cheshire Cat wasn’t actually in the original version of the story.) Alice becomes alarmed when the cook begins throwing things at the Duchess and the baby, but the Duchess tells her to mind her own business. The Duchess is rough with the baby and throws it. Alice catches it and takes it away, worrying that the Duchess might kill it, but the baby turns into a pig, and Alice has to let it go. Alice thinks that it would have been a very ugly child and is better off as pig, which reminds her of other children she knows. (Ouch.)
Alice spots the Cheshire Cat and tries to ask it for directions. It directs her to the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, telling her that they’re both mad. (These also come from old expressions, “mad as a hatter” and “mad as a March hare.”) Alice says that she doesn’t want to “go among mad people”, but the Cheshire Cat says that can’t be helped because everyone is mad here, including Alice, because she wouldn’t be there if she wasn’t. He says that he will see her later when she plays croquet with the Queen. Before the Cat vanishes completely, he asks her what happened to the baby, and when Alice says that it turned into a pig, the Cat says, “I thought it would.”
Alice ends up at the tea party that the March Hare and the Mad Hatter are having with the Dormouse. (This tea party also was not part of Carroll’s original version of the story.) Although they tell her there is no room at the table for her, Alice notes that it’s a big table with a lot of chairs, so she sits down, uninvited. The conversation is confused, and the Mad Hatter tells Alice a riddle without knowing the answer to it himself. Alice says that he’s wasting time, and the Mad Hatter says that Time won’t do anything he wants now because he was accused of “murdering the time” when he sang “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!” before the Queen of Hearts (he messed up with the timing of the song), and now it’s always six o’clock and always tea time (that’s when people, including the Liddells, used to have tea time when the story was written). This gives them no time to clean up between tea times, so they just keep moving around the table. Alice tries to ask them what they do when they get back to their original positions at the table, but the March Hare changes the subject. The Dormouse begins telling the story of the three sisters who lived at the bottom of the Treacle Well and were learning to draw things that begin with the letter ‘M’. (As the March Hare says, “Why not?”) Alice tries to ask questions, and starts to say, “I don’t think-” The Mad Hatter says, “Then you shouldn’t talk.” Alice gets offended and decides to leave.
She finds a door that takes her back to the hallway where she was in the beginning, and she is able to open the door that she couldn’t before, which leads her into a beautiful garden. There, she finds some playing cards painting the roses. It turns out that they accidentally planted white roses, and the Queen wants red ones, so they’re just painting the roses so she won’t find out. The King and Queen of Hearts enter the garden, and the Queen begins demanding to know who Alice is and who the cards are. Alice gives a flippant remark, and the Queen screams, “Off with her head!” (Which, I think, is about the third time in the story that someone has said that. The Duchess was the first.) The King points out that Alice is only a child. The Queen invites Alice to play croquet. The White Rabbit explains that the Duchess isn’t coming because she’s supposed to be executed for boxing the Queen’s ears.
In this game of croquet, the mallets are flamingos (ostriches in the original version) and the balls are hedgehogs. The card soldiers have to bend themselves to be the arches. Alice can’t control her flamingo or hedgehog, nobody waits for their turn, and the Queen keeps ordering people’s heads to be taken off. Alice is very worried, and when the Cheshire Cat appears, Alice tells him that nobody is playing fairly. She notices that the Queen is listening, so she comments that the Queen is likely to win, which pleases her. The King says that he doesn’t like the Cat and wants him removed. The Queen orders its execution, but the Cheshire Cat makes its body disappear. The executioner doesn’t know what to do because he’s used to removing heads from bodies and can’t deal with a bodiless head. Alice suggests asking the Duchess because it’s her cat.
The Duchess seems glad to see Alice, and as Alice’s mind wanders, the two of them have a discussion about what the moral of the situation is. (Victorian children’s books often had a moral to the story. All of the Duchess’s and Alice’s suggested morals are proverbs that don’t fit the situation at all or are parodies on popular sayings. “Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves” is a parody of “Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves.”) The croquet game continues until everybody has been arrested except for the King, Queen, and Alice.
