Alice in Wonderland is
the original children’s story. But Tim Burton’s blockbuster version of Alice will be watched mostly by adults, a) because of Johnny Depp, and b) because the story of Alice in Wonderland has fascinated children and adults alike since the Victorian era. The blue dress and blonde hair; the Cheshire cat; the white rabbit; the Mad Hatter; the Queen of Hearts are all iconic images from the story and loved by children of all generations. The hallucinations, drug references and sinister conspiracies of paedophilia surrounding the story’s origins are analysed by adults looking for a method to the madness. And mad it is: every character in the classic Victorian novel seems to be high on something.
In 1865 a gentleman named Charles Ludwig Dodgson wrote a story for his friend’s daughter, Alice Liddell, about her adventures underground. He published it under the name Lewis Carroll, and pretty soon every middle-class home in Victorian England had a leather-bound copy in the nursery.
Fast-forward 145 years. 3D glasses have replaced reading glasses, cinema seats have replaced the fireside rug, and Charles Dodgson would be turning in his grave should he know that an actor is being paid tens of millions of pounds to play the Mad Hatter.
Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is set to be the most popular film version of the story since Disney’s sugary-sweet cartoon in 1951.
Full of singing pansies and cuddly, cute creatures, it was well and truly Disney-fied, ending with Alice sobbing that she wanted to go home. But the original book, despite being a children’s story, is a classic piece of literature that openly references drug use, manic depression and the feeling of being totally disillusioned. Alice doesn’t have a Ron and Hermione to chat things over with when she’s left holding the baby (literally: the one she rescues from being shaken violently by its mother in the house in the woods – not very Disney). Nor is Alice a cautionary tale; there is no moral to the story like so many children’s stories around now, promoting acceptance and harmony. Disney also coined the blue dress, white pinafore and black Alice band; in the original book Alice has brown hair and a yellow dress with stripy tights.
If Alice was published now it would not conform to PC guidelines: an opium-addicted caterpillar encourages Alice to smoke it and then challenges her to sing a nursery rhyme; the Mad Hatter celebrates his ‘un-birthday’ 364 days a year with a never-ending tea party, getting crazier and talking in riddles the more tea he drinks; every time Alice eats a ‘mushroom’ or drinks something her perspective changes, and the Queen is so bloodthirsty she has her entire court beheaded in a fit of rage.
We must remember, however, that in 1865 drugs such as opiates, cocaine and laudanum (a painkiller that was dangerously addictive made from opium) were available over-the-counter. Queen Victoria took cocaine for her period pains. So referencing drugs in a children’s book would not have been as absurd as it is today, even in a society where not much shocks anymore.
Indeed, the book was banned, but not in Britain and not for a reason as rational as drug-taking. In 1931 in Hunan, China, authorities banned Alice because they believed animals should not use human language because it put them on the same level.
Tim Burton’s film will definitely keep Alice in the public eye for years to come, but without him Alice certainly wouldn’t have an expiration date. Gwen Stefani’s first solo album was entirely modelled on the character; her What You Waiting For? video a modern Vivienne Westwood version of Wonderland with white tights, huge platforms and Japanese girls dressed as white rabbits. Girls looking for a good time can buy ‘sexy’ Alice in Wonderland fancy dress outfits on eBay. There is even an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ syndrome, a form of dysmorphia where people hallucinate everyday objects as freakishly proportioned.
The 21st century is not ready to give up the little girl who falls down a rabbit hole, as countless other drawing-room tales have fallen into oblivion. Alice personifies innocence, naivety and a fear of the unknown in a world where nothing is as it seems. In other words, it is timeless concept that is remarkably relevant 150 years later.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for a very important date.
This book was, for the most part, dull. There are 17,000 characters intricately involved with each other - kind of like Love Actually based in 1895. The Children's Book is indeed a page turner. A page-turner in the sense that I regularly turned ahead a few pages to see when the scene would end. It got better towards the two-thirds mark, which, in a book of 600 pages, requires some staying power. My staying power was that I had paid for this book and not borrowed it from the library, which is how I usually acquire my literary material.
