Analysis Of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland By Lewis Carroll Using The Collective Unconscious Theory
There was a conclusion to the Victorian Era which is commonly signified as the “fin de siècle”, in French this phrase means “the end of an age.” The time period that this phrase is referring to is the closing decades of the 19th century, when England was transitioning from Victorianism into the 20th century to what we now know as modernism.
Around the time between the 1800s and 1890s was dated the beginning of a Victorian society that was taking much more notice of the severe discrepancy between the conservative rules of Victorianism as well as the new world evidenced by post-Darwinism, science and social justice. There was a great disappointment about how astringent the Victorian social code was commanded to extensive diversion throughout the Victorian society.
Due to the extensive social discontent, the final decades of the 19th century, they had witness a shift towards new artistic styles, modern approaches, and shifting gender beliefs. The Imaginative and literary movements acknowledged as Aestheticism and decadence aided smoothening the transition from Victorian to modern. Modernism in the context on how it relates to the Victorian era, it does not necessarily mean what we think as “modern” in our present society, although the transition did stain the beginning of a moving social and economic ethics and ways of contemplation these factors have assisted them in guiding us to the current life that we live today.
Within the history of the English literature as previously mentioned, this era saw and increase of most of the best novelist of their time. The novelist that I will be specifically focusing on is Lewis Carroll.
Charles Dodgson was born on 27th January 1832 in Daresbury, Cheshire, England. He used to write and create games when he was a child. At the age of twenty he obtained a studentship at Christ church and was later appointed the position of a mathematic lecturer. Dodgson was known to be quite shy. However, he took pleasure in creating stories that were aimed for children. His collection includes “Alice’s Adventures in wonderland” and “Through the looking glass”, these books were published under his pen name Lewis Carroll. This story originally was intended for Lorina, Alice, and Edith Liddell.
The story is mainly focused on Alice, a little girl who falls asleep in an inceptual amount of dreams, when she follows the white rabbit down it’s rabbit hole. She ends up having astonishing, occasionally, odd adventures with a sure amount of inconsistent and eccentric individuals, constantly changing sizes, and questioning who she is supposed to be.
The events that take place in the story gives you an outline about a child’s own growth and progression throughout childhood and puberty. According to Charles Frey and John Griffin, “Alice is engaged in a romance quest for her own identity and growth, for some understanding of logic, rules, the games people play, authority, time and death.” Now, when you delve into the book with this perspective in mind, it opens up the mind to different interpretations of each events and characters within the story.
Alice’s call to adventure initially started when she had laid her eyes on the white rabbit, she had witnessed him running pass her exclaiming “Oh dear I shall be late!” (Lewis Carroll 9)it is in that instant Alice’s curiosity gets the better of her. She could not comprehend the fact that the rabbit was talking, as a result of her curiosity she chases after the rabbit and ends up falling into a large rabbit hole. In what seem like an eternity of free falling for Alice, she reaches the ground. Alice yet again spots the rabbit and notices how he appears to be going mad behind a small door.
Now, that Alice is within wonderland she has to go through varies trials that are presented throughout the duration of her time in wonderland. The first challenge was Alice trying to get herself through the door, because Alice is not originally from wonderland, her size would have been too big for her to fit through the door. She is presented with a key and a bottle that is labelled “Drink Me” on the table. Alice takes a swallow of it and before she could even make sense of anything she began shrinking, however she realises that she had forgotten the key that opens the door to wonderland on the table.
She then ends up discovering a small glass box that is located under the table, inside the box was a cake that was marked with the phrase “Eat Me”. Alice proceeds to consume the cake and starts growing to the size of a giant. Panic-stricken Alice starts crying and whiffing; she has now shrunk back to a tiny size. Unfortunately, now there is another challenge because Alice ends up crying to the point where she is literally “swimming in a pool” of her own tears. Fortunately, she overcomes this obstacle and makes her way into the bizarre world of Wonderland. The third trial that Alice appears to go through is when she is approaching a garden and discovers three gardeners, painting white roses red and being the polite child, she offers to aid the gardeners in this task. Displaying how much of a caring person she really is.
When Alice encounter the caterpillar, who is supposed to represent the mentor within the story, who appeared to help Alice the most, he advices her how to get the height back to normal by eating the mushrooms. He states that “one side will make you taller, and the other side will make you shorter.” (Lewis Carroll 43) The caterpillar then gives Alice a new viewpoint and aids her in discovering who she is supposed to be, “who are you?” said the caterpillar. “I—I hardly know sir, just at the present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.” (Lewis Carroll 39) This is the moment when Alice comes to the realisation that she is not the same person as she used to be, she has grown from her experiences and now has a new perspective on the world.
Alice is now in a predicament when the Queen of Hearts forces her to play croquet alongside her. As a result, from this game Alice ends up winning the croquet match. Which causes the Queen to burst out in a fit of rage and sentencing Alice to a trial. While being on trial, accidently Alice ends up knocking down a jury box, that is full of animals. The King and Queen order Alice to then leave then quotes rule 42 “All persons more than a mile height to leave the court.” Stubbornly, Alice refuses to listen and stands up to the Queen by shouting, “Who cares for you?” (Lewis Carroll 187) Alice finally musters up the bravery to stand up to the queen, the person who she feared the most.
Now we have the returning aspect of Alice’s adventure. Now that Alice has overcome these challenges it is time for her to go home. She ends, up returning into her own world with her still laying on her sister’s own lap. She ponders on the peculiar dream she had woken from. Telling her sister about her odd dream. Now, in order for Alice to have actually escape Wonderland she would have had to come to the realisation that she had already decided to leave but she needed to realise that she always had a way out of wonderland and the only way she could get out is by waking up.
The theory that was used to analyse this was indeed Joseph Campbell’s theory which was based around Carl Jung’s theory. Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell are known to be the greatest explorers of psychoanalytical and mythological origins for human and social behaviour.
Carl Jung had expanded his work of Sigmund Freud and the unconscious mind to further emphasize the mythological forces working within the individual to then form his or her personality. Jung created the concept of archetype and collective unconscious to explain the analogy of dream images and situations found in people. Jung had believed that individual and social behaviour, thoughts have their origins in a common palette of characters and situations the mind retains from early human consciousness development. To Jung, the archetypical hero represents the psyche’s quest for individuation, the process that makes the person unique.
Joseph Campbell had built on Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious to incorporate all the worlds of mythologies. Campbell had studied world’ religion, art, and stories, and had discovered there were common threads throughout all, including the hero. Campbell believed that mythology is the collective “dream” of mankind, the “song of the universe.” Campbell’s work brings out mankind’s common search, personally and socially, meaning the truth that’s been carried out through the ages.
