Alice's Adventures in Adaptation: the Evolution of Power In

ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN ADAPTATION: THE EVOLUTION OF POWER IN

CHILDREN’S AND YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE

A THESIS

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIRMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE

TEXAS WOMAN’S UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, SPEECH, AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

ALLYSON HIBDON, B.A.

DENTON, TEXAS

August 2020

DEDICATION

This thesis is dedicated to my parents, Kenny and Susan Hibdon, for their unwavering support during the process of writing this thesis. My parents have always believed in my knowledge and capabilities. I would also like to thank them for continued motivation to complete my thesis and the encouragement to continue my education. I will forever be grateful for their unwavering support.

This thesis is also dedicated to my best friend, Malena Eaves, for her continued support, encouragement, and accountability during the writing process. At times of frustration and stress, she helped me keep my focus and drive to complete my thesis.

Lastly, I would like to dedicate this thesis to my partner, Andrew Prater, for his support, encouragement, and patience as I worked on this project. Andrew listened to my ideas and became on my biggest cheerleaders.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank both of my committee members. Dr. Gretchen Busl served as my committee chair and without her theoretical knowledge and structural guidance, this thesis would not be possible. Dr. Busl’s weekly encouragement and accountability have proven to be invaluable to me. Secondly, I would like to thank Dr. Genevieve West. Dr.

West’s support, suggestions, and theoretical knowledge have helped me shape this thesis into what it is today. I am grateful for them both.

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ABSTRACT

ALLYSON HIBDON

ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN ADAPTATION: THE EVOLUTION OF POWER IN CHILREN’S AND YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE

AUGUST 2020

In this thesis, I have analyzed the evolution of power in Children’s and Young

Adult literature through Lewis Carroll’s children’s novel, Alice’s Adventures in

Wonderland (1865). Carroll’s novel is one that has been adapted and retold a multitude of times in varying ways. In this thesis, I compare Carroll’s original work to three different adaptations, Walt Disney’s animation (1951), Tim Burton’s visual film adaptation Alice in Wonderland (2010), and Young Adult trilogy Splintered (2013) written by A.G.

Howard. In comparing the three works, I discuss how power plays a role in Wonderland through Alice’s relationships to three key themes: identity, authority, and time. In doing so, it is demonstrated that as Alice gets older with each adaptation, the more power and responsibility she receives. Her purpose and relationship to Wonderland changes as she gets older, as does her power to choose and become a heroine while navigating elements of the fantastic. Though Howard’s adaptation does not focus on Alice, but rather her fifteen-year-old great-niece, Alyssa, the premise remains the same: She is a teenager who must carry a legacy, yet struggles with the power imbalance that comes with being younger than Burton’s Alice but older than Carroll’s. I demonstrate how power and relationships specifically as it relates to children’s and Young Adult literature as Alice

evolves and gets older, therefore receiving more power to save Wonderland and become a heroine.

Table of Contents

DEDICATION ...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iii

I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

II. DEFINTIONS ...... 13

Young Adult Literature and Why it is Separate From Children’s

Literature ...... 20

Power and Agency in Young Adult Literature ...... 23

III. LEWIS CARROLL AND WALT DISNEY ...... 33

The History and Criticism of Walt Disney’s Animation ...... 33

Identity ...... 38

Authority ...... 46

Time ...... 53

Conclusion ...... 59

IV. TIM BURTON AND A.G. HOWARD ...... 61

Conclusion ...... 81

V. CONCLUSION ...... 84

Prophecy ...... 84

Other Directions ...... 91

Beyond Wonderland ...... 92

Works Cited ...... 95

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This thesis aims to analyze and identify the development of power in various adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s children’s novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

(1865). These adaptations work to distinguish Children’s literature from Young Adult literature. In order to do so, I have chosen three different adaptations of the original work to demonstrate an evolution of power being transferred to the protagonist, Alice, as she gets older with each retelling. The first adaptation is Walt Disney’s animation Alice in

Wonderland (1951), the second is A.G. Howard’s Young Adult fantasy trilogy Splintered

(2013), and the third is Tim Burton’s gothic film Alice in Wonderland (2010). Each of these works are evaluated through and expanded upon using the definition of David

Rudd, in which the distinction between Children’s literature and Young Adult literature comes down to the power, or the disempowerment of the child portrayed. As Alice gets older in the adaptations of Carroll’s original work, the more power she is granted in

Wonderland.

In 1865, Charles Dodgson (1832-1895), a skilled English mathematician, poet, and photographer, wrote and published a children’s novel entitled Alice’s Adventures in

Wonderland under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. The inspiration for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland came from the controversial relationship Dodgson had with a ten-year-old girl called Alice Liddell, the daughter of Henry Liddell who was the dean of Christ

Church in Oxford, England where Dodgson and the Liddell family met and developed a friendship. Later in July, Dodgson took Alice Liddell and two of her sisters out on a rowing trip from Folly Bridge. During this rowing trip, the three sisters asked Dodgson to tell them a story, and thus the fantastic tale of the infamous Alice was birthed. Alice

Liddell was so amazed and delighted with the story that she asked Dodgson to write it down for her, which he obliged to complete with extra chapters and illustrations that he entitled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. Shortly after the rowing trip, Dodgson gave his story to another author, George Macdonald, who encouraged him to seek out a publisher.

Adopting the name Lewis Carroll, he followed Macdonald’s advice, and in 1865,

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published with Macmillan Publishers with illustrations drawn by Sir John Tenniel. Shortly after, Carroll published a sequel to

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland entitled Through the Looking Glass and What Alice

Found There in 1871. These two whimsical, adventurous, and silly novels catapulted

Carroll into a household name and became a pillar of children’s literature for those young and old. In this thesis, I explain and summarize the original Lewis Carroll story, as the story remains as a basis for all adaptations, and it will be important to understand due to the adaptogenic nature of the text, referring to the way in which Alice in Wonderland adaptations go through a spectrum of modes and frequencies without losing the essence of the original story. I drew the term adaptogenic from Sissy Helff and Nadia Butt because despite the sheer number of adaptations that have been produced since 1865, that have come since Carroll’s, these works still have recognizable features from Carroll’s

novel, such as a girl falling down a rabbit hole and embarking upon a different adventure than she is used to after falling down a rabbit hole (Helff and Butt 113-116).

To demonstrate the adaptogenic nature of the text, I have chosen three adaptations to analyze through close-readings: Walt Disney’s animated children’s film, Alice in

Wonderland (1951), A.G. Howard’s Young Adult fantasy trilogy Splintered (2013), and

Tim Burton’s gothic film Alice in Wonderland (2010). This specific order was chosen intentionally to demonstrate the evolution of Alice’s age and her gain of power as she matures and develops meaningful relationships. She begins her journey at around ten years old, then she is about fifteen, and finally, she is nineteen-years-old on the bridge between childhood and adulthood. Next, I will define important elements of adaptation theories, including what it means to be an adaptogenic work and define relevant principles of children’s and Young Adult novels, specifically tropes relevant to Young

Adult literature such as the need for a hero and the fulfilling of a prophecy. Finally, I will examine each adaptation chosen and compare how Alice’s access to (or lack of) power becomes an important theme with every interaction she has in Wonderland that helps audiences distinguish children’s literature from Young Adult literature as separate categories.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland begins with a ten-year-old girl called Alice, who is first seen having a hard time staying awake and doing her school lessons. As she drifts further away from schoolwork, she spies a talking white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and checking a pocket watch. Of course, this rabbit is much more interesting than her lessons, so Alice decides to follow the white rabbit and ends up

falling down a rabbit hole that takes her to the curious and magical land of Wonderland.

During her time in Wonderland, she embarks on adventures that include mistrial and tribulation. In this particular world, nothing is what it seems. Flowers speak, cats smile and disappear, and the Queen of Hearts is not a card in a deck, but rather the actual ruthless queen of Wonderland who frequently shouts, “Off with your head!” if she is not pleased with the actions of those she encounters in her vast palace. As Alice navigates

Wonderland, she is put to the test mentally and physically. She is new to this fantastical world where “everything is nonsense,” and she virtually has no power over the circumstances she finds herself in, resulting in frustration and confusion.

The two questions I aim to answer in this thesis are first, how does the adaptogenic nature of Lewis Carroll’s text help illustrate how power evolves based on age within three deconstructed adaptations? Secondly, how does the adaptogenic nature of Lewis Carroll’s text help us understand the ways children’s literature and Young Adult literature are fundamentally different and should be classified as separate categories instead of genres? In each of the adapted works chosen for this thesis, there is a focus on power: who has it, who gives it, and how Alice will eventually receive it. What begins as a nonsensical tale about a ten-year-old girl who follows the white rabbit down a hole and finds herself in a fantastic world develops into something darker and more serious with each adaptation.

The research and case-studies published on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are consistent and ever-growing. The original text was published in “the Golden Age of children’s literature” (Hemmings 54). Not only has Carroll’s work been used as examples

of what a child’s imagination is capable of, but it has also been a mode to understand the psyche of children. Carroll is known as a master of blending genres, such as satire and fantasy disguised as a story meant for a child, and many scholars such as David Day utilize the tale to explore notions of Victorian culture, and parodies that are seen in the intentional rhymes and political poetry Carroll carefully concocted. Likewise, Carroll’s tale is also often subjected to Freudian psychoanalysis, specifically within

Tantalizing Alice: Approaches, Concepts and Case-studies in Adaptations of a Classic

(2016), edited by Susan Helff and Nadia Butt. In this collection of case-studies, there is a laser-sharp focus on the Carroll myth in which the controversial and disturbing relationship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell is scrutinized. Most of the arguments from scholars included in this book pertain to Freudian psychoanalysis and

Alice’s sexuality and sex-appeal to mass audiences as it is speculated between Lewis

Carroll and Alice Liddell, the child in which Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was written for and based off of. Though I recognize the amount of research done using a

Freudian approach is a valid method to analyze the novel and its adaptations, it is beyond the scope of my research and interpretation, as I am choosing to focus on how power exists within children’s and Young Adult literature, and how those two types of literature are separated using the Wonderland novel as a catalyst to do so.

