Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Who’s the Boss?

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Who’s the Boss?

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story that deals with the issues of coming of age. It is the growth of Alice from an immature and undisciplined child to an intelligent and clever young woman. The fantasy world that Carroll created imitates reality in how as people begin to mature from adolescence to adults; they become more assertive and verbally aggressive. In reality adults learn to be more assertive through life experiences and lessons learned. As adults become masters at language they are able to assert themselves more effectively. This is displayed as well in Alice as she begins to mature and gain more confidence in her verbal abilities as well as her understanding of the rules of Wonderland; she becomes more assertive and verbally aggressive.

Alice’s self-confidence and verbal aggression is not a characteristic of her in the beginning of the story. As Alice begins to mature in Wonderland and slowly begins to gain an understanding of the jargon and slang of the language spoken there leads to her becoming more confident in her ability to communicate with the rest of the creatures within Wonderland. Alice learns to assert herself through language and becomes more verbally aggressive in order to establish herself within the hierarchy of Wonderland. This is what allows for Alice to resist the Queen and King. At one point within the story Alice surprises herself at her own courage when the Queen asked Alice aggressively, “And who are these,” referring to the gardeners lying around the rose tree, and Alice replied with equal aggression, “how should I know, its no business of mine” (Carroll, pg. 365). This newly found confidence to resist and defy the authority of the Queen and King is not only because of her obvious physical growth during the trial, but largely because she is astute enough to realize that the Queens threats of “off with their head!” are all empty threats and not real.

Alice’s courage is also learned behavior. As we follow Alice throughout the story she is able to see how the other creatures of Wonderland interact with each other aggressively and Alice begins to realize that in order to survive she must imitate the examples set by them. For example she sees how the White Rabbit respectfully interrupts and corrects the King by frowning and making faces at the King saying, “Unimportant, your Majesty means, of course” (Carroll, pg. 382). This proves to Alice that if he does not fear the King so why should she.

In Wonderland the King and Queen are purposely intimidating and use aggressive language to try and stress their power and dominion over the other characters. The King and the Queen continually make empty threats of violence to display their power. The Queen continuously cries of "Off with their head!" and "I'll have you executed," in order to make the other characters