Curiouser and curiouser.
Despite the fact that I've had, not just one, but two copies of Lewis Carroll's most famous work sitting on my shelves for years (we got that Barnes & Noble edition in 2015 for our anniversary!), I just got around to actually reading these classics for the first time ever last week. And I have to tell you: it was not the best of times.
Both our copies contain both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland—originally published in 1865—and Through the Looking-Glass—originally published in 1871. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was an immediate success upon publication and is now one of the best-known—and many scholars even say most important—works of Victorian literature. It has never been out of print and has been translated into 174 languages. Through the Looking-Glass did equally well, and both novels have been adapted for the screen, radio, ballet, opera, musical theater—even board games and theme parks!
If you're unfamiliar with Carroll's greatest successes (which would be difficult to believe given their enduring popular appeal), in his first novel—a pillar in the genre of literary nonsense—Alice falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. She grows to dizzying heights and shrinks into almost nothingness by eating or drinking different things, she cries a literal ocean of tears, she contends with the disappearing Cheshire cat, she plays an insane game of croquet in which the balls are live hedgehogs that get up and run away and the mallets are also live flamingos whose necks flop around, and sasses the King and Queen of Hearts who are constantly putting everyone on trial because the Queen can't stop screaming "Off with their heads!" at everyone she comes across.
It's a strange, fever-dream of a story—a baby turns into a pig, for crying out loud!—and Through the Looking-Glass is much the same only this time, Alice enters a fantasy world through a large mirror and finds herself in a place where everything is backwards and she's trying to become a queen in a game of chess. She talks to live flowers, meets the severe Red Queen and the flustered White Queen, quarrels with Tweeledum and Tweedledee, discovers how rude Humpty Dumpty is, and finally becomes a queen herself at which point she is named the host of a chaotic banquet.
I didn't particularly enjoy any of it.
As I've said many a time, children's literature may be my very favorite genre in all of literature. I was expecting to at least appreciate Alice for its place in the canon, but instead of coming off as charming, Alice only read as strange to me. It was dark and weird and, at times, even unsettling. Alice herself was sometimes precocious but mostly bewildered, and while it was certainly imaginative, it wasn't imaginative in a fun or even particularly playful way. I just couldn't get into it, and I didn't care for it. Frankly, I'll never forgive Lewis Carroll—or shall we call him by his proper name: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson—for calling daisies the worst of the flowers, and for not making any of the flowers especially pleasant, for that matter!
I guess none of this should come as a major shock to me since I always thought the classic animated Disney film was rather strange, and if Disney can't make something sparkle, then the source material must be pretty dark. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass have both been picked apart and analyzed to death by critics and scholars the world over for all its symbolism, linguistic puns, mathematics, fantastical rules and games, and all the nonsense. I cannot be the least bit bothered with any of that, and so I'm done with Alice. I doubt I'll ever revisit these novels though they will remain in my library for their classic status, and I will happily lend them to any of my friends or family who care to read them.
But I wouldn't personally recommend them, and I'm truly puzzled as to exactly why they are so beloved.
Do you like Alice and her strange adventures?