Children’s literature began as an oral tradition of storytelling including fables, fairy stories, and tales that can be dated back to the Song Dynasty in China as early as

920 AD and grew as children grew up and passed the oral stories from generation to generation. As the concept of childhood evolved and children became recognized as tiny

beings instead of small adults, so did the concept of children’s literature, and from that realization comes a surplus of research, especially focusing on the Victorian age in which Carroll existed and wrote, which would become the Golden Age of children’s literature. Studies in children’s literature have since expanded, and scholars now have the capacity to truly understand the effects popular or “canonized” children’s books such as

Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland had and continue to have in the twenty-first century. To further that exploration of Carroll’s tale, I am expanding on David Rudd’s notion of power in children’s literature. In this, as the child gets older in each adaptation created, the more power and responsibility is given. I will tie this definition back to each of the three adaptations I have chosen in direct comparison to Carroll’s original work to see the evolution of a ten-year-old girl falling down a rabbit hole due to curiosity to a nineteen- year-old young woman having a prophecy set on her shoulders in order to save

Wonderland from darkness and despair, a trope commonly found in Young Adult literature. The differences between children’s literature and Young Adult literature will be addressed in chapter two of this thesis, as they are similar but contain very different tropes, ideologies, and contexts. Both attempt to explain how readers grow with the characters presented, but key differences between the two are the wisdom and autonomy gained through getting older.

A main goal of this thesis is debunking the myth that children’s literature and

Young Adult literature are interchangeable terms to be used in scholarship. Likewise, this thesis will provide a distinction between the terms genre and category as the two are not interchangeable when describing Children’s and Young Adult literature. Historically,

there is a lack of scholarly research on Young Adult literature that does not have an emphasis on pedagogy. Unfortunately, scholarship focusing on Young Adult literature as a notable and respectable category is scarce in comparison to the scholarship on children’s literature, ranging from psychological to pedagogical. This is inherently problematic because Young Adult literature is not being seen as a worthy opportunity for scholarship. Of course, the scholarship specifically on children’s literature is wide and deep, yet there is a hole left by not exploring the differences between children’s literature and Young Adult literature. The readership of Young Adult literature is expansive, ranging from 12-44 years of age, despite the target audience being 12-17, as explored by

Lindsay Ellis in “The Evolution of YA: Young Adult Fiction, Explained.” Within Young

Adult as a category, there are various subgenres such as the fantasy novel, the coming of age novel, and the dystopian novel. Young Adult literature provides a space in which teenagers (and beyond) can move forward in their thinking and their reading material. It cannot be assumed that teenagers move from children’s literature straight into contemporary adult literature. They need a bridge to walk them to the other side, and

Young Adult literature provides a valuable path.

Finally, the research that exists in adaptation studies is extensive, ranging from pioneers in literature to film adaptation such as Brian McFarlane, Linda Hutcheon, and H.

Porter Abbott. There are many mediums adaptations can take, novel to film being the one that I am exploring. Because the range of adaptation studies from the past decade is slippery, I utilize the term adaptogenic, which refers to the way in which Alice’s

Adventures in Wonderland goes through a spectrum of modes and frequencies to be

adapted, textually or visually. In this definition, modes refer to the medium in which the text is being adapted into and frequencies refer to the number of times a text has been adapted. This definition allows me to expand upon the works of Linda Hutcheon’s studies in adaptation and the intentionality of adapting children’s literature for the screen

(Hutcheon 113). For the purpose of this thesis, intentionality will come back to Rudd’s explanation of children’s literature and how power plays a massive role in understanding textual and visual retellings of Carroll’s novel (Rudd 123). I will also need to recognize the change and shift in understanding Children’s and Young Adult literature from the

Victorian age to the latest adaptation I am discussing, which was originally published in

2013 with the sequel published in 2014, and the final installment published in 2015.

Carroll’s original text and Walt Disney’s animation is compared in chapter three, while A.G. Howard’s Young Adult trilogy and Tim Burton’s film are compared in chapter four, so it will be vital to my understanding of adaptation to use H. Porter

Abbott’s chapter in The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative entitled “Adaptation Across

Media” as a framework for dissection. Abbott invokes George Bluestone’s destructivist position, which argues that with each film adaptation, the filmast, such as Tim Burton in this instance, becomes a new author of the work, with the work acting as a deconstructed version of the original (120-24). This definition and framework coincide with the idea of

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland being adaptogenic, and with every adaptation, it is retold, renewed, and the artist creates something deconstructed, whilst contributing to the evolution of power.

Each of the three adaptations I have chosen requires an in-depth close-reading with the intent on showcasing how power functions as Alice gets older. I have placed

Carroll’s original novel alongside Walt Disney’s animation and compared those two as they both portray Alice as a ten-year-old girl and her childlike struggles with Wonderland as a place. This allows me to place a text in comparison to a visual, on-screen adaptation.

Likewise, Tim Burton’s adaptation will accompany A.G. Howard’s Young Adult fantasy trilogy, Splintered. These two comparisons will follow structural narrative analyses, which is “examining particular characteristics of a story, such as plot elements,” or in this instance, power in relation to Alice, to highlight the benefit of being modernized and acts as a retelling, or deconstruction, rather than a line-by-line linear adaptation (Hutcheon

52). Each creator imagines Wonderland as their own, and samples and combines scenes from Through the Looking Glass instead of sticking to the primary text. Each creator of every adaptation provides a fresh perspective and new point of view. Part of what makes

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland so adaptable and recognizable is that she, as a character, is malleable. She appears in animation, in Young Adult novels, and in gothic films without losing the essence of Wonderland itself, nor the curious nature of her character development. Each Alice is different and plays a different role within the

Wonderland universe, and like the former, the latter will be the subject of in-depth close reading analysis building on Rudd’s definition of power in children’s literature framed through Abbott’s explanation of adaptive deconstruction.

This thesis will add to the conversation of the importance of children’s and Young

Adult literature and how power plays a large role within those categories. Scholars and

educators alike have difficulty in distinguishing between Children’s literature and Young

Adult literature, and this thesis will provide one way in which there is a difference between children’s literature and Young Adult literature through adaptation. However, this thesis contains limitations as there are so many different adaptations of Alice in

Wonderland that it is impossible to acknowledge each and every one of them as well as every contribution those adaptations have made to Wonderland since the Victorian era.

For that reason, I chose three different adaptations that I believe relate to power in

Wonderland specifically. However, I know that when I mention major adaptations, there is a possibility that something will be left out. There is simply too much out there including clothing, makeup lines, Disney World rides, video games, pornography, and more. The scholarship on these things is extensive, but I believe the ones I have chosen will be effective and efficient in understanding the role of power in Children’s and Young

Adult literature. Alice remains herself in each of the adaptations I have chosen, and each time she revisits Wonderland, she gains more power as she ages until she is nineteen years old in Tim Burton’s film, and she must save Wonderland from the Red Queen’s tyranny.

This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction, in which

I have discussed Charles Dodgson’s life and how Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the pseudonym Lewis Carroll came to be. The rest of this thesis consists of four subsequent chapters. The second chapter focuses solely on definitions from adaptation theory, specifically what it means to be an adaptogenic text and how it relates to Carroll’s works. I will invoke Children’s literature scholar David Rudd and his definition and

explanation of how power works within Children’s literature. By drawing on Rudd’s definition I will successfully categorize the three adaptations I have chosen not only as it relates to power, but how that power affects and relates to Children and Young Adult adaptations of the original work. Each adaptation is created in a different time from the

Victorian age, to the 1950s, to as late as 2013. Principles evolve over time as do definitions. I work to pinpoint the changes within Children’s literature and define where

Children’s literature ends and where Young Adult literature begins as recognizable categories, instead of being considered different genres. The third chapter of this thesis conducts a close-reading analysis. This chapter will act as a case-study in which I place the Walt Disney animation in conversation with Carroll’s original text. I have chosen for these two to be paired with one another because they both focus on Alice as a ten-year- old girl and her first encounters with Wonderland.

The fourth chapter follows the model of the third chapter above. A.G. Howard’s

trilogy and Tim Burton’s film are placed in conversation with one another, as they are

intended for a more mature, young adult audience and deal with Alice, and her

descendants, coming back to Wonderland and gaining power to save the creatures that

reside there. I am choosing to do the case-studies in this manner because it is important to see and understand how power will work in the children’s novel and adaptation, and how it works within the Young Adult adaptations. This chapter organizational pattern shows an evolution of power based on age will be more clearly stated than if I did separate, individualized chapters for each adaptation, especially as the time frames of each adaptation are vast. Alice will go from a ten-year-old girl who gets lost in a strange, yet

whimsical land called Wonderland and has her world flipped quite literally upside down

while A.G. Howard’s textual adaptive trilogy follows Alice’s great-niece, Alyssa, and her adventures in Wonderland as a fifteen-year-old girl who does not necessarily have the power to be the hero Wonderland needs just yet. Likewise, Burton’s version of Alice in

Wonderland tells the tale of a much older nineteen-year-old Alice Kingsley and her return to Wonderland to become the heroine and sole restorer of peace in Wonderland.

The last chapter of this thesis aims to provide an effective conclusion. This conclusion will state why the work I have done matters in the grand scheme of scholarship of

Children’s and Young Adult literature, and why it matters to adaptation studies.

Ultimately, my goal is to provide meaningful conversation about a children’s story meant to delight the imagination, which in actuality becomes a story with depth and meaning that effectively shows readers how Children’s literature can be differentiated from Young Adult literature through the depiction of power and maturity.

CHAPTER II

DEFINITIONS

What is a Genre?

While some scholars equate genre to form, I am exclusively discussing genre as it pertains to fictional literature. Likewise, fictional literature is not limited to novels, but includes film as well. Both film and novels take on the responsibility of telling a story, or in the case of this thesis, adapting a story, using common literary devices such as plot, setting, character development, and theme, and will both be referred to as literature. In the same way, films and novels both adhere to the same types of genre that gives the consumers a heads up regarding the content, such as fantasy, which outright tells the consumer what to expect. Genres, however, are not the same thing as categories and should not be used interchangeably. I argue that Children’s literature and Young Adult literature have to be referred to as a category that contains various subgenres, instead of a genre that contains subgenres.