The Queen asks Alice if she’s met the Mock Turtle yet (which is supposedly what mock turtle soup is made from). Alice hears the King pardon everyone who was arrested. The Queen orders the Gryphon to take Alice to the Mock Turtle, and the Gryphon tells her that nobody ever really gets executed when the Queen orders an execution – it’s all just the Queen’s fancy.
When the Gryphon introduces Alice to the Mock Turtle, the Mock Turtle explains that he used to be a real turtle. He talks about his youth and the lessons he had when he was young. (The “extras” that he and Alice describe – French, music, and washing – are a parody of British boarding schools at the time and a play of the word “extra.” These things were not provided as free “extras”, and of course, washing isn’t a lesson – they would cost extra at boarding school and the additional costs would be added on to the fees.) The Gryphon and the Mock Turtle describe the Lobster-Quadrille dance to Alice, demonstrating it (while singing a song that is a parody of The Spider and the Fly). They ask Alice about her adventures, and she tells them everything that’s happened to her so far. When she mentions not being able to recite poems correctly, they have her try another, and she recites “‘Tis the voice of the Lobster” instead of “The Sluggard” by Isaac Watts. The Mock Turtle sings “Turtle Soup”, which is a parody of the song “Star of the Evening” by James M. Sayles.
Then, they hear that a trial is beginning. It turns out that it’s a trial for the Knave of Hearts who stole the Queen’s tarts. During the trial, which is basically nonsense, Alice feels herself growing larger. She is called to give evidence, but because she is becoming too tall, she is told to leave the court. The King says that it’s Rule Forty-Two and is the oldest rule in the book, but Alice points out that the oldest rule should be Rule One. The White Rabbit presents a letter, supposedly written by the defendant, which is a nonsense poem. (This one is a shortened version of another nonsense poem by Carroll which loosely parodied the song “Alice Gray” and isn’t recognizably close to the original here.) The King and Queen try to figure out what the poem means, but Alice doesn’t think it means anything. The Queen wants to give the sentence first and the verdict afterward, and Alice says that’s nonsense and she doesn’t care what they think because they’re just a pack of cards. The cards come flying at her, and Alice wakes up.
Apparently, the entire adventure was a dream, and Alice feel asleep on the river bank with her sister. Alice tells her sister about the dream, and her sister is enchanted. Alice’s sister imagines Alice in years to come, telling other children the same story.
The story of Alice in Wonderland is over 150 years old, as of this writing, and it has been reprinted in many different languages and editions. The edition that I’m using for this review is actually a combined edition with the sequel, Through the Looking Glass, from 1960 with added notes by Martin Gardner. I like editions with added notes because there is quite a lot to explain about both Lewis Carroll and his stories. This is going to be a very long review, and there are a number of things I want to explain before I even start summarizing the story.
Lewis Carroll, real name Charles Dodgson, was actually a mathematician at Oxford in England. His modern reputation is somewhat dubious because one of his hobbies was photography, and among the pictures he took were pictures of children, including many in various states of undress, some nude or partially nude and some in nightgowns. Charles Dodgson never married and never had any children of his own, and his sexuality (or relative lack thereof, as some have also speculated) is debatable. He was known for being friendly with the children of many of his friends and colleagues, and he enjoyed spending time with them, talking to them, telling them stories, and teaching them things … and taking pictures of them. The parents of the children knew about the photographs, including the nude ones, and gave permission for them to be taken, even keeping copies themselves.
Scholars debate about Dodgson’s photographs and the intention behind them. Not all of the pictures feature children who are undressed; some are just wearing ordinary clothes and others are dressed in fanciful costumes, like characters from stories. However, the nude or partially nude pictures are troubling because the children in those pictures were not babies, like the ones in modern Anne Geddes photographs. By modern standards, there would be no innocent reason for taking pictures of unclothed children like that. However, some scholars point out that photography was a relatively new hobby at that time, and people were taking pictures of things and other people in ways that people wouldn’t now because they were so eager to try out this new technology. People were realizing that they could use photography to immortalize loved ones in ways that they never could before. (Look up 19th century post-mortem photography only if you’re not easily startled or disgusted.)
