Victorian Society Exposed In Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland

Lewis Carroll expressed his opinion on many subjects in his novel. A common area he had frequently liked to touch on and poke fun of was Victorian Society. During this time it was expected for young women to be very knowledgeable in arts in literature. People were viewed differently depending on their social class. In general, the more money someone had, the more power they had possessed as well. While everyone during this time was trying to conform and be seen as proper and sophisticated, Carroll was creating stories where real logic does not always apply and impossible things were made to be possible. Through the looking-glass, everything appeared to be backwards and this may be what he was trying to show, that the Victorian expectations …show more content…
Children were not taken very seriously during this time because they needed to grow and mature in order to be successful. Alice was a piece in a large game of chess, playing the White Queen’s pawn. The position seemed insignificant compared to the Queen that she was working to become. As a pawn she was not able to give orders, much like a child cannot tell an adult what to do. Once she was able to become a Queen, that is when she was able to have more freedom and give orders. At the banquet she experimented giving out an order to see if it would be followed (222). Children during the Victorian era were not given much thought until they were thought to have matured. To please an adult and show respect, children would have to listen and do whatever needed to be done. Compared to an adult, it was thought that their knowledge of certain things was much lower. Although Alice had worked to become a Queen, it was still not good enough for the Red and White Queens. The Red Queen told Alice, “You can’t be a Queen, you know, till you’ve passed the proper examination” (212). Adults had been very controlling over young children and giving them constant hoops to jump