Discussion Topic
The critique and reflection of Victorian society in Through the Looking Glass
Summary:
Through the Looking Glass critiques and reflects Victorian society by highlighting its rigid social structures and absurdities through the surreal adventures of Alice. The characters and events mirror the often arbitrary and illogical nature of Victorian norms, emphasizing issues such as conformity, authority, and the struggle for individual identity within a highly stratified society.
How does Carroll criticize Victorian society in Through the Looking Glass?
Through the Looking Glass is a satirical work in which author Lewis Carroll strongly criticizes Victorian society by means of disguised characters and absurd events. Throughout the novel, Carroll makes fun of authority—especially England’s highest authority figures, including the queen herself. More generally, he also goes after the hypocrisy that seems an inevitable by-product of the country’s rigid social hierarchy.
In a wide variety of ways, Carroll applies the overall conceit of inversion to call attention to the dangers and absurdities of Victorian society. Alice finds herself in a backwards world. One key element of the symbolic inversion is Alice’s wisdom and maturity, which offer a stark contrast to the foolish behavior in which the adults—and the nonhuman characters—consistently indulge.
The character of the Queen of Hearts or Red Queen is generally understood to satirize Queen Victoria. Carroll’s critique partly addresses the queen herself but more broadly applies to the...
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concept of monarchy as a system of government. The queen’s distance from her subjects and the daily workings of the kingdom are apparent through her excessive concern with the missing dessert. This obsession leads to her putting the knave on trial.
The seriousness of the critique of the government is most evident in this trial scene. The jury members are both ignorant and uninterested in the proceedings. The queen declares that the sentence must be pronounced first. When Alice sensibly objects to this travesty, she risks her own life. The queen declares, as she does on other occasions, “Off with her head!” The relevance of the royalty is dismissed with Alice’s declaration: “you’re nothing but a pack of cards.”
How does Through the Looking Glass reflect and critique the Victorian age?
Through The Looking Glass both embodies and satirizes Victorian values. Alice is both the model Victorian child and an example of how the rules of Victorian society are nonsensical and arbitrary. There are several examples.
For instance, Alice's encounter with Humpty Dumpty highlights this nonsensical quality and focuses on language as a key element. Humpty's self importance and Alice's deference to him are part of a larger critique of Victorian society, but it is his "interpretation" of the Jabberwocky poem, in which he authoritatively defines nonsense words, calls into question not only the self-importance of intellectuals but also the meaning of texts themselves (including the one he appears in).
Another example can be found in Alice's dinner with the Red Queen, in which she is introduced to a leg of mutton, only to be forbidden from eating it by the Queen, who insists that you can't eat "anyone you've been introduced to." The Queen, as the symbol of moral authority in the book, is shown to be a hypocrite. She criticizes Alice's manners and permits others to criticize her too, while her own manners are barbaric in the extreme. The same goes for Victorian morality, Carroll suggests; like many Victorian children, Alice is told to "do as I say, not as I do."