There is some evidence that Victorian people were not scandalized by the idea of nude photographs of children, perhaps considering them a preservation of a state of innocence that would gradually disappear as the children grew up, almost like how some people today still photograph nude babies. Dodgson wasn’t the only one taking pictures of nude children at the time, and he apparently did so with the full knowledge and approval of the children’s parents, giving them photographs to keep. On the other hand, without knowing Dodgson’s real intentions, it’s difficult to say whether or not these pictures were really as innocent as they were once supposed, and some people consider that Dodgson may have taken advantage of the innocence of both the children and parents involved for his own purposes. After his death, some of his relatives removed some of the pages in his diaries, censoring them before they could be made public, so it’s difficult to say what they removed and why. This censorship could have had something to do with his photography hobby and how he felt about it, or it could be unrelated, maybe covering up his romantic feelings for someone else or maybe personal or professional quarrels that might have proved embarrassing to people still alive at the time he died. Without the missing diary pages, there isn’t really much to go on, and the speculation is really just speculation.
Not what Alice Liddell really looked like.
One of the favorite child friends of Dodgson’s was Alice Liddell, one of the daughters of the ecclesiastical dean of Christ Church, Oxford. Dodgson often visited the Liddell family and took Alice and her sisters on outings. On one of their outings together, when he and a friend took the Liddell girls on a boating trip on the Thames, Alice begged Dodgson to tell a story, and he began making up the story that became Alice in Wonderland, making Alice herself the heroine. Dodgson was still friends with the Liddell family at that point, although he later had a falling out with the family for reasons that are still unknown. The reasons for the falling out were apparently part of the pages removed from his diary, and some people have speculated that Dodgson may have behaved improperly toward one or more of the girls, although that’s not the only possibility; Dodgson may have had a different type of romantic indiscretion at that time, possibly involving the children’s governess or Alice’s older sister Lorina, and he may have also quarreled with the dean over college politics. Dodgson was a contemporary of another famous author of children’s fantasy books, George MacDonald. (I’ll be talking about him more when I get to The Light Princess and The Princess and the Goblin.) The two of them were friends, and MacDonald was the one who urged Dodgson to publish Alice in Wonderland after his own children read it and liked it. (MacDonald’s children were also among the ones photographed by Dodgson.)
This documentary has more details about the history Lewis Carroll, his photography, and his writing. Overall, I think that probably the most accurate answer in the documentary to the question of what was really going on in Oxford in the mid-1800s is “Who knows?” Some people gave much more definite-sounding responses to the question, but there are equally vehement opinions that take completely opposite views of the situation, and with the obvious gaps in the available information, I don’t think that level of certainty is warranted. The documentary covers various viewpoints and ends with a photograph that is potentially damaging to Lewis Carroll’s reputation, one that would have been scandalous even in the Victorian era if it was really taken by Carroll (it wasn’t proven definitely, but the experts’ conclusions were that seems likely or at least credible, and its time period and quality are in keeping with Carroll’s work) because the subject of the photograph (possibly Lorina Liddell) would have been too old for the photograph to be considered “innocent” even back then. The girl in that photograph would have been above the minimum age of consent for her time but still below the age of consent for ours, making that photograph suspicious by everyone’s standards.
My Reaction
This is not sexy, Martin Grotjahn.
My theory about the issue? I kind of doubt that Carroll was a pedophile. Kind of. Partly, my reasoning is based on listening to and reading the different arguments on each side, and it seems to me that those who express doubt about the accusation have more concrete evidence to support their points (they reference other photographers who took pictures similar to Carroll’s, they discuss the age of consent in the Victorian era, they note inconsistencies in the reported ages of Carroll’s female friends, they provide details about different sources of information, etc.) than the people who insist that he “obviously” and “without doubt” was sexually attracted to little girls, who seem to be largely reactionary and make I statements like “I can’t believe” that there was anything innocent going on and “it makes me angry.” (Some of the people interviewed the Timeline Documentary speak like that.)
