“Tenniel’s illustrations form an inescapable complement and counterpart to Carroll’s dream text and to the reader’s sense of the squarely down-to-earth ‘dream child’ in her striped stockings and long brushed hair, as well as her other various fabulous and incongruous interlocutors in wonderland and beyond the mirror.” (Carroll Haughton lxxix) Carroll’s opening sentence of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland emphasizes how these (Tenniel’s) illustrations act as the nucleus of the book:
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought …show more content…
Carroll’s text and Tenniel’s illustrations highlight the novel’s concern relating to the troubling instability of human identity in a society where the people are pushed to pursue voracious desires. “Tenniel and Carroll assert the grotesqueness of Alice’s increasingly rapid size changes” (Lim). Her eating habits and the presence of food in Wonderland is particularly interesting. In the novel, eating can be viewed in predatory terms, either Carroll preying upon Alice or him looking deeper into “the Darwinian struggle for survival; or those who see eating as a comment on the anxiety of control” (Lim). Tenniel’s second and third images in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll 12-13) show Alice unearthing an exceptionally small door right through which she sees an “Eden-like” garden (Carroll 12). The second of the two images is of Alice picking up the “‘DRINK ME’” bottle (Carroll 13) in an attempt to access the garden. This image anticipates her decision to drink from the bottle, giving the reader insight into a not yet narrated event. Lifting the bottle about halfway to her lips, Alice displays an unchildlike expression on her face, one of serious intent. This is actually quite
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought …show more content…
Carroll’s text and Tenniel’s illustrations highlight the novel’s concern relating to the troubling instability of human identity in a society where the people are pushed to pursue voracious desires. “Tenniel and Carroll assert the grotesqueness of Alice’s increasingly rapid size changes” (Lim). Her eating habits and the presence of food in Wonderland is particularly interesting. In the novel, eating can be viewed in predatory terms, either Carroll preying upon Alice or him looking deeper into “the Darwinian struggle for survival; or those who see eating as a comment on the anxiety of control” (Lim). Tenniel’s second and third images in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll 12-13) show Alice unearthing an exceptionally small door right through which she sees an “Eden-like” garden (Carroll 12). The second of the two images is of Alice picking up the “‘DRINK ME’” bottle (Carroll 13) in an attempt to access the garden. This image anticipates her decision to drink from the bottle, giving the reader insight into a not yet narrated event. Lifting the bottle about halfway to her lips, Alice displays an unchildlike expression on her face, one of serious intent. This is actually quite