If genre is the identifiable content in literature, then categories, such as Children’s literature and Young Adult literature, speaks only to demographics. In the novel-verse,

Children’s literature can range anywhere from 0-11 years of age, while Young Adult literature can range anywhere from 12-19 years of age. Film does a similar thing with ratings of G, PG, and R, which can tell you who the intended audience is. In short, categories do not tell you what the story will be about, but genre should and will. This distinguishment is important to note because there is a long history of classifying

Children’s literature and Young Adult literature as linked genres, when they have to be

classified as categories due to the very fact that Children’s literature does not tell you

what exactly to expect during consumption, but rather only tells the audience who it’s intended for: children. The same thing happens with Young Adult literature. A major goal of this thesis is to untangle the myth that genre and category are interchangeable terms used to describe children’s literature and Young Adult literature as it pertains to both novels and films.

In order to understand why Children’s literature and Young Adult literature are not genres, it is important to fully understand the scholarship surrounding what exactly a genre is, and why the distinction matters. According to David Fishelov, genres “shape how writers write, and how readers respond to literary works” (Fishelov 53). This seemingly simple explanation, however, does not address the slippery notion that comes with the term Genre. In order to help break genre down, scholar Perry Nodelman makes a simple suggestion in his article “The Hidden Child in the Hidden Adult”: break it down as “if texts can and do share characteristics, then groups of texts sharing similar characteristics might be thought of as a particular type or kind of literature---a genre”

(Nodelman 107). That being said, Nodelman raises the argument that the term genre is an abstract concept that lives in people’s minds as they try to compartmentalize conventions, tropes, characterizations, and responses to specific literature such as poetry, tragedy, fantasy, so on and so forth. By taking account into genre similarities, we are able to group together literature by putting them into specific boxes that are then easily identified by

both authors and readers and easily marketed to bookstores to assist in placing books on shelves.

While conventions, tropes, characterizations, and responses as listed above are valuable and necessary ways to identify different genres, they also include the ways in which language assists our understanding of what a genre is. As Jacques Derrida suggests, as expanded upon by Nodelman in “The Hidden Child in the Hidden Adult,”

“the operation of genre is just one example of how linguistic categories---language itself-

--always operates to establish guiding principles--rules or law” (107). One of the established principles that people have regarding a type of text is a genre. The genre has preexisting backgrounds while the author and consumer similarly have preexisting notions of said background, allowing them to participate in the abstract concept of genre.

Generic characteristics, like that of a fantasy novel, have “redundancies that allow readers to recognize a text of being of a certain sort and then read and interpret it as such”

(Nodelman 109). Thus, we have historically held a need for genre for context, content, marketing, and language.

Why children’s literature and Young Adult literature should be considered separate

categories

In order to properly understand how and why children’s and Young Adult literature exist alongside one another, but are very much separate categories; it is important to understand that these literary categories are dependent solely on the books

produced in their sub-genres and a “particular audience that has been constructed”

(Nodelman 115). These constructed audiences depend obviously on the age of the readers, but also rely on the gender, class, race, religion, and sexuality. The following section of this definition’s chapter acts to place an explicit distinction between children’s literature and Young Adult literature.

According to David Rudd, Children’s operates in three elements: “The texts, the

children, and the adult critic” (Rudd 14). This notion opens up theoretical concerns that

Rudd addresses in his chapter of Understanding Children’s Literature (1998), edited by

Peter Hunt, entitled “How Does Children’s Literature Exist?” The first, put simply, is that

the idea of the child is simply a construct made up by the writers, and in turn the readers

who are manipulated by the text, meaning those who write children’s literature have a

specific type of child in mind that they are writing for, and the children reading the text

are then manipulated by the content of the text, which is usually a moral takeaway or

lesson. Children and adults obviously view literature differently, as children do not have the theoretical framework nor the critical thinking skills to properly dissect the texts they consume, thus leaving the criticism to adults who work with children’s literature whether it be through scholarship or pedagogical. In order to understand the text, the children, and the adult critic Rudd pinpoints as the three elements of children’s literature, it is important to understand the competing and varying histories and criticism it has faced and continues to face throughout history.

A turning point of children’s literature occurred in the eighteenth century, in which the books being produced drew on “instruction and entertainment” (Rudd 13). Five 16

years before Lewis Carroll published the beloved Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, notable British psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne published Physical Diseases in Early

Life in 1860 in which he argues that children should not be encouraged to be imaginative, nor should they be allowed to participate in daydreaming as those fantasies and

“delusions” will be ingrained into the minds of the child, rendering them a useless adult

(Schatz 93). Carroll had an incredible interest in the medical field and his library showcased that interest with books on mental health, medicine, and homeopathic remedies, but Crichton-Browne’s findings did not sit well with Carroll, though widely accepted by the British medical population in the 1860s. Carroll, five years after this popular publication, published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland anyway, imagining

Alice to be the utmost dreamer, “finding pleasure in simple joys” and having the ability to look back on a childhood well-lived when she became older, telling other children the fantastic dream in the hopes that they might too find joy in her imagination (Schatz 94).

Carroll’s ideas regarding entertainment, joy, and pleasure in storytelling eventually resulted in a turning point of children’s literature and what they are capable of regarding characters, content, themes, and morality (Rudd 15). Children became more than simply tiny adults and were starting to be seen as developing beings. From this massive shift of the fundamental understanding of children came two distinctions in how scholars view children’s literature. On one hand, there are “notions that there are underlying ‘essential’ children whose nature and needs we can know, and on the other, the notion that the child is nothing but the product of adult discourse” (Rudd 16). Rudd, however, argues against both of these notions and instead combines them, resulting in a

hybridity of the “constructed” and “constructive” child. This notion of construction is interesting because it takes power away from the child, as whether they are indeed constructed or constructive, or a hybridity of the two, they essentially do not have a voice, and are seen more so as objects, especially in their literature. This lack of power children has in their literature comes from a textual and visual place. Children are learning language and figuring out how constructed societal norms operate in their cultures and time periods. This concept is delicate and relies on power dynamics regarding what is deemed acceptable and unacceptable reading material from adults.

Following Michel Foucault’s model of power, David Rudd claims “power is not held by one particular group over another, powerless one; rather, power is conceived of an imminent of all encounters, through which certain discursive relations are possible”

(Rudd 17). I agree with Rudd’s explanations that children are conceived as powerless

beings in adult discourse. Children create and operate in their own varying discourses

that render them a voice amongst themselves. However, I reject the notion that power is

not held by one particular group over another. Power, those who give it and those who

receive it, has been proven to be historically systematic and in favor of white cisgender

men.

That being said, children cannot and do not speak for themselves in literary spaces, because they are not the ones writing for themselves. Simply put, adults write children’s books. Adult writers produce works that they believe the universal child should read as they grow and develop. In a perfect world, perhaps children would write their own books and give these stories to one another, given the notion that they would have

the language know-how to do such a thing. Unfortunately, we do not live in that perfect world and are stuck by trying to decipher what children want to read, how to read, and what content and morals should go into their books. There is really no way to know for sure if children actually understand what they are reading, as their perceptions and imaginations are much different than that of adults, and like adults, their existence is not universal, nor is it homogenous. Each child has their own lived experiences with their own cultural impact. This complicates things from a theoretical standpoint because this idea that each child is their own person with their own culture, race, and values creates hardship when it comes to defining and pinpointing childhood.

Karín Lesnik-Oberstein makes the argument that this is a big problem when it comes to studying children’s literature, because too often scholars are looking at what the child feels instead of what they know cognitively or are trying to learn from reading a specific piece of literature (224). Historically, the realm of children’s literature has been studied almost exclusively under the scope of Freudian psychoanalysis. However, the problem with this type of one-size-fits-all framework is that, like Lesnik-Oberstein argues, it only seeks out one type of understanding of children, that being how they feel about something, and not how their brains develop whilst reading or being read to.

Likewise, Freudian psychoanalysis often gives way to the hyper-sexualization of children and their literature, fixating on the Oedipus and Electra complexes without paying any mind to the cognitive aspect of children. Children are complex humans, and children’s literature and developmental psychology need to expand and move past Freudian psychoanalysis.

Young Adult Literature and Why it is Separate From Children’s Literature

Young Adult literature is not a new phenomenon, but it is a much more recent area of scholarship and expertise than children’s literature, dating back to as early as 1926 when librarians began to designate specific sections for books meant for their teenage readers. The American Library Association decided then to divide the

Association of Young People’s Librarians into the Children’s Library Association and the

Young Adult Services Division in 1957, but it was not until 1958 that the term “Young

Adult” would be used more frequently as a category to be marketed to (Nell and Paul np).

This division between children’s books and Young Adult books is essential to understanding the differences between Children’s literature and Young Adult literature.

Marketers, librarians, parents, and educators alike note that a large difference between the two lies within the content. In short, children’s books are typically rooted in happiness, imagination, and portray cheerful dispositions in character and plot (Pinkerton 15-17).

Young Adult literature, however, differs in how societies view teenagers themselves. The literature, much like the young adult reading, have the ability to challenge the status quo and disrupt the power dynamics previously put in place for children’s literature. In order to understand how Young Adult literature exists, it is vital to know the history of YA and how it has a place in literary scholarship.

Beginning in 1958, there was a shift in terminology where the actual term Young

Adult became used more frequently to describe books for teenagers, and in turn people

began to notice a shift in content. What they expected was still the happy, imaginative,

cheerful books that younger children read that would shape moral, upstanding citizens,

and what was actually being read was stories that were much more serious and mature,

dealing with problems that teenagers face daily (Talley 228). This type of shift is

referred to as what Lee A. Talley would call an “articulation of realism” in the Young

Adult chapter of Keywords in Children’s Literature. This articulation of realism is “a

description of facing up to things as they really are, and not as we imagine or would like

them to be then we arrive at a dominant theme in much of contemporary YA literature”

(Talley 229-30).

This ideology of facing facts in YA would be a constant factor going into the sixties, following S.E Hinton’s The Outsiders (1967). Hinton wanted less fairy-tale perfect YA books, and more fiction that showcased actual problems that teenagers are concerned with such love, sex and sexuality, drug abuse, gang violence, familial problems, death, struggles with individuality, and mental health (Michauld 2014).

