Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism | Carroll, Lewis - Michael Irwin (essay date 2000)

Michael Irwin (essay date 2000)

SOURCE: Irwin, Michael. “Alice: Reflections and Relativities.” In Rereading Victorian Fiction, edited by Alice Jenkins and Juliet John, pp. 115-28. Houndmills, England: Palgrave, 2000.

[In the following essay, Irwin explores the theme of instability in the Alice stories.]

The Alice books are centrally concerned with instability. In Wonderland the heroine suffers alarming shifts of size. In Through the Looking-Glass (1871) there is much straightforward physical disequilibrium. When the White Knight is sliding down the poker Alice notes that ‘he balances very badly’.¹ He and the Red Knight repeatedly fall off their horses. Humpty-Dumpty is doomed to tumble from his wall and defy re-assemblage. In both stories there are strange translations and dissolutions. The Cheshire Cat vanishes and reappears. A baby becomes a pig. The White Queen turns into a sheep, the Red...

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