Between the two choices, I’d be more inclined to go with reasoned arguments and cited sources more than gut reactions. My reviews here on this site are full of my personal feelings and gut reactions on a number of topics because that is the nature of opinion-based reviews, but I’ve had training in evaluating historical sources and writing research papers. Feelings change over time, and you can’t cite gut reactions as evidence in a thesis paper. The first essay that postulated that Alice in Wonderland may contain sexual symbolism, written by A.M.E. Goldschmidt in the 1930s, may have actually been written as a parody of contemporary psycho-analysis, and some of the “obvious” sexual symbols cited in later essays and analysis make no sense to me. In 1947, a psychoanalyst named Martin Grotjahn said that the scene where Alice’s neck suddenly grows longer is a symbol “almost too obvious for words.” No, it’s really not. I had to sit and think for awhile about why a person with a giraffe-like neck would be considered sexy, and then, it occurred to me that he’s probably really thinking of a piece of male anatomy instead of a girl’s neck, which doesn’t make any sense for the context of the story. Even now, I’m still not completely sure if that’s what he’s really getting at, and if I have to ponder it that much, it’s not that “obvious.” It’s about as bad as all the “that’s what she said” jokes I’ve heard. Quite a lot of unrelated things can be made to sound raunchy if you add “that’s what she said” after them, and the more times you hear that, the more annoying and less funny that kind of joke becomes. When a scholar does something like that in literary criticism, I’ve noticed that people are reluctant to question it because they assume that the scholar knows something they don’t, but I really don’t understand that comment and I don’t mind saying that I don’t think it makes much sense.
Also, I can’t help but notice in the descriptions of Carroll’s interactions with the Liddell girls that he visited them in different locations and took them on outings in different locations and that they were in the company of different people during these visits. The Timeline documentary mentions that the children’s governess would have been with them, even if the parents weren’t, and on the day that he took them on the boat trip where he began composing Alice in Wonderland, they were accompanied by his friend, Robinson Duckworth. I’m not a specialist in Carroll’s life, but it isn’t clear to me, from their descriptions, whether or not he was ever completely alone with the girls or with any child in particular, with no other witnesses. He may have been, but it seems to me from others’ descriptions that they were often chaperoned by different people. If some form of abuse or suspicious behavior were going on, it would be more difficult to evade or fool multiple witnesses. In 1932, when Alice was 80 years old, she went to New York to receive an honorary doctorate from Columbia University for her participation in the creation of a piece of iconic children’s literature and to take part in a centennial celebration of Dodgson’s birthday. I would think that if she had bad memories of Dodgson, she would have been less likely to take such a long journey at her advanced age in order to attend this celebration. On the other hand, that’s still just a guess of mine, and the suspicions about Dodgson, now raised, really can’t be proven either way. It still remains a possibility, and that’s why I only “kind of” think that Dodgson’s intentions might have been innocent.
In the end, I don’t have a firm theory so much as a conclusion: if you need to have definite answers, without debate, qualification, or reservation, in order to acquire knowledge, history probably isn’t your field. My first degree was in history, and I’ve noticed so many times that people discount historians and historical knowledge because the field doesn’t make firm, definite statements on many debatable aspects of history like this, and times when historians and private individuals have tried, they have often been proven wrong in some respect. However, that’s exactly the point: serious, professional historians don’t make definite statements unless and until they have definite proof because they know that there’s always a chance that they could be proven wrong at a later date when new information surfaces. It’s happened before, so true professionals are usually cautious. It’s not that they don’t know anything, it’s just that they’re aware of the limits of their knowledge, and they are careful in how they present what they really know in order to prevent people from drawing the wrong conclusions too quickly. It would be irresponsible to tell people that something is definitely true when the circumstances aren’t definite, so instead, they tell people about the information they know they have and the things are “possible,” “likely,” or “probable,” which irritates people who expect definite answers from experts. We know some things, and we also are aware of what we don’t know and what pieces we’re missing, which is also very important.