Though The Outsiders is a popular and still-read and taught book for high schoolers, it is viable to acknowledge that this shift in content did not occur overnight. In fact, The

Outsiders was originally intended and marketed for an adult audience yet did not have the commercial success expected. Remarketed toward adolescents, the now canonized YA novel went on to sell 14 million copies. In an interview at The New York Times, Hinton reiterated that she wanted to create a novel that portrayed real, nitty-gritty life. In turn,

The Outsiders “transitioned YA literature from romance and genre novels written by out- of-touch adults to a genre that portrayed the true and realistic trials faced by modern teenagers without falling into common pitfalls such as “mix[ing] up the real with the

dirty” (Hinton 1967). From this point on, writers, educators, librarians, and readers alike showcased the desire for more mature content. Thus, the “‘adult’ in ‘young adult’ is often code for its euphemistic meaning of mature content” (Talley 230).

Since the late fifties and sixties when Young Adult literature began its distinction from children’s literature, there is still much debate regarding who exactly Young Adult literature is meant for in terms of readership ages. In fact, the term Young Adult in regard to literature is still missing from popular dictionaries, but Random House Dictionary provides a vague and not necessarily useful definition, simplifying the massive category of books and readers as “a teenager (used especially by publishers and librarians)” (Nell and Paul 229). However, this definition does not necessarily work as Young Adult literature has gained more recognition for its context and impact. In fact, more recent studies have shown that the readership of YA is much larger than twenty-five, and while it is still geared toward those from twelve to eighteen years of age, kids and adults in their forties read YA (Ellis np).

Improbably, their editors skip the phrase's adjectival form entirely. Although they gesture toward the textual world—reminding readers that people who work with books use this word—they never remark upon it in the context of YA literature. They also define it as “a person in the early years of adulthood,” a definition that only points to the very end of the age continuum, excluding most of the readership addressed by Random House's YA imprint, Delacorte. It does incorporate the more expansive understanding of “young adult” that includes the MTV demographic of readers as old as twenty-five, however (Nell and Paul).

Not only is the readership of Young Adult literature extremely broad and difficult to pinpoint exact age groups, so is the use of power dynamics. The following section of this chapter works to unpack ideas regarding power and agency in children’s and Young

Adult literature in the context of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its adapted counterparts.

Power and Agency in Young Adult Literature

If power is how I argue Young Adult and children’s literature should be

separated, then a conversation on agency has to be discussed. To separate the two terms,

“agency is the power people have to think for themselves and act in ways that shape their

experiences and life trajectories,” which can take both individual and collective forms

(Cole par. 3). Power can come from agency, however, the two are not necessarily

synonymous. Agency focuses on the individual and can be about their means to an end,

whilst power is much more systematic in nature (Kockelman 375). The topic on whether

or not children actually have agency in a real, tangible way is a central question and

argument to those in children’s scholarship. On one end of the spectrum, David Oswell

states, “children’s agency (children as ‘active,’ ‘participative’ and politically

demonstrative) is less something that can be or needs to be asserted, and more something

to be explored” (25). However, when children’s literature is explored there seems to be

two extremes that stem from this ideology. The first extreme holds the ideology that

people, all people, including children, are born with the choice of choosing freedom, thus

resulting in their own power and agency. In this freedom, they have the choice to defy

social institutions that expect certain ideologies, traits, and behaviors that society places

before them. In short, children innately have agency because they are not aware of

societal norms and expectations yet, thus their mere existence go against the status quo,

resulting in a sense of power that adults do not have, or rather, have lost. On the other

side of the extreme, scholars hold the belief that children are, in fact, shaped by societal

expectations and culture, and to “bypass them is illusory” resulting in the fact that agency

cannot be achieved as a child, as stated in “The Hidden Child in the Hidden Adult”

(Nodelman 266). Of course, these statements are extremes and while each argument has

support and publications, it seems as though children having agency and power is

something that is thrust upon them in literature is based on the child’s culture, race,

gender, and lived experience. Without knowing each child’s particular demographics, I

am not sure it is responsible or even correct to choose one side or the other as a blanket

statement for all children’s literature. Likewise, it is not children writing these stories for

themselves---adults are. And that complicates things because adults consciously or

subconsciously impose their own culture, race, gender, and lived experiences onto the

literature they produce. For example, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

is a beloved children’s book that has been reproduced, retold, and recognized since the

Victorian era. Carroll’s work is both based on a real ten-year-old Alice Liddell, but also includes elements that Alice Liddell may not be aware of during the Victorian era, such as Carroll’s careful satirical critiques of the British monarchy disguised as nonsense poetry and characters. Such hidden discussions of politics are not thoughts from an actual

Victorian child, especially because Alice is a young girl, and girls were not to concern

themselves with matters such as politics. Instead, those are the thoughts and ideas of a

well-educated, upper class man who has already obtained power and agency. The blend of whimsical, childlike imagination mixed with satirical politics result in a matter that

Florian Esser describes as part of the “social network of childhood.” Esser goes on to provide a happy medium for the two extremes by arguing “the child is embedded in a whole network of different objects, people, and practices within agency is produced” later on adding that when it comes to the child and agency, “agency is not a human capacity opposed to society but is socially produced” (Esser np, emphasis mine). Agency is “a

person or thing through which power is exerted or an end is achieved.” Thus, I believe

that Esser’s explanation of agency is accurate when looking at a variety of children’s

literature as a category. Children are not born with power; they gain it as they get older,

and even that notion relies on the child’s lived experiences. It could be argued that the

notion that a child is born with agency and has the natural born ability to obtain power is

a very white-washed, privileged, heteronormative, gendered, and westernized ideology of

childhood. Carroll’s text is evaluated under Victorian, upper-class ideologies, while A.G.

Howard and Tim Burton’s are texts released in the twenty-first century, they are mostly

evaluated as twenty-first century texts, exploring modern notions of gender, class, and

expectations in a way that is not offered to Lewis Carroll. That being said, it is nearly

impossible to not place twenty-first century ideologies on the Victorian text at hand when

analyzing a spectrum ranging from 1865-2015.

What is Adaptation and How Does it Help Us Make The Distinction?

This thesis relies heavily on adaptation studies to help distinguish children’s

literature from Young Adult literature. In order to successfully make that distinction, it is

important to understand what adaptation is, how it operates, and how it provides a line

where children’s literature ends and Young Adult literature begins. Julie Sanders argues

for three broad categories of adaptation. The following three categories are important to

layout in order to effectively understand how adaptation helps make the distinction

between Children’s literature and Young Adult literature.

In transposition, Sanders argues “all screen versions of novels are transpositions in the sense that they take a text from one genre and deliver it into a new modality and potentially to different or additional audiences” (Sanders 25). During this transposition period, the text is ultimately reborn, rewritten, and reimagined for mass audiences of certain demographics and purposes. For example, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice has since been adapted into numerous films, plays, and texts. However, Austen’s work underwent an incredible transformation when it was adapted textually into a Young Adult novel entitled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016) and later on, was adapted into a blockbuster film. The point of Austen’s work to be adapted into a Young Adult novel with an emphasis on flesh-eating zombies turned successful film was not to do Austen a disservice, but rather to paint the original text in a new light, for a new culture, and for a younger audience: one that enjoys the love/hate relationship between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, but would rather see them defeat the undead rather than fall in love.

Sanders makes the point that “the full impact of the film adaptation depends upon an audience’s awareness of an explicit relationship to a source text” (Sanders 26), and while

accuracy to the source text might be extremely important to some critics and scholars, children and Young Adult consumers might find these kinds of adaptations more inviting and accessible, and it encourages them to go and locate the source text and find joy in that.

The second category following transposition is commentary, in which Sanders argues that prior knowledge of the source text is not necessary to enjoy a film adaptation, but it does have the ability to “enrich the spectators experience” (28). This is because consumers will already be familiar with characters, setting, and plot, which has the ability to bring joy to the consumers. Likewise, Sanders goes on to state that adaptations “prove complicit in activating and in some cases reactivating the profile and popularity of certain texts, participating in canon formation in some respects” (29). For example, Tim Burton’s film adaptation of Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland reactivated the popularity of the beloved

Disney film. From Burton’s adaptation came an influx of merchandise and transmedial adaptations ranging from new music, clothing, stuffed animals, and an interactive eyeshadow palette from the luxury brand “Urban Decay.”

The third and final category Sanders explains is analogue. Sanders states “while it may deepen our understanding of the cultural product to be aware of shaping intertexts, it may not be necessary in order to enjoy the work independently” (Sanders 30). This notion has the opportunity to open the debate to whether or not an adaptation should overtly acknowledge the source text at all. Overall, Sanders points out that adaptation has a pleasure factor, and adaptations, especially film, are meant to be enjoyed with or

without that nod to the source text. However, the source text has to be able to survive in order to be adapted over and over again. Walt Disney and Tim Burton could not have successfully adapted Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll both in 1951 and in 2013 if the Victorian novel did not survive across these vastly different timelines.

This type of survival is what I argue to be adaptogenic, meaning it has the ability to be adapted into a variety of mediums, genres, and time periods without losing the essence of the storyline. In other words, it is easily recognized and extremely malleable. We return to this specific story time and time again not because of its status in the literary canon, but because Alice possesses a sense of childlike wonder and curiosity that is equally admirable and intriguing. Each time it is adapted and retold, we see a new Alice with new characteristics, challenges, and story world interpretations.

Part of the reason that adaptation can get incredibly muddy and complicated is because it is a creative process and has the ability to cross boundaries. Adaptation is quite literally everywhere, whether we recognize it or not. When we go into a store and see a beloved character's face on a sweater, that’s a form of adaptation. When we go to Disney

World and ride the Mad Hatter Tea Cups, that is a form of adaptation. When we play a video game that is an interactive version of a film, that is a form of adaptation. Too often adaptation is only thought of as a novel being adapted into a film, and while page to screen is one of the most popular forms of adaptation, adaptation studies is much more complex than taking the pages of a novel and turning into a script to be acted out for the sake of the movie theater. This notion of taking one story and retelling it into different mediums whether it be theme park rides, clothing, music, makeup, books, or films is the

act of transmedial adaptation. Transmedial adaptation is the most common form of adaptation, and relies specifically on a central text to operate in. Most adaptations occur in this context. According to Jens Eder, these types of adaptations “contribute to building networks of texts that spread across different media and have central elements in common” such as the beginning of most Wonderland adaptations in which a girl follows a white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and falls down a rabbit hole and finds herself in a different world (62) Eder goes on to state the characteristics of transmedial adaptation, explaining that these retellings are

far from being limited to professional productions in fictional art and entertainment, transmedial productions and adaptations also include amateur and nonfictional productions, for instance in journalism, marketing, or education. Moreover, they can be found in any phase of the communication process, from advertising to advertised core offers (e.g., video games) to follow-up communications (e.g., fan websites). And they are influential: with their constant repetition and variation of certain contents and forms, values and norms, meanings and affects, transmedial discourses have considerable cumulative effects (66).

