ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

Everyone knows Alice but not everybody knows how Alice was created or much about the writer of the book. Charles Dodgson better known as Lewis Carroll was born in Cheshire in 1832. He was an English writer, logician, mathematician and photographer. When he was eleven his family moved to Yorkshire, where he stayed for 25 years. Since he was a child he showed an open mind. He was very intelligent and when he was seven, he read an allegorical religious novel called “ The Pilgrim’s Progress”. He suffered from stuttering and that caused him many problems to socialize. At age twelve he was sent to study in a private school in Richmond. He was a genius, in fact his Maths teacher, R.B
Major, said that Dodgson was the best student he had ever had. In 1856 he became interested in photography. He photographed children mostly and his most favorite model was Alexandra Kitchin. He tried to portray her in a bathing suit, but he couldn’t. Another of his friends were Alice Liddell and her sister Lorine Edith. On the 4th July 1862 Dodgson decided to take a trip on the Thames with a friend and the little girls. The children asked him to tell them a story and he created the wonderland and made the little Alice the main character of his story. On Christmas day of 1864 Dodgson gave Alice the manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Underground. The first edition was published in 1865.

Do you know that … ?

1- Alice wasn’t blond as she appeared in the movies but brown.

2- The word “curious” ,said by Alice twenty- one times, was attributed by Oxford English dictionary to Carroll.

3- Lewis Carroll suffered from a rare disease. It caused him hallucinations and it altered  the real sizes of the objects. This disease was called “Alice in wonderland syndrome”

4- In1923 Alice Liddell sold the manuscript for £15, 400 .

5- In the last chapter of……. There is a reference to Alice Liddell: it is an acrostic, all the first letters of the every line compose the name “ Alice’s Liddell”

THE MAIN CHARACTERS

Who is the Mad Hatter?

The Hatter is a character in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and in its sequel, Through the Looking Glass. Generally in Carroll novels we never find him defined as the Mad Hatter, but only as a Hatter (Hatter) or the diminutive of Hatta. In fact Carroll does not describe in detail the physical appearance of the Mad Hatter, but he focuses on his behavior , his personality and his relationship with Alice. In Carroll’s novels, drawings he is illustrated with a large cylinder with "in this style 10/6" written on. It indicates the price of the hat in the old English coinage.

The character of the Mad Hatter comes from a pun created by Carroll. In Victorian England there was a way of saying, "mad as a hatter" ,an expression born from the mercury’s effects used in the processing of tissues. The Mad Hatter lives in Wonderland. In the first novel, the Mad Hatter is the subject of the Queen of Hearts. He is a failed Hatter who spends his time drinking, eating and lounging. In the past he had participated in the Song Festival singing “Twinkle, twinkle little bat”. Time, offended by the performance, stopped itself at hour 5 for him and his friends, so Hatter lives perpetually at tea-time and participates constantly in parties given by March Hare. He loves clocks and he has one which does not mark the hours, but only the day and month.

Alice

Alice is a fictional character and the protagonist of Lewis Carroll's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland . A mid-Victorian era child, Alice goes on an underground adventure after accidentally falling down a rabbit hole into Wonderland. She is a loving and gentle girl, she is generous to all. She is an innocent and imaginative girl but also witty and intelligent.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which takes place on 4th May, Alice is seven years old. “She is pure and simple, just like a white canvas” says Carroll. She is “transparent” and we can see the world around her through her eyes.

The Cheshire Cat

The Cheshire Cat is probably the most famous character of the book. It’s a fundamental character: after all, have you ever heard of a Wonderland without a Cheshire Cat? The apparitions of the Cheshire Cat are short and quick. From his hit-and- tat with Alice, we know he is witty, shrewd and concrete. The Cheshire Cat has no special relationships with the other characters, and it seems he doesn’t care about what happens in Wonderland.

The Queen of Hearts

The Queen of Hearts is the first antagonist of the book. Carroll describes her as “ a blind fury”. She has an ungovernable passion. She has only one solution for any problem: to cut people’s heads. Her greatest passion is croquet. But this a very special version of the game. She plays with flamingos instead of bats and hedgehogs instead of balls.

Alice meets the queen and the whole royal family during one of these game-days.

Lucrezia & Angela