The meaning of both the food and drinking imagery in “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass”

Introduction

From the beginning of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, food and drink play an important role. Alice follows a white rabbit down his rabbit hole and ends up falling into a well. Regardless, she manages to obtain a bottle labeled Orange Marmalade and is unmistakably disappointed when she discovers that it is empty (Carroll, Lewis. 2011). Thinking over how far she’ll go, her main question is if the others will remember to give Dinah the feline her ’saucer of a drain’ at break time. In this article, we will discuss the main lessons that can be drawn from Lewis Carroll’s two novels.

The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party

By a wide margin the most popular feast of Alice’s undertakings, however, is the Mad Hatter’s casual get-together. To the cutting edge peruser, the casual get-together seems to be a foolish disorder, with everybody contending and evolving places, a napping dormouse, unworthy puzzles stories of three sisters living at the base of the treacle well. Carroll has made a set-bit of the foolish, that has been rethought and reproduced in everything from movies to strip toons for each new age. In center and high society family units, kids once in a while ate with grown-ups and an imperative supper in their eye was the nursery tea.

The Breakdown of Victorian Dining Etiquette

A grown-up would supervise the supper. Most likely the caretaker paid to take care of them or, if Mother was there, she chooses who got the opportunity to eat what and when, yet the Mad Hatter’s Tea gathering of Chapter 7 appears to break pretty much every one of the guidelines (Grotjahn 32). Right off the bat, the Dormouse is snoozing at the table. The Mad Hatter and the March Hare are laying their elbows on him. Resting elbows anyplace was entirely illegal. The visitors are not sitting in a systematic manner around the table, however, are altogether jammed in one corner. One’s position at the table was crucially essential. The Hatter and the Hare are yelling. They should, presumably, be biting quietly.

Victorian Concerns about Food Contamination

When we find that the Mad Hatter has put the best spread into the precision of his pocket watch, we understand that the very texture of Victorian culture is at risk! Filthy mugs and plates aren’t washed, essentially cleared out. A spoon is utilized to point with; a drain container thumped over. There’s singing, yelling, making of ’individual comments’ and confusion. Concerning pouring hot tea on another’s nose, this, under more traditional conditions, would have prompted a youngster being sent to bed without to such an extent as another chomp to eat. What’s more, the Mad Hatter, March Hare, and Dormouse do carry on like kids, with the Dormouse as the most youthful. At the point when Alice leaves, before the tea is finished, she sees the Mad Hatter and the March Hare endeavoring to stuff the poor Dormouse into the tea kettle. The rulebook of Victorian feasting manners appears to have been torn up, as well as stuck in the mouth and unceremoniously gulped.

The Symbolism of Food in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Despite the fact that the Victorians might not have anticipated that would discover a mouse in their tea kettles, all through the nineteenth century, there were genuine worries about what precisely was in their nourishment. Deceitful pastry specialists had been discovered putting anything from floor sweepings to arsenic in their flour to mass out their bread. Children’s desserts infrequently contained mortar of Paris. In the 1850s sustenance, debasement was explored by an administration advisory group and intensely announced in national daily papers. The training turned into a general wellbeing concern, bringing about mass shock and an assurance that something ought to be finished. Alice was composed in 1862 in the midst of this tension, so there’s an unmistakable plausibility these contemporary disclosures impacted how Carroll treats nourishment in the novel. Of all the nourishment and drink that shows up on Alice’s pages, quite a bit of it is debased somehow: tulip globules are stirred up with onions, and tarts and soups are tainted with sniffle prompting ground pepper. Moreover, we should not overlook one of the best sustenance and drink taboos which still stand today: drinking the substance of a container of unidentified fluid. Alice does only that. She explains that the mark on the container says DRINK ME. The two words jump off the page of Carroll’s unique original copy.

Growth and Transformation in “Through the Looking-Glass”

In through the looking glass, Alice keeps changing measure. When she initially arrives in Wonderland, she’s too huge to go through the little entryway into the lovely garden; after Alice drinks from the secretive bottle, she’s also small to reach the key. When she eats the different cake, she’s enormous, yet the White Rabbit’s fan makes her little once more (Carroll, 45). In the rabbit’s home, another contains secret warm makes her swell and stall out in the room; stones tossed in the window swing to cakes and eating them shrivels her. Now, Alice meets the Caterpillar, who shows her to utilize pieces of mushroom to control her size snacking a bit from one side to get bigger and a bit from the opposite side to get littler. Exactly when we believe she’s at long last responsible for her size, she starts developing in the court, getting bigger and bigger until the point when she, in the long run, understands that the characters around her are only a pack of cards.

The Symbolism of Size and Growth

We need to make the unique association between size, age, and development ( Lough, 305-315) Indeed, even back in reality, Alice is always showing signs of change in estimate since she’s a developing young lady, getting somewhat more excellent and a little more continuously established. This is a subjective procedure that she can’t control; all youngsters grow up. It’s likewise a procedure that makes Lewis Carroll, who was attached to kids however not of grown-ups, apprehensive. Alice changes measure and changes in connection to everybody around her because Carroll needs to demonstrate to us that growing up is capricious, some of the time merely influencing you to feel cumbersome, here and there putting you or others around you in threat. In Through the Looking-Glass, Alice doesn’t change in estimate, in spite of the fact that the chess pieces and amusement themselves develop substantially. In any case, Carroll attracts our thoughtfulness regarding her age and procedure of developing.

Contrasting Wonderland and the Looking-Glass World

In conclusion, through glass looking is like Wonderland, but maybe not the same. Wonderland is particular, yet Looking-glass world is quite from multiple points of view. The White Queen’s memory works in the two headings, and she encounters time backward, seeping before she pricks herself with a stick. The print in books is in reverse, and with a specific end goal to remain still you need to run angrily. Through the Looking-glass is conflicting with these various types of in reverse ness. Alice doesn’t need to race to stop it simply happens once because it’s amusing.

References

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s adventures in wonderland. Broadview Press, 2011.

Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., 2009.

Grotjahn, Martin. “About the Symbolization of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” American Imago 4.4 (1947): 32.

Lough, George J. ”Alice in Wonderland and cognitive development: teaching with examples.” Journal of Adolescence 6.4 (1983): 305-315.