This is why a large problem when defining specific retellings of a text such as Alice’s

Adventures in Wonderland it is virtually impossible to pinpoint and discuss every

adaptation of the story. With all the versions, retellings, and mediums adaptation takes

with this specific story, there is no doubt that Alice is influential and somewhat easy to

replicate or retell. However, it is important to note that I am not implying that the

adapters participating in the retelling of Carroll’s tale are merely copycats. Rather, I

argue that all these adapters relate the story in their different ways. They use the same

tools that storytellers have always used “they actualize or concretize ideas; they make

simplifying selections, but also amplify and extrapolate; they make analogies; the critique

or show their respect, and so on” (Hutcheon 3), which draws attention to the long-

standing argument over textual fidelity.

Linda Hutcheon argues that the fidelity of the adaptation, meaning how accurate the adapted text is compared to the original text should not frame adaptation today.

Instead, each new adaptor, such as Tim Burton when he adapted Carroll’s work, becomes a new kind of author, relying not necessarily on line-by-line accuracy, but rather on the overall story and aesthetic with his own artistic take on the story. Film, like Burton’s, can be said to be one of the most inviting and inclusive forms of adaptation though it gets a lot of slack if the visual product does not match the written one. As mentioned above, there are issues with the idea of fidelity and many debates have and continue to rise about the importance of preserving the work being adapted, and whether or not film cheapens literature, or even makes it less of an art form. It is not only adaptation and literary scholars who have made this argument time and time again, it is a lot of the general public. You will hear the phrases “the book was better, in my opinion” or “the film ruined the essence of the book for me” after a popular text becomes a movie. Hutcheon points out that this is because in order for a film to happen, the book has to be dramatized, synthesized, and oftentimes, beloved scenes do not make the final cut to the film leaving fans, scholars, and critics feeling disappointed, though those cuts may be deemed incredibly necessary by the directors and screenplay writers, in which Abbott dubs as

“surgical art” (115). In making these changes, those involved in the film-making process the story itself, then, is recognized as Carroll’s, but becomes equally Burton’s through his own creative style and interpretation of the story. This ideology is supported by H. Porter

Abbott as he invokes George Bluestone’s idea of the destructivist, which argues that with each film adaptation, the filmast, such as Tim Burton in this instance, becomes a new author of the work, with the work acting as a deconstructed version of the original.

According to Linda Hutcheon, adaptation can be defined by three distinct but interrelated perspectives, when we refer to adaptation we refer to the process and the product” (Hutcheon 7):

1. Formal entity or product: an adaptation is announced and extensive

transposition of a particular work or works. This ‘transcoding’ can involve

a shift in medium, or a change in genre, or a change of frame and therefore

context.

2. Process of creation: the act of adaptation always involves both

(re)interpretation and then (re-)creation; this has been called both

appropriation and salvaging.

3. Process of reception: adaptation is a form of intertextuality; we experience

adaptations (as adaptations) as palimpsests through our memory of other

works that resonate through repetition through variation.

Since we are transitioning to a digital age and adaptations such as films, plays, operas, amusement park rides, music, and so on are becoming more and more accessible, it is worth noting that people very may well be experiencing literature in a new way, and those who are introduced to a canonical text like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland where so many variations exist, to borrow Hutcheon’s phrase, “multiple versions exist laterally not vertically” (115). This simply means that people can be introduced to the

original text, they just are not being introduced to the text first. Instead, they might be watching Walt Disney’s animated adaptation on Disney Plus, resulting in a lateral reading instead of a vertical one that past generations might be more familiar with.

The following chapter will provide close reading analyses of Lewis Carroll’s

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland compared to Walt Disney’s animated adaptation.

These two texts work to showcase the power dynamics of Wonderland and how Alice navigates them as a child. I will analyze how Disney has chosen to adapt Carroll’s

Wonderland by providing a historical account of production and success and providing a close reading that highlights the use of power dynamics between Wonderland and Alice.

CHAPTER III

LEWIS CARROLL AND WALT DISNEY

The History and Criticism of Walt Disney’s Animation, 1951

In 1951, Walt Disney released a full-length adaptation of Carroll’s children’s novel,

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson,

Hamilton Luske, with Kathryn Baumont as the voice of Alice. By 1951, there were already eight film adaptations of Carroll’s beloved children’s novel, but Disney’s would be the first to be a full-length, completely animated film that would last seventy-five minutes. However, Disney’s full-length film was not the first time he adapted Carroll’s novel. Before Walt Disney moved to Hollywood, he released a series of silent short films called the “Alice Comedies” that adapted parts of Carroll’s novel, though they did not receive the popularity that he had hoped they would. After moving to Hollywood,

California, Walt Disney continued to tinker with the full production of Alice in

Wonderland. Walt Disney spent 18 years on the animation, beginning to develop the artwork of the film in 1933. Alice in Wonderland would be released in 1951, making it the thirteenth animated film produced by Walt Disney. As it would turn out, the animation process for Wonderland proved to be incredibly difficult for a number of reasons, the first being that the original illustrations done by Sir John Tenniel were considered iconic, and illustrators concluded that not referencing Tenniel's illustrations would be a big mistake (Walt Disney Archives np). However, as this image of Alice demonstrates, Tenniel’s drawings had a lot of linework, which proved it difficult for animators to translate to the screen.

As replicating Tenniel’s drawings for animation proved to be tedious and unrealistic for film, it was also very expensive for Disney to replicate for animation. The difficulty and cost seemed to be resolved by providing replicas of Tenniel’s illustrations in the initial opening scene of the film. Alice, the White Rabbit, and the infamous tea party scene have obvious pencil lines and are extremely detailed, something that the film does not continue on to the first scene of the film. By choosing to adapt Alice in this way,

Walt Disney begins to deconstruct Carroll’s Alice by producing a new illustration that is a more modern take on Alice and the creatures she encounters. Disney’s opening scene of

Tenniel’s work nods to Carroll, taking the time to acknowledge where she came from, but as the film opens to Alice in the garden making a daisy chain, she becomes Disney’s creation.

Eventually Disney would turn the majority of his resources and nine artists to focus instead on the film Cinderella, as that production did not have so many variables working against it. As a result, multiple artists took turns drawing characters, specifically our protagonist Alice and the Cheshire Cat, making it difficult to develop the same distinct and unmistakable image that other famous Disney heroines like Cinderella and

Snow White have. This lack of uniformity for Alice made her “the blandest of Disney

Heroines” by critics despite the popularity of Carroll’s work, and by default, critics and

Disney himself considered his adaptation a complete failure after its initial release (Ness

134).

The last and perhaps the biggest issue Walt Disney had with adapting Carroll’s work was the lack of plot that occurs in the novel. Walt Disney states in his article “How

I Cartooned ‘Alice:’ Its Logical Nonsense Needed a Logical Sequence,” that “it was imperative that we created a plot structure, for Carroll had not had a need for such a thing. We decided, of course, that Alice’s curiosity was the only possible prime mover for our story and generator of the necessary suspense” (Disney 8). Disney claims that others told him that the laws of fantasy do not follow the laws of story and progression did not need to apply. However, he points out that “when you look at a moving picture you do not have a chance to ponder over the meaning, or re-read” (9). Disney opted to keep the basic outline of Carroll’s tale: a girl falls down a rabbit hole, has a bit of adventure, makes mathematics and linguistic jokes, and then wakes up from a dream.

However, Walt Disney and his animators decided the children’s novel did not have a distinct and clear moral the way other children’s literature did, because Alice herself,

“lacked heart” and decided to come up with their own moral of the story in their deconstruction, one that is common in children’s literature: “be careful what you wish for” (Walt Disney Archives np). Having a moral of the story in children’s literature is historically important as,

those who write children’s books have always thought it part of their job to instruct their readers, whether in facts, religion, morals, social codes, ways of thinking, or some other set of beliefs or ideas. From very early on, authors and publishers realised that instruction would be more effective if it were made entertaining, and this sugar-coating approach – ‘instruction with delight (Grenby np).

In the cases of Carroll’s Victorian Alice and Disney’s 1950s Alice, she depicts a middle-class girl who must learn values familiar to their middle-class audiences which included “commercial qualities like hard work, thrift and honesty; moral virtues like solicitude for others; social virtues like politeness, charity and obedience to parents; and a

rationality which disdained fear of the dark or ghosts and rejected sentimentality or excessive emotion” (Grenby np). This is foreshadowed in the very first scene of the film and plays out as Alice navigates Wonderland, eventually desperate to be back home with her cat, family, and studies. Like other later adaptations of Carroll’s novel, such as Tim

Burton and A.G. Howard’s retellings, Disney brought over other characters and plot lines from Carroll’s sequel, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, to slow the film down and attempt to add depth and length to the animation without overwhelming audiences with the original eighty characters that appear in the first novel.

Instead, Disney combined characters for a total of thirty-five characters that he believed would progress the story (Disney 9).