It doesn’t matter so much in modern times that we can’t completely prove Dodgson/Carroll’s intentions regarding his photography one way or the other as that we understand that the controversy exists. Without the diary pages, which would have been proof of his thoughts and intentions (and which were probably destroyed long ago), the most we could say is that the photographs suggest a possibility. Because, as scholars have pointed out, Dodgson wasn’t the only person who took photographs of children like that without apparently causing scandal, I wouldn’t say that it’s “definite” that his behavior or intentions were inappropriate. The final photograph in the documentary above is bad, but because they never proved definitely that he made it, I’d hesitate to call it “probable,” even though it seemed to me that the documentary makers were fishing for that so they could have a compelling revelation for their documentary. I don’t know for certain whether Charles Dodgson was or was not a pedophile, but I do know that it’s possible that he may have been one or at least had feelings or urges in that direction. There are enough indications that it remains possible, even though it’s unprovable. If you’re okay accepting as fact that an idea is “possible,” but probably not “probable” and certainly not “certain” … you could do well studying history, and just getting through my explanation (if you managed all that) means that you’re more than ready to tackle the logic puzzles of Alice in Wonderland. They’re kind of like that when you turn them around in your head.
Parodies, In-Jokes, and Literary References
There are a couple of things that are easier to prove about Alice in Wonderland than whether or not Lewis Carroll may have been attracted to the real Alice, and these more easily provable aspects of the story are what make it particularly interesting for me. First, parts of the Alice stories are actually parodies of popular stories and rhymes from the 19th century. Dodgson/Carroll particularly liked to poke fun at didactic stories and rhymes that were used to teach children useful lessons and morals. He liked to twist those more serious stories and rhymes into things that were basically nonsense. Modern readers are more likely to focus on the nonsense and less likely to notice the parodies in the Alice stories because they are not familiar with the original rhymes and stories being parodied, as the original readers of these books would have been. The original readers would have known immediately what he was making fun of. For example, “How Doth the Little Crocodile” is a parody on “Against Idleness and Mischief” by Isaac Watts, which is about the importance of using time well. “You are Old, Father William” or “Ballad of Father William” is a parody on “The Old Man’s Comforts and How He Gained Them” by Robert Southey, which gives advice to the young about how to behave so that they may enjoy a happier old age. These types of poems would have been given to Victorian children as something to read and memorize during their lessons, and so they would have noticed that Carroll was poking fun at them. That’s why I like editions of the Alice books that come with extra notes, pointing out the parodies and original references, so I can be in on the joke. On the other hand, modern readers will have no trouble recognizing the source of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat” as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” or “The Star” by Jane Taylor (first published in 1806, although modern readers think of it as the song instead of the poem, and not all of them know all the verses). It’s pretty common throughout history for bored students to make jokes about the things that they’re required to learn in their lessons, and many of these poems are old enough for Carroll himself to have learned them when he was a student. It’s possible that he may have started playing with parodies of his school lessons or popular songs long before he started writing Alice in Wonderland, although that’s just my personal guess, based on my own school years. I did things like that, and some of my friends did, too. (People older than me also remember On Top of Spaghetti and Joy to the World, the School Burned Down – not Carroll parodies and much cruder than his work, but examples of the way kids can twist things that are commonly known for the amusement of their friends.)
The second important point about the Alice stories is that they are full of puzzles, riddles, and word games. Remember that Lewis Carroll /Charles Dodgson was really a mathematician and scholar, and he liked to play with logic puzzles and word games. There are a lot of puns in Alice in Wonderland, some of which reference places in and around Oxford, like the Treacle Well where three sisters supposedly live – Lacie (anagram of Alice), Elsie (her older sister was Lorina Charlotte – L.C. Liddell), and Tillie (her younger sister Edith’s nickname). Alice in Wonderland is full of inside jokes, riddles, and puns like this. There are many in-jokes for people who are familiar with places in Oxford, and there are many in-jokes that Dodgson and the girls had with each other. Some of the strange characters in Wonderland are apparently parodies of people that Dodgson and the Liddells actually knew. Dodgson himself explained that he is the Dodo in the story. Dodgson spoke with a stutter, and when he would introduce himself to people, his name would often come out, “Do-Do-Dodgson.” “Dodo” Dodgson was an in-joke that the Liddells would have recognized.
