The eternal wonder of Alice in Wonderland

By Philip Hensher Published: 6:50AM GMT 02 Mar 2010

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A middle-class child, even one innate in the 1960s, had one thing drilled in to him or her. When a grown-up was good sufficient to perform you as a guest, you constructed a protocol word when you left: "Thank-you-for-having-me-I"ve-had-a-lovely-time." Possibly the same word survives, even now, between old-hat tendencies of parenthood.

So suppose the pleasure for a kid when he read, in a book published 100 years prior to he was born, a seven-year-old heroine"s thoughts on withdrawal a tea-party. "At any rate I"ll never go there again. It"s the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life."

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The hosts a Mad Hatter, a Mar Hare and a Dormouse handle abominably, initial charity their seven-year-old guest wine, and afterwards revelation her there isn"t any. "Then it wasn"t really polite of you to suggest it," Alice says, prior to an evidence breaks out about who has behaved worse.

Even as a child, one could see that amicable encounters had rules, and that these were being joyously damaged on each side. The dual Alice books are smashing bold assaults on appropriateness and authority, but they are right away really old, and positively rather perfectionist books. Have they left in to the sort of ancient times that a kid will no longer assimilate or appreciate? Or do we need their suggestion and clear-sightedness some-more than ever before?

Tim Burton"s inhuman movie of Alice, that opens this week, reminds us of the stability hold up of these good classics. They have regularly been theatre and movie favourites. With their episodic structure, and countless clear walk-on parts, they have mostly been used to suggest star actors cameo roles. In the Burton adaptation, Barbara Windsor is the Dormouse, Johnny Depp the Mad Hatter, Matt Lucas Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and so on.

In a distinguished radio instrumentation of 1966, Jonathan Miller expel Leo McKern as the Ugly Duchess, Michael Redgrave as the Caterpillar and, unforgettably, Malcolm Muggeridge and John Gielgud as the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle. These melodramatic adaptations began in Lewis Carroll"s lifetime. But what of the books these mostly difficult, difficult books, full of perplexing philosophical ideas and schooled vocabulary? They competence no longer be children"s books: they competence never have been.

WH Auden, one of majority critical admirers of the Alice books, wrote that there "are no good books that are usually for children". Certainly, the ideas and reversals of proof in the books, as well as majority of the allusions, cruise right over children"s heads. Probably not one reader in 10,000 right away recognises what any of the majority poems are parodying.

Alice, as well as being foul-tempered and awfully bossy, is a freakishly well-read seven-year-old, reflecting on what she had "so mostly review in the newspapers, at the finish of trials". Even she is doubtful by authorised arguments about possibly you could cut the Cheshire Cat"s head off, observant that there is no physique to cut it off from, and schooled discussions about possibly "I contend what I mean" is the same, in conditions of logic, as "I meant what I say".

Students of proof have revelled, over the past 150 years, in that discussion, that takes place at the Mad Hatter"s tea party. The initial content of linguistic semantics is Humpty Dumpty"s assertion, in Through the Looking Glass, that "When I have use of a word...it equates to usually what I select it to meant conjunction some-more nor less," after Alice objects that ""Glory" doesn"t meant "a good knock-down argument."" The books are on Humpty Dumpty"s side in this argument, not on Alice"s.

One of their main joys is in their illusory punning. When the Mock Turtle says that they called the turtle who ran the propagandize underneath the sea Tortoise "We called him Tortoise since he taught us" it will have even a small kid laugh. The conger-eel who taught "Drawling, Stretching and Fainting in Coils" competence be one for the parents. This aspect of the books, and Humpty Dumpty"s reason of "Jabberwocky", desirous James Joyce in Finnegans Wake, and in truth allusions to Carroll run right by that stern masterpiece.

The books interest to young kids since of their naughtiness, and their utterly unpleasant perspective to anything imitative authority. Before Carroll, majority novel created for young kids was heavily terse and directed at mending children. Alice is different. "I"ve a right to think," she says "sharply" to the Duchess, who is rather as well penetrating on sketch ludicrous "morals", as pre-Carroll children"s novel tended to: "Everything"s got a moral, if usually you can find it." Alice speaks angrily to the Queen of Hearts, and when the Queen yells "Off with her head", deals with her by observant "Nonsense!"

Is Alice a cynic? Certainly, she takes a majority some-more tough-minded perspective of the universe she finds herself in than majority complicated kid characters would be authorised to. When the Duchess"s baby turns in to a pig in her arms, she cold-heartedly abandons it, reflecting realistically that "if it had grown up, it would have done a dreadfully nauseous child: but it creates rather a large pig, I think."

She contradicts queens to their faces. She is snobbishly amused that any one should inapplicable designation her Alice! for a housemaid "How astounded he"ll be when he finds out who I am!" And the humerous entertainment in her review with the Caterpillar comes from both characters assuming, angrily, that the alternative ought to be responding to them.

Much of this high-handedness positively derives from Lewis Carroll"s model, Alice Liddell, whose total family was formidable, starting with her socially desirous mother. When Alice in the book complacently anticipates a time "when I"m a duchess", there competence be a dig at the Liddells, who invited and performed the assemblage of Prince Leopold at the marriage of their eldest daughter. It is not mostly remembered that Mrs Liddell had banned Charles Dodgson, the genuine mathematician and Christ Church don, the association of her daughters a small years prior to the Alice books were written. Is there a small rancour at exclusion, in further to a well-advertised nostalgia, in these books?

Dodgson, these days, would positively be on the sex offenders register, with his unrestrained for photographing exposed small girls. His tastes were abominable the Liddell sisters could see after themselves, but the Victorian enlightenment of inventive paedophilia broken majority alternative lives, such as Ruskin"s intent of fantasy, Rose La Touche. Nevertheless, Dodgson"s mania with small girls does seem, unusually, to have had an penetrable side. The Alice books are full of a caustic fury opposite management when it is unaccountably and designedly exerted, and the Red Queen is at once governess, mom and, as lawyers say, the Crown.

That hasn"t antiquated one iota. In the 21st century, the authorities are insisting on their right to sketch us exposed prior to permitting us to travel. They attempted to catch civilians for months on finish but bringing any rapist charge. They goal to abet us to lift temperament cards to show to total of authority, maybe in case, similar to Alice on some-more than one occasion, we dont think about the own names.

They are behaving, in short, similar to Victorian governesses with their mantra "If you have zero to hide, you have zero to fear". Perhaps in the age of Guantánamo Bay, the Queen of Hearts"s decree "Sentence initial outcome afterwards" does not crop up utterly so apparently foolish as it did 100 years ago.

There are unrelenting domestic allusions in the Alice books, majority famously when (in Tenniel"s illustration) Disraeli and Gladstone crop up in the railway carriage in Through the Looking Glass. But the majority fast of the messages is the one that says that power, exerted unjustly, can be countered by the word "Nonsense!", by the jolt of the Red Queen until she turns behind in to a kitten. That is a summary that goes on carrying a small stress to a small kid being systematic about, as well as to a adult in 2010.

The majority rebellious judgment in possibly Alice book is this: ""That"s the judge," she pronounced to herself, "because of his good wig."" The logician, the unimpressed child, and the perpetrator of unsteadiness splendidly stick on in that word "because"; and we see that a decider is usually a man who has put a big wig on.

These books learn young kids that one day, they will step opposite a creek and find that a climax is, in the end, utterly simply acquired with all the strong management and power. They can still learn the rest of us that, too.