Power Struggle Between The Adult And Child In Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland - Nursing Assignment Help

Assignment Task

Power Struggle between the Adult and Child in  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 
Aihong Ren 
School of Foreign Languages, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China 
Abstract—Lewis Carroll portrays the struggle of power between the adult and child in Alice’s Adventures in  Wonderland and displays a strong sympathy for the child Alice who is thrown into a mad and disorderly world  of adults. Those adult figures are all anxious to dominate Alice and infantilize her. But the powerless child  shares and asserts her power in the adult world. By describing Alice’s struggle against the adult figures for  power, Lewis Carroll exposes and challenges the power relationships of adult and child, and subverts the social  conventions and binary opposition between the adult and the child. 
Index Terms—Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, power struggle, adult, child 
I. INTRODUCTION 
Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland remains as one of the greatest classic work not only for children  but also for adults ever since its publication in 1865. The tale was originally told for the amusement of three Liddell  girls, daughters of the Dean of Oxford College, where Carroll was teaching as a mathematics tutor. He wrote it down in  memory of their fun on a boat trip, naming it Alice’s Adventures Underground and presented it to Alice Liddell as a  birthday gift. Later, he altered the title to the present one when he was preparing it for publication. Darton called the  publication of this fantasy “the spiritual volcano of children’s books.” (Darton, 1932, p. 267) Unlike the heavily  moralistic and didactic children’s books of the time, the Alice book is famous for its playfulness. It is purely of  entertainment, with no instruction or morality whatsoever. As noted by The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, it is “the  first literary fairy tale for children with no moral purpose whatever. Alice moves in a dreamworld, remote from ordinary  laws and principles” (Zipes, 2000, p.88) Carroll’s Wonderland story “cleared away the dead wood in children’s  literature and marked the arrival of liberty of thought in children’s books” (Carpenter, 1985, p. 68) Readers young and  old have been especially fascinated by the little heroine Alice endowed with her numerous qualities. She inherits the  typical femaleness of a Victorian woman such as politeness and good manners, yet she also displays features of a male hero like assertiveness and independence. 
Ever since its publication, critics and researchers have attempted to analyze this baffling yet fascinating work from  many different perspectives. Humphrey Carpenter rightly asserts that “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Trough the  Looking-Glass are so well known that trying to re-examine them with a fresh eye is rather like attempting to make a  new estimate of the Bible or Shakespeare.” (Carpenter, 1985, p.57) Deeply influenced by the Romantic images of  childhood, Lewis Carroll adores the innocent children especially little girls and holds them as ideal company. He finds  himself often at his happiest in the company of children, talking to them happily and freely without any barrier or  embarrassment he feels in an adult society as a poor stammerer. Carroll as an adult surely suffers in the adult society,  but his inner and real self is finally free with children, for he becomes a child himself. There is always a power  imbalance between the adults and children, as children are considered by the adult society as insufficient and in need of  guidance to grow up and become socially acceptable. Different from many Victorian writers who exploited children’s  books as a means of dominating children, Lewis Carroll exposes and challenges the power relationships of adult/child.  He portrays the struggle of power between the adult and child in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and displays a strong  sympathy for the child Alice who is thrown into a mad and disorderly world of adults. By sending the child into an adult  world, Lewis Carroll subverts the social conventions and binary opposition between the adult and the child. 
II. DISCUSSION 
In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the heroine Alice follows a talking White Rabbit down a well, and enters a  garden where she attends the Mad Hatter's tea party, a game of the Queen’s croquet, and a trial of the Knave of Hearts.  Almost all the figures that the child Alice encounters in Wonderland are adults, such as the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar,  the Duchess, the Mad Hatter, the King and the Queen of Hearts. Very often, Alice comes face to face with those adults  and she has to struggle with them for power. At a close look, those adult figures, no matter human or animal or card, are  all anxious and try their best to dominate Alice and infantilize her. As a matter of fact, power is the primary source of  their anxiety. Power and adulthood are closely related. We are more powerful than others because we are more mature  or adult-like; the opposite is also true: we are more grown than others because we have more power. Tim Morris uses  the term “juvenilize” to refer to the imposition of power over another person by placing one’s self in the role of adult to the person, who turns out to become implicitly a child (Morris, 2000). This happens again and again in Alice’s encounters with them. 
Children have been relegated to the position of the inferior, the weaker, and the other in western culture. Children  should obey the wishes of adults and succumb to their authority. In the third chapter, after getting out of the Pool of  Tears, Alice and the other animals discuss ways of getting them dry, but she can not reach any agreement with the Lory  and they begin to argue. The Lory finally interrupts her with impatience: “I am older than you, and must know better".  (Carroll, 1993, P.32) The Lory takes it for granted that Alice is just an immature child who is therefore quite unable to  make any sensible suggestions. Finally, Alice and the other animals accept the proposal from the oldest animal among  them the Dodo and have a running race. When the race is over, Dodo declares that everybody wins and he assigns Alice  to give out the prizes. In despair, Alice pulls out a box of comfits out of her pocket and hands them around. Given that  each person wins, at the request of the Mouse, Alice is forced to surrender her little thimble to the Dodo, who gives it  back to her in a solemn prize-giving ceremony. Alice as a winner deserves to take the prize offered by the adults.  However, she is forced to surrender her own personal belongings to the whole party, which is definitely unfair for the  child. Moreover, sweets are closely connected with happiness, while the thimble is linked to the role of sewing and  womanly duty. Alice is rather reluctant to be treated that way, but a child’s concerns are never of too much weight to the  adults. With no power of her own, Alice has to submit herself to the arrangement of the adults. The relationship between  adults and children is never equal in real life, more so in the underground. The powerless child has to endure all the  injustice in an adult-dominant world. 