Part of the trouble with analyzing Alice in Wonderland is that it’s possible to take it too far. Some of the parodies are obvious to people who are familiar with 19th century literature and poetry, and the references to places in Oxford are noticeable to people who are familiar with Oxford, but there are so many in-jokes in the story that might not be possible for modern readers to understand them all because we might not know all the in-jokes that Dodgson and the Liddells had with each other. So many strange and surreal things happen in the story that it’s possible to read too much into all of it. Some of it may have simply been meant to be silly references to other stories that Dodgson told the children before Alice’s story, long-standing in-jokes, or random silliness, and may not have any deeper meaning than that. When I read other reviews and analysis of the stories, I sometimes get the feeling like the critics are trying too hard, reaching and reading too much into everything. There’s a lot to enjoy about the story just as it is, without over-analyzing it to death, looking for hidden psychology that might not actually be there because a major part of it was based on parody and in-jokes in the beginning. If you want to spend some time appreciating the logic puzzles and word play and comparing the parody poems to their originals, that’s fine, but it’s also fine to just enjoy the book for the imaginative nonsense. It’s a long, strange trip, and I think it’s perfectly okay to just sit back and enjoy.
Note About the Illustrations and Original Version
Something else I’d like to mention before starting on the story itself is that the Alice who is depicted in the classic illustrations is not actually the original Alice Liddell. The illustrated Alice is a blond girl, but Alice Liddell was a brunette with shorter hair. Lewis Carroll apparently suggested that the illustrator use a picture of Mary Hilton Badcock as the model for the book illustrations, and Mary Hilton Badcock did look similar to the finished illustrations, although it’s also possible that the illustrator used a different child with a similar appearance as his model.
Also, the story as Carroll originally wrote it was called Alice’s Adventures Underground. Carroll did his own illustrations in the original version, showing Alice more like the real Alice, and there were a number of differences in the story. For example, in the original version, the White Rabbit drops a nosegay of flowers, which Alice smells, and that causes her to shrink, something that didn’t happen in the later version. If you want to read the original, it’s available through Project Gutenberg.
Is It Soup Yet? By Ane Weber, Ron Krueger, and Tony Salerno, 1986.
When Benny enters the Land of Pleasant Dreams, he meets Ricrac Rabbit. Ricrac is trying to cook something for his friends, but he’s worried because the only thing he knows how to make is broccoli soup, and he doesn’t know if his friends will like it because they all have different tastes.
Because Benny’s father is a chef, he suggests that Ricrac try his recipe for black bean broth because everyone loves that when his father makes it. Ricrac decides to give it a try, adding the black beans to his broccoli soup.
However, as each of Ricrac’s friends arrive, they also decide to bring their favorite ingredients with them. Bobbin the Horse brings barley, and Threads the Bear brings blueberries. Then, Snips the Dog brings a bone, and Lacey the Lamb brings buttercups. In an effort to please everyone, Ricrac adds each ingredient to the soup.
When they finally try it, the soup is horrible. At first, everyone argues about which ingredient ruined the soup, but Benny realizes that their real mistake wasn’t trying the soup according to Ricrac’s original recipe. When they try the broccoli soup as it was supposed to be made, without the extra ingredients, it’s really good.
Moral: Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth.
The point of the story is that trying to please everyone often means pleasing no one. When planning a project, if you try to stretch it in too many different directions, it’s difficult to accomplish anything because you’re not focusing on anything in particular. In the end, you have to pick one way and stick with it, focusing on what you can do best.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. This book was made into an episode for the tv series with puppets. Sometimes, you can find it or clips of it on YouTube.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 