In addition, the film is a musical, which was not surprising considering the previous animations meant for children also featured a variety of musical numbers, though the original works had no mention of singing or dancing. Rather, Disney opted to deconstruct Carroll’s nonsensical poetry into musical numbers to keep children interested in the film (Disney 9). In doing so, Walt Disney eliminated scenes such as The Duchess and the pig baby in favor of musical numbers courtesy of Tweedle-dee and Tweedledum because some of the scenes and nonsensical poetry would be “horrifying” playing across the screen for a film meant for children (Walt Disney Archives np). Overall, Walt Disney considered his adaptation to be a flop, and he was incredibly disappointed with the outcome. It wasn’t until the late 1960’s that college students rediscovered the film and pushed for a rerelease, where it would get the reputation of being “trippy” and “weird,” both staples of the sixties (Walt Disney Archives np). After the popularity of the re-

release, the Disney Company would go on to adapt Alice in transmedial ways, creating toys and merchandise, and eventually installing a “Mad Tea Party” ride at Walt Disney

World in Florida that still operates today (Walt Disney Archives np).

Whether Walt Disney liked his animation or not, he opened up a wide range of later adaptations. I argue that both Carroll’s Alice and Walt Disney’s Alice work most successfully as a building block for other writers and directors to expand upon. Her character and story are malleable and adaptogenic. Alice’s character and story has been able to stay a relevant piece of popular culture because of the countless adaptations that have come since 1865. Because artists, writers, directors, and the like continue to adapt

Wonderland, the story will continue to be relevant for the years to come in the realm of both Children’s and Young Adult literature. Walt Disney’s film production of Alice in

Wonderland paved the way for toys, theme park rides, comic books, computer games, video games, and graphic novels. These transmedial adaptations all allow multiple entry points into Wonderland without having to be familiar with Carroll’s novel first. Instead the adaptogenic nature of Alice provides the unique opportunity to create adaptations that can stand on their own to provide a rich story experience (Sanders 26). Likewise, Walt

Disney opened the door for other adaptors such as A.G. Howard and Tim Burton in the

2010s to add more depth to Carroll’s character and story world of Wonderland.

At its core, and like most adaptations of the novel, Disney kept the iconic scenes that include Alice getting distracted from her studies and following a White Rabbit

dressed in a waistcoat down a rabbit hole, where she will drink and shrink and eat and grow to enormous heights. My purpose of Walt Disney’s adaptation in comparison to

Lewis Carroll’s novel is to showcase how children’s literature is distinguished from

Young Adult literature as two separate categories differentiated by the way that Alice gains power through age. As Alice navigates all of the shrinking and growing, she comes across a curious world, much different than her own reality, called Wonderland. Her navigation is typical of her ten-year-old age in which like most children, there is a lack of power due to the fact that she is easily side-tracked and manipulated by the creatures in

Wonderland, and her attempts at standing up for herself are arbitrary and often end in tears. This lack of power calls for an analysis that outlines how power operates in Lewis

Carroll’s novel and Walt Disney’s animated adaptation. The following analysis of what will be completed thematically: identity, authority figures, and time. These themes have been chosen because they most accurately showcase Alice’s disproportionate loss of power during her time in Wonderland. This is not to suggest that these three themes exist independently from one another, nor are they the only themes present. Instead, I recognize that each scene can and will relate to one another. I chose to organize this chapter in this way to illuminate the power imbalance Alice experiences as a character of children’s literature. Additionally, this organization method provides uniformity for the next chapter.

Identity

“Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle” (Carroll 21).

Alice’s identity is repeatedly conflicted as she begins to navigate Wonderland. In her reality, there were proper customs to be understood, rules to follow, and a routine of sameness. However, as she begins her adventure in Wonderland her basis for her identity is challenged. In Lewis Carroll’s novel and Walt Disney’s adaptation, Alice’s sense of identity is tied to growing up, represented by a literal and repeated growing and shrinking. Alice’s identity is determined by how others perceive her in both Carroll’s novel and Disney’s adaptation. Alice is constantly looking for approval from the creatures of Wonderland and seeking guidance with characters such as the caterpillar.

Ultimately, Alice wants to be told who she should be and how she should go about things in order to please the creatures of Wonderland. Her desire for acceptance and approval clouds her perception of who she is and what she is doing in Wonderland. The following section will explore three chapters of Carroll’s novel in contrast to Disney’s corresponding scenes: The Pool of Tears, The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill, and Alice’s

Evidence.

In Disney’s version of “The Pool of Tears,” after Alice falls down the Rabbit hole, she notices a tiny door and immediately wants to know what is on the other side.

She grabs the doorknob not realizing that the knob is actually the nose of the door and is startled when the door speaks up, “You did give me quite a turn! Get it? Doorknob?

Turn?” (Disney 10:51). This door character is the only character in the film that was not included in Carroll’s tales. Instead, Disney made him up in order to skip the long monologue Alice has whilst trying to figure out how to get through to the other side and provide humor to her otherwise frightening endeavor (Disney 7). She asks to see what is

on the other side of the door and inquiries about getting to the White Rabbit, a fixation that would last the entirety of the film. The door concludes that she is much too large to get through the door and suggests drinking a multi-flavored concoction with “DRINK

ME” written across it. Alice takes a large gulp of the drink and immediately shrinks to three inches high. She realizes that she is “just the right size” to which the doorknob chuckles, “I forgot to tell you, locked!” and inquiries about a key that appears on the table that, like the drink, appears out of nowhere.

In Carroll’s novel, Alice has the opportunity to navigate the task of getting through the inanimate door herself, where she immediately questions who she is and how capable she is on her own. This is seen as Alice spends a good deal of time weighing the pros and cons of drinking something that has appeared out of nowhere. She makes remarks regarding it possibly being poisoned and tries to recall lessons on how to know if something is poisoned or not. She remembers that she should only not drink something if it has the words “poison” written across it and shrinks to three inches high. She cannot climb the table, and eats a cake labeled “EAT ME” that causes her to grow abnormally tall. The door mocks her for her new height stating, “that went a long way” and laughs at her expense (Disney 10:11). His creature-talk is the first instance of Alice becoming incredibly frustrated with the creatures indulging in nonsense and she immediately starts to cry until she has created a pool of tears, drinks more of the shrinking potion, and swims her way through the door. This particular episode creates massive differences in

Alice’s characterization from Carroll’s novel to Disney’s film. In Carroll’s novel, Alice does not receive help or commentary from a creature, and instead is left to her own

devices to get to the other side of the door. This chapter showcases that Alice is capable of doing things on her own, though she questions her intelligence and ability to recall what she has been taught and who she is. Her back and forth conversation with herself are because there is no one available to tell her what to do just yet and being on her own to make direct choices is not something she is used to as a child. Disney’s film, however, portrays Alice as more childlike than Carroll’s. The inclusion of a talking doorknob to act as a character buffer is humorous in his puns but does not allow Alice to get to the other side on her own. While both do get past the door, Disney’s film marks the beginning for more creature-talk, frustration, and power imbalance that is heightened in “The Rabbit

Sends in A Little Bill.”

Lewis Carroll’s Alice did not learn her lesson about eating growing cakes from her pool of tears, and takes one from the White Rabbit’s house after he mistakes her for his housekeeper, Mary Ann. She does not correct him and instead follows his order to go inside his house and fetch him a pair of white gloves. This scene is important as the audience sees Alice running around and taking orders from the creatures of Wonderland without questioning why or correcting the White Rabbit when he mistakes her for someone else. She instead laughs at this new power imbalance where animals take the place of human authority figures, fantasizing about returning home and having to take orders from her cat, Dinah (Carroll 29). Her lack of speaking up and defending herself because she finds the situation humorous is a direct result of Wonderland having power over her, though this notion is initially lost on her. Alice wants to be grown up and

becomes tired of being so small, so she drinks a potion she finds in the White Rabbit’s house which results in her growing at an alarming rate, even taller than before. This scene is in both Disney’s animation and in Carroll’s novel; however, Carroll’s novel results in

Alice fantasizing that her life is like one of the fairytales she likes to read, and states that a book should be written about her, and she will be the one to write it when she is a grown up. Quickly Alice realizes that she has grown up in size, and “there’s no room to grow up any more here” (Carroll 31). This thought is distressing to Alice, as she concludes that if she does not go back down in size, she will not grow in age, always having “lessons to learn” (Carroll 31).

In comparison, Disney opts out of this humorous conversation Alice is having with herself, and instead chooses to jump from her alarming growth to the White Rabbit mistaking Alice for a monster rather than a little girl. The White Rabbit wastes no time enlisting the help of Wonderland creatures to try to get her out of the house, resulting in a musical number entitled, “We’ll Smoke the Monster Out!” courtesy of the Dodo bird.

The term monster is incredibly childlike with connotations of the fear children have of a figure such as the boogey man, but this type of monstrous fear Disney portrays is not necessarily childlike in nature despite the silly song sung by wondrous creatures.

Disney’s Alice in Wonderland was released in 1951, post-World War II. During this time, films and their increased focus on monsters and invasions, was a result of the war and cultural anxieties regarding foreign invasion, the rise of technology in the United States of America, along with teenagers who were sent to war and forced to grow up (Telotte

2008). Carroll’s Alice provides humorous commentary on her own identity, concerning herself with the logistics of growing older (and larger), while Disney showcases Alice as a monstrous invader: foreign and capable of causing mass destruction in the White

Rabbit’s home. As the scene develops, the Dodo bird’s idea to fix Alice and the White

Rabbit’s predicament is to throw the rabbit’s possessions at the house. The force breaks the items as intended, and the Dodo bird continues to throw things to build a base for a fire despite the White Rabbit’s pleas for him to stop destroying his property. Eventually, the White Rabbit gives in, concluding that the only way to get the invader out of his house is to “smoke” her out. The creatures do not understand that Alice is not a monster because her physical size does not match the one of a little girl, making her fear of being grown up and staying too large a reality. Because of this, Alice realizes the only way for her to escape being burned alive by the creatures of Wonderland is to take a carrot from the White Rabbit’s garden and eat it in the hopes that she will shrink and escape her demise, so she can continue to pursue the White Rabbit, despite her own anxieties about being much too large or much too small. The anxiety of equating physically growing to growing up mentally leaves Alice powerless over her size and enlarges the fear that she will lose out on her childhood back home in England the longer she stays in Wonderland.

She fears she will never be the right size again which clouds her ability to comprehend how the foods and drinks she consumes controls her physical size, not her mental maturity and age.

“Alice’s Evidence” is a scene in which Alice comes full circle with her identity.

