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For Tuesday: Finish Alice in Wonderland!

Magritte, The Portrait (1935)


Sorry for the delay--I forgot to post these yesterday! But go ahead and try to finish the book for Tuesday since it's pretty short, and we'll have one more set of questions to round it out. On Thursday, we'll watch an excerpt from a recent adaptation of Alice in Wonderland to discuss ideas associated with your Mid-Term Paper. 

Answer two of the following:

Q1: How subversive should we consider the book, especially as it consistently parodies monarchs (this is written under Queen Victoria, after all), moral poetry, social norms, education, and even the courts of law. Is this all just cheeky nonsense to amuse children? Or is it also aimed at getting a chuckle (or a gasp) from the adults reading it aloud to their sons and daughters? An example that might support this?

Q2: How does Alice's approach to Wonderland change throughout the novel? As she grows in size, does she also 'grow' in other ways as well? Is there a hidden moral lesson in the character of Alice, perhaps for the 'real' Alice to pick up on?

Q3: In Chapter IX, the Duchess tells Alice to "Be what you would seem to be--or, if you'd like it put more simply--'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise." Though this sounds like nonsense, why might this support a certain view of British society we've seen in the other books in class?

Q4: Recently, the books of Roald Dahl (author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, among others) has come under fire for offering damaging characters and stories to children, and many of his books have been slightly re-written so as not to offend young readers (substituting "ugly" for "unpleasant," for instance). As one of the first true classics of children's literature, how might Alice in Wonderland come under fire for offensive stereotypes, and triggering scenes and language? Would the 'mad' Hatter and March Hare pass muster today? Or the homicidal Queen? 

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