In the real world, the adults try to infantilize the child in order to remain in power. They will not allow a child to  challenge their position or threaten their power. In Chapter five “Advice from a Caterpillar”, Lewis Carroll mocks the  adults’ desire for power by portraying an arrogant caterpillar. When the creature meets Alice, he addresses Alice in a  languid voice, demanding her to answer the question: “Who are you?” As Alice has undergone several physical  transformations earlier that day and becomes very confused about her own identity, she cannot offer any explanation.  Alice takes it for granted though that the Caterpillar is an infant, as he is the larva of a butterfly. If a butterfly marks the  state of being an adult, then the Caterpillar must be a baby. Therefore, Alice believes that the Caterpillar can understand  her feelings of confusion over her bodily changes: “When you have to turn into a chrysalis—you will someday, you  know--and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?” (Carroll, 1993, P.50) However, the Caterpillar denies her bluntly, saying “Not a bit”, and then continues to demand Alice to answer the  mysterious and baffling question “Who are you”. Only a child will be puzzled by the bodily change, as an adult who has  experienced this process of growth will take it lightly. By demonstrating his difference, the Caterpillar takes hold of his  dominant position. Alice would not like to be defeated so easily; she works up her courage to ask him back the same  question. The unpleasant Caterpillar ignores this question and changes the subject of the conversation, advising Alice to  keep her temper. Considering the fact that the Caterpillar is very bad-tempered himself, this advice demonstrates the  hypocrisy of the adults. The Caterpillar’s intention to control Alice is further shown in his demanding Alice to recite  nursery rhymes. Alice obeys this order and when she finishes, she is criticized for being “wrong from beginning to the  end”. (Carroll, 1993, P.54) 
The process of growing up involves a pursuit of knowledge. Alice is a very curious girl, but her desire for knowledge  is never encouraged by the adult figures in Wonderland. Quite on the contrary, she is scorned for her questions and  reduced to silence. In Chapter 6 “Pig and Pepper”, Alice enters the Duchess’ house, where she sees a large cat grinning  from ear to ear. She asks the Duchess timidly why the cat grins like that. The Duchess answers that it’s a Cheshire cat,  adding a final word “Pig”. “She said that word with such sudden violence that Alice quite jumped”.(Carroll, 1993, P.62)  “Pig” is a synonym of “fool” and “idiot”, a most scornful and insulting term used to address to a child, which causes  much alarm in Alice. Alice is attacked as being a fool for asking questions. When the discouraged Alice admits that she  does not know cats can grin, the Duchess replies that “You don’t know much, and that’s a fact.”(Carroll, 1993, P.63) In  the eyes of the adults, the child is ignorant. The innocence of the child lies with his/her ignorance. The child should  remain that way and never venture to ask stupid questions, especially when that question challenges the position of the  adult as the powerful. In Chapter 7 “A Mad Tea-Party”, Alice encounters three adult figures engaged in a tea-party: the  March Hare, the Hatter and the Dormouse. Alice wants to join them, but when they see her coming, they cry out: “No  room! No room!” in spite of the fact that the table is a large one. Alice is indignant by their behavior, and sits down in a  large armchair at one end of the table. When Alice sees these creatures wasting their time asking riddles with no  answers, she asks them questions, which is evaded by the March Hare: “Suppose we change this subject.” (Carroll,  1993, P.75) The Dormouse then tells a story of three little girls living at the bottom of a treacle-well, which quite  amazes Alice and prompts her to ask more questions. As a matter of fact, Alice begins to question the validity of the  story, for she believes there is no such thing and utters her doubts: 
‘There’s no such thing!’ Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the March Hare went ‘Sh! sh!’ and the  Dormouse sulkily remarked, ‘If you can’t be civil, you’d better finish the story for yourself.’ (Carroll, 1993, P.76) They attempt to silence her to obedience, yet the curious Alice would not be silenced. She continues to ask more questions, expressing her own ideas and thoughts, and continued to be interrupted and scorned by the adult figures. The  Hatter even calls her “stupid” in the same way that she is called a pig by the Duchess. They ask her questions, but  interrupt her again before she answers: 

This Nursing Assignment has been solved by our Nursing Experts at My Uni Paper. Our Assignment Writing Experts are efficient to provide a fresh solution to this question. We are serving more than 10000+ Students in Australia, UK & US by helping them to score HD in their academics. Our Experts are well trained to follow all marking rubrics & referencing style.

Be it a used or new solution, the quality of the work submitted by our assignment experts remains unhampered. You may continue to expect the same or even better quality with the used and new assignment solution files respectively. There’s one thing to be noticed that you could choose one between the two and acquire an HD either way. You could choose a new assignment solution file to get yourself an exclusive, plagiarism (with free Turnitin file), expert quality assignment or order an old solution file that was considered worthy of the highest distinction.