In the beginning of the chapter, Alice is called to be a witness by the White Rabbit to

testify against the Knave and forgets how tall she has grown. As she walks to the stand to testify, she is very large, measuring at “nearly two miles high” (Carroll 110). She does not realize that her largeness can endanger smaller creatures, as she is beginning to accept that she cannot be a little girl due to her physical size. As the trial begins, Alice becomes incredibly frustrated with the rules of nonsense and unjust rulings of the court. The

Queen demands that the sentence come before the verdict (Carroll 113). Alice balks at this proposal and loses her temper with the Queen stating, “stuff and nonsense!” “The idea of having the sentence first!” The Queen does not appreciate the outburst and orders her card soldiers to chop off her head (Carroll 113-14). In the beginning this may have unsettled Alice and resulted in proper apologies, yet she holds her own, viewing herself as a grown up with the ability to stand up for herself due to her largeness looming over the rest of the creatures of Wonderland. Alice realizes they are “just a pack of cards” and wakes herself up to find that she is a little girl again of her regular height.

Disney takes a slightly different approach in the ending of this scene. While Alice is alarmingly tall and grows confident in her ability to stand up for herself against the creatures of Wonderland, she does not stay “two miles high” for the entirety of her speech (Disney 1:02:52). Instead, as she yells “stuff and nonsense!” to the Queen she begins to shrink little by little until she is back to her original size (Disney 1:05:23). Once she realizes her height no longer offers her the same menacing and powerful identity of a grown-up, she begins to run away from the pack of cards, retracing her steps through

Wonderland until she gets to the talking door and sees herself sound asleep on the other side.

Each of these corresponding scenes and chapters demonstrate that Alice correlates her identity with her physical self. As she grows and shrinks, she believes that she will never know who she is, as it changes by the second in Wonderland. As Alice sees herself sleeping through the door that once led her to Wonderland, she is able to realize that she has not changed at all. She is still a child, Wonderland cannot hurt her, and she has not lost her childhood; she just needs to wake herself up. Alice comes to believe that her size affects how the creatures in Wonderland treat her. When she is three inches high, she is treated as incompetent. When she is as tall as the trees, she is treated as though she is something to fear, which is seen as the creatures call her a monster and do not believe that she could be a little girl. In turn, she uses this to her advantage to assert dominance over the Queen of Hearts and call out the nonsensical justice system set in place in

Wonderland. However, she does not make the connection that physical size does not equate to adulthood until she returns to her childlike size and is the same Alice she was when she fell down the rabbit hole. This realization illuminates an important aspect of

Children’s literature as children are constantly learning, growing, and trying to figure out who they are through trial and error.

Authority

In both Lewis Carroll’s novel and Walt Disney’s animation, Alice views certain characters of Wonderland as authority figures to be followed and respected without question of why or how. The following section of this chapter focuses on chapters and scenes in which Alice views the creatures as authority figures and tries to follow their nonsensical norms in order to get direction. The two corresponding chapters and scenes that demonstrate Alice’s search for authority in Wonderland are: “A Caucus-Race and A

Long Tale” and “Advice from A Caterpillar.” These two scenes demonstrate that Alice will continue to seek out someone she views as powerful and authoritative to get her through Wonderland rather than getting through on her own accord.

Carroll begins the chapter “A Caucus-Race and A Long Tale, with Alice landing on a beach bank after her pool of tears, introducing her to birds and animals with soaking wet fur due to her crying frenzy. Very quickly, Alice would argue with the Lory about who was older, therefore had more authority, until a mouse proclaimed, “Sit down, all of you, and listen to me! I’ll soon make you dry enough!” (Carroll 19-20). And he soon begins telling the tale of William the Conqueror, reasoning that the story is dry enough to make everyone listening to it physically dry from the tears as well. Of course, metaphorical dryness still leaves Alice and friends soaking wet, leading to a Caucus race in which everyone runs around in circles for half an hour until the Dodo exclaims, “the race is over!” indicating that there must be a winner, but there is no winner, as all of the creatures are winners and must have a prize (Carroll 21-22). The Caucus tale is a satirical

critique of Victorian English government in which Carroll implies there is a lot of meaningless running around without actually doing anything at all, and like children, those doing the governing expect prizes and praise for their meager attempts at authority.

This entire chapter is a long linguistic joke, with the creatures taking pleasure at confusing Alice by using words such as tale and tail, and not and knot. The first mistake

Alice makes happens as the mouse states that he is going to tell Alice his history, a “long and a sad tale!” which Alice confuses for his literal “long tail, certainly” to which he recites a poem, which has the words following the shape of a mouse tail, a visual play on words to accommodate Carroll’s readers. The mouse accuses Alice of not paying attention to his poem, and she states that he “had got to the fifth bend…” to which the mouse responds that he had not. Alice once again does not realize that he is not talking about a literal knot and asks the mouse to let her “help undo it” (Carroll 23-5).

In comparison, Walt Disney does not indulge in satirical critiques or linguistic jokes to the extent Carroll does. Instead, Disney opts for a very brief encounter of the caucus race and has Alice still in an empty bottle begging for help from creatures who simply swim past her toward singing voices. She finally washes up to the shore and sees creatures running around in circles, singing, “Forward, backward, inward, outward, come and join the chase/Nothing could be drier than a jolly caucus race/Backward, forward, outward, inward/Bottom to the top/Never a beginning there can never be a stop” and so on until Alice begins to run with the others in an attempt to get dry (Disney 11:50).

Instead of including the mouse and Alice’s linguistic misunderstandings, Disney enlists

Through the Looking Glass caricature twins Tweedle-dee and Tweedledum to tell the

story of “The Walrus and the Carpenter” in which the Tweddle’s beg Alice to stay for story time, despite her hunt for the White Rabbit. Alice initially refuses, but is convinced easily by their dancing, singing, and promise of story. This scene is set on the beach, with

Tweedle-dee and Tweedledum transforming into the sun and moon, creating a split-shot on the screen where both are present.

The original poem is in iambic pentameter and has themes of trickery and warnings of greed. When read out loud, the poem is meant to sound sing-songy and catchy, and Walt Disney mimicked this by turning the scene into another musical number between the Walrus and the Carpenter. Disney’s musical adaptation of the poem creates a clear line of right and wrong. The Walrus is the “bad guy” who sings songs of adventure to the baby oysters, though his intention is not to befriend the oysters over dinner, but to make them his dinner. The baby oysters are fooled by the song and fall prey to the large

Walrus. The Carpenter in this scene acts as comic relief. He is the only human in the scene but is the one with the least amount of common sense, bonking himself on the head, playing the flute on a cane, and believing the Walrus just as the baby oysters do.

His desire is friendship with the oysters and implies he will let them go back home to their mother in the ocean. Literary scholars have scratched their heads at guessing who the Walrus and the Carpenter are supposed to represent. Some have thought the characters to be satirizing religious or political leaders. Walter Russell Mead, for example, has made the popular argument that those two characters are allegories for

Great Britain and the United States (Mead 309). However, Martin Gardner, coauthor of

The Annotated Alice, settles the longstanding argument once and for all. Lewis Carroll

was not the one who chose the Carpenter, it was his illustrator, John Tenniel. Carroll gave

Tenniel the option of drawing a carpenter, a butterfly, or a baronet, to which Tenniel chose to draw a carpenter. The reason behind the three very different character choices was because they each had three syllables, making it easy to fit in Carroll’s meter

(Gardner 30). Even if there is not necessarily a literary explanation for the characters and their choices to be greedy and selfish from Carroll, Disney adds to the plot of the animation by giving this scene a spoken moral: “The oysters were curious too. And you know what happened to them!” (Disney 14:39) serving as the first piece of advice Alice receives from creatures in Wonderland. This advice is important to Alice’s search for authority because it illuminates to her that she should not trust everyone to have her best interests in mind and her curious nature can lead her to trouble, just as the Walrus demonstrated with the baby oysters. Additionally, this lesson is related to children’s literature as a category because of the spoken morals and consequences the oysters faced due to their curiosity and submission to the Walrus. As mentioned in the previous chapter, children’s literature relies heavily on morals, lessons, and demonstrating how consequences are given.

The next chapter following the theme of identity is entitled, “Advice from A

Caterpillar.” In this chapter, Carroll’s Alice gets lost trying to track down the White

Rabbit and comes across a talking caterpillar smoking a hookah pipe. The first question

he asks of her is “who are you?” This question befuddles Alice, as her adventure thus far

has been a series of shrinking, growing, and taking orders from creatures she is not

familiar with. Her anxiety about growing up and lacking power in Wonderland makes her

struggle to give the caterpillar clarity on who she is, stating, "I—I hardly know, Sir, just

at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have

been changed several times since then" and turns away to end the conversation after he

quickly scolds her for not knowing (Carroll 38). However, like every other time she has

tried to leave a creature, she is unable to as the caterpillar calls her back to “mind her

temper” and recite the poem “Father William” to him, a parody of Robert Southey's "The

Old Man's Comforts and How he Gained Them” (1799). She immediately straightens up,

folds her hands in front of her, and begins to recite the poem, just as she would with her

schoolteacher back home. She becomes flustered and does not recite the poem correctly,

which upsets her.

Reciting poetry incorrectly was a big deal for Victorian children, as memorization and recitation were things children did for adults at parties, and if they could not execute the poem perfectly, it showed them to be uneducated, reflecting poorly on their family

(Gardner np). Reciting poetry, or as Alice refers to them, “lessons,” incorrectly is something she does often, as readers see in the beginning of the novel as she falls down the rabbit hole and cannot remember the words to “How Doth the Little Crocodile,”

Carroll’s parody of Isaac Watt’s “How Doth the Busy Little Bee.” The caterpillar informs her she is “incorrect” and moves on from the lesson to ask what size she would like to be if she believes she is too small. She replies that “three inches is a wretched height to be” and offends the caterpillar as he is “exactly three inches” himself (Carroll 42). She

responds angrily to the caterpillar because she did not mention her disdain of her tiny height, and it was as though he read her mind, rendering her frustrated that not only does she not have the power to return to her normal height, but now does not have power over her own thoughts. The caterpillar turns away in a huff, not taking his own advice and minding his temper with her. This contradiction is typical of Wonderland but could also be seen as typical for how children see adults: saying one thing and doing another leaving the child confused about which is right, the statement or the example. Before he disappears, he tells Alice that one side of the mushroom will make her taller and the other will make her small. She is thankful for the tip, and bites off a piece from the right side and shrinks even shorter than the “wretched” three inches she just was. This does not please her, as she wants her normal, childlike size back. She takes a bite from the left side of the mushroom and becomes the tallest she has been thus far, her neck extending past the trees.

