Queen Alice and the Monstrous Child: Alice through the Looking-Glass

In chapter 10 of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, the unicorn, who had been battling the lion for the crown of the White King, catches sight of Alice and regards her “with an air of the deepest disgust.” When informed, with great to-do, that she is a child, the unicorn is very excited, exclaiming, “I always thought they were fabulous monsters!” It is even more fascinated upon being informed that “It [Alice] can talk,” and when addressed, Alice good-naturedly says that she had always thought that unicorns were fabulous monsters (175).¹ Despite this momentary mutual recognition of monstrosity, it is Alice who is referred to as “the Monster” and addressed as “Monster” by both the unicorn and the lion for the rest of the chapter. In this sequel to Carroll’s wildly successful Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the dream-child has become a monster. Despite pages full of gryphons, mock turtles, and bloodthirsty queens, this is the only use of the word “monster” in either Alice book.

But why? On the face of it, the Alice of Looking-Glass is far less monstrous than the Alice of Wonderland, as Nina Auerbach noted nearly forty years ago. Wonderland Alice’s size and shape change at an alarming rate and with an alarming elasticity; Looking-Glass Alice maintains her physical self admirably well. Wonderland Alice threatens the inhabitants of the fantastical realm through which she travels both accidentally, when she speaks repeatedly and longingly of her cat Dinah, who would love to gobble down the creatures Alice encounters, and purposefully, when she warns the White Rabbit not to set fire to his own house in order to rid it of her overlarge presence; Looking-Glass Alice is unfailingly helpful, and even deferential, to those she encounters, biting down on some of her thoughts to avoid “hurting the poor Queen’s feelings” (although she does threaten to pick a few unruly flowers at the very beginning of the story and destroy her banquet at the end) (196).

I would suggest that Alice’s monstrosity in Looking-Glass is key to understanding some of the sharp differences between this book and its predecessor, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Carroll had established the question of Alice’s identity as central to Wonderland, as she wonders if she is curly-haired Ada or possibly the ignorant and deprived Mabel, the rabbit mistakes her for his housemaid and succeeds in interpolating her into that role, and she is told there is no difference between her and a serpent. I have, in a previous article, discussed what it means for there to be no difference between a little girl and a serpent; here I wish to understand what it means for a child to be a monster, to Carroll, to his contemporary readers, and to us. I will demonstrate that Alice’s ascension to queendom, the central quest of Looking-Glass, is intimately tied to the monstrosity of childhood, and that rather than the book being an indictment of Alice’s royal ambition to maturity, becoming a queen is Alice’s path out of monstrosity.

What is that monstrosity, then? One path we might follow to discover the answer is an etymological exploration of the phrase “fabulous monster.” “Fabulous” seems clear enough; certainly both the unicorn and the character of Alice are creatures of fable. But then again, for the unicorn, it is not Alice personally or even little girls generally who are fabulous monsters. It is the category of children. In what way, then, are children creatures of fable and monstrous? Turning to the entry for “monster” in the stalwart Oxford English Dictionary, we find definition A.1.a.: “Originally: a mythical creature which is part animal and part human, or combines elements of two or more animal forms, and is frequently of great size and ferocious appearance. Later, more generally: any imaginary creature that is large, ugly, and frightening.” It is interesting that Alice calls the unicorn a fabulous monster, rather than a mythical beast or animal, as...