VIOLENCE IN THE POEMS IN THE ALICE BOOKS AND LEWIS CARROLL’S INTENDED AUDIENCE

Abstract

Through a close reading of some of the major poems in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass1, this essay examines how the author subverts the Victorian educator’s notion that lessons must always offer a moral code by which children should live. Though originally intended for a child audience, the Alice books appear to have messages for an adult audience as well. The poems, especially, highlight the violence perpetrated by adults that children must become aware of in order to survive as they grow older. In his own way, Carroll was offering a didactic text that adults as well as children could learn from, even today.