Disney’s animation is very similar to Carroll’s, creating a caterpillar that is strict and unfriendly. Though he is arguably the rudest creature Alice encounters during her time in Wonderland, he is the only one who gives her useful direction to grow back into her original size. When Alice first encounters the caterpillar, he is famously sitting atop a mushroom, singing, and smoking hookah. He, like Carroll’s caterpillar, does not introduce himself and instead asks, “Who are you?” Disney uses Alice’s encounter with the caterpillar to showcase the linguistic nature of Carroll’s text. He is seen smoking letter rings, and when he asks, “Who are you?” The smoke rings come out as the letters

“W” “R” “U” wrapping around her face and arms changing colors from red, to orange, to white, and green, representative of the amount of physical change Alice has gone through thus far (Disney 1:34:09). The smoke makes Alice cough uncontrollably, yet he continues to do it, blowing smoking letters on her as he speaks. The scene follows Carroll’s model, with the caterpillar demanding she recite a poem from memory and asking her what size she would like to be. She eats the sides of the mushroom “one side makes you taller, one side makes you smaller” and grows the largest she’s been, shooting up into the trees

(Disney 1:36:02). The bird she unfortunately took with her during growth screeches that she is a serpent, providing another instance in which the creatures she wants to please mistake her for a monstrous invader instead of a little girl messing with her sense of authority again. She desires guidance and normalcy in Wonderland, yet what she receives is a series of contradictions that is frustrating for a child.

Both “A Caucus-Race and A Long Tale” and “Advice from A Caterpillar” reflect

Alice’s desire to be governed by logical rules and obvious authority figures that will

explicitly guide her and model culturally appropriate childhood behaviors in her

adventure. “A Caucus-Race and A Long Tale” demonstrate that Alice is easily swayed by

the creatures of Wonderland. She follows their lead in attempts to dry off, attempts to

participate in conversations she does not necessarily understand, and is easily convinced

to postpone her own agenda. In the same way, “Advice from A Caterpillar” demonstrates

the desire for authority and guidance. She views the caterpillar as someone to impress

with the recitation of poetry, just as she would in her own reality with parental figures

and schoolteachers. Her frustration from the caterpillar comes from the lack of guidance.

Alice’s reality as a child is governed by rules and the need to be obedient. The lack of logical uniformity with the creatures she seeks out to employ the same rules she is familiar with creates frustration and cripples her ability to problem-solve for herself.

Alice’s attempts to seek out authority reflects the idea that because children are used to being told what to do, where to go, and how to do things, they will not have the wherewithal to guide themselves when left to their own devices.

Time

Alice’s identity crisis and submission to creatures she views as appropriate authority figures is a direct result of the time she fears she is losing being trapped in

Wonderland. Put simply, the longer Alice thinks she is stuck, the more she believes she is losing out on her childhood, creating an anxiety regarding time spent and time lost. The following two chapters identify how time plays a role in Alice’s inability to gain power and control her size: “The Fall” and a “Mad Tea-Party.”

After following the White Rabbit in a waistcoat, Alice’s curiosity gets the best of her, and she decides to chase him down a rabbit hole, as he frantically yells, “I’m late,

I’m late, I’m late!” For what exactly he is late for, neither Alice or the audience knows.

All she wants is to know why he is talking and if she can be invited to wherever he is going. Talking animals and inanimate objects are often seen as key staples of children’s literature, dating as far back as Aesop's Fables (Cosslett 475). Animals and objects are most commonly used to convey morals and help young protagonists make choices

(Cosslett 476). Since not every creature is an animal in Alice in Wonderland, I refer to

this phenomenon as creature-talkers; i.e. creatures that would not talk in real life such as the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, a deck of cards, a door, and so on. Alice’s desperation for the White Rabbit indicates that she is both bored and frustrated by her routine life in Victorian England, and if she can catch up to the White Rabbit, she will be fulfilled and have control over what comes next. The continued chase becomes more enticing as Alice repeatedly yells, “Oh, Mr. Rabbit!” After losing sight of the White

Rabbit, Alice peers into the hole, loses her balance and falls, waving goodbye to her cat,

Dinah. Her fall indicates her world turning upside down and finding a new appreciation for her reality where rules are clear, guidance is available, and time is inevitable.

In Carroll’s novel, the fall provides a series of mathematics jokes as Alice tries to calculate how long and how far she has been falling, “I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth...but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I’ve got to?”

(Carroll 4). As she continues to talk to herself, she becomes tired and feels herself dozing off until she lands “upon a heap of sticks and dry leaves” an indication that Alice is only dreaming of Wonderland (Carroll 5). In comparison, as Alice falls in Disney’s adaptation, she falls slowly and is very controlled by her dress acting as a parachute, slowing her down and allowing her to get a good look at her surroundings, the first indication that a new reality is about to set in. As she goes further down, she sees images of technicolor lamps and clocks, representative of Time, a nod to Through the Looking Glass and What

Alice Saw There and the time that she believes she will lose during her adventures in

Wonderland.

As Alice journeys on in search of the White Rabbit, she comes across the March

Hare and the Mad Hatter having a tea party. Tea as a social convention in Victorian

England is something she is familiar with and is delighted upon seeing something that she recognizes as normal for the first time in Wonderland. However, when she goes to sit down at the long table, she is met with disagreement as the March Hare yells, “no room!

No room!” despite there being a large table with empty seats (Disney 43:08). Alice is clearly not wanted at the tea party by the creatures of Wonderland, and they try to take the place of an authority figure by telling her no. Unlike the White Rabbit and the caterpillar, however, she does not recognize them as powerful authority figures, but rather insists that there is room for her and she sits down to spend her time having tea.

The creatures do not say anything else regarding her decision to join them for tea and offer her wine though there is none. Alice believes that offering someone something that does not exist is “uncivil” and rude, to which the March Hare informs her that sitting down without permission is uncivil. The Mad Hatter injects himself in the conversation and tells Alice that her hair “wants cutting,” which Alice finds very rude and attempts to scold him the way a parent might scold a child for saying something uncouth to a stranger

(Carroll 61). The Hatter ignores her attempts at scolding and instead replies with a riddle:

“Why is a Raven like a writing desk?” Alice becomes distracted trying to answer his riddle, and then gives up, repeating the Hatter’s riddle back to him, to which he replies, “I haven’t the slightest idea” (Carroll 70). This riddle became something Carroll’s readers obsessed over, writing him repeatedly for the answer. Originally, there was no answer.

The Hatter was mad thus the riddle is nonsense, which frustrates Alice as she behaves as though she is on a time crunch. However, the overwhelming amount of questioning led

Carroll to eventually providing a solution to the riddle. According to Dr. Selwyn

Goodacre, Editor of Journal of the Lewis Carroll Society, Carroll proposed an answer in the 1897 final revision of Alice's Adventures: "Because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in front!" (Goodarce np).

The early issues of the revision spell "never" as "nevar," i.e., "raven" spelled backward.

The creatures move on from the riddle and continue to argue with Alice and attempt to contradict her every time she speaks. Alice concludes that she is the only one who operates with sound judgment and logic. After some silence, the Hatter gets angry with the March Hare after he notices the March Hare’s watch is broken as he got “crumbs” on it when he was spreading butter on it. The Hare agrees, understanding that the crumbs he got in the watch was supposed to measure the day of the month, and now it cannot. Alice tries to reason once again with the creatures, to which the Hatter explains to her that Time is not an “it” but a “him,” foreshadowing the plot of Carroll’s sequel Through the

Looking Glass and What Alice Saw There. The Hatter continues to explain to Alice that

Time became angry when the Queen of Hearts said the Hatter was

“murdering” a song when the Hatter performed poorly. Since the month of March, the month the March Hare went mad, it has been perpetually six o’clock in the evening, marking a never-ending tea party the creatures cannot escape. Alice decides she will no longer sit there and be insulted by the creatures and gets up and walks away, furthering the notion that perpetual tea time is absolute nonsense, and the creatures can get up and walk away at any point, yet they are too far gone into madness to realize it.

The tea party marks a change in Alice’s attitude toward Wonderland and how she

navigates the story world. She seems to no longer care about coming off as rude and asks

questions about the new reality with a newfound confidence. The creatures’ infuriating behavior is intentional, meaning to drive Alice into madness, or at least test how sane she is and if she will fall into the trap of believing that time is perpetual. Up until this point,

Alice had been shrinking and growing physically, which she thought was her inevitable growing up and maturing. Yet, her ability to distance herself from the madness showcases her maturing mentally. Her reality is governed by time, logic, and rationality that the creatures cannot budge, “At any rate I’ll never go there again! It’s the stupidest tea-party I ever was in all my life!” (Carroll 58).

Disney’s Mad Tea Party scene is similar in plot to Carroll’s, filling the tea party with nonsensical riddles, questions, and attempting to drive Alice into insanity. However,

Disney’s scene does not have the same intention. Rather, it works purely as entertainment and as a device to point Alice back to her fixation on the White Rabbit. This scene in particular has become one of the most notable and recognizable scenes from Alice’s

Adventures in Wonderland. However, instead of focusing on Time as a person, Disney opts to pull the “un-birthday” scene from Through the Looking Glass and turn the 1871 neologism into a catchy musical number written by Mack David, Al Hoffman and Jerry

Livingston. Disney’s continuous melding of the two novels to create a visual plot coincides with what Benjamin Lefebvre calls a textual transformation in which Disney creates a mash-up of an adaptation, blending Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with

Through the Looking Glass, thus becoming a new text in which Disney becomes the new

author. The main difference, however, is the idea that there is not a lesson that Alice learns. Disney’s tea-party scene trades lessons about time for humor and entertainment by trading her frustrations with the creatures with singing and dancing. As the scene unfolds,

Alice is curious about what an un-birthday is, and why they are having cake to which the

Mad Hatter explains that an un-birthday is every day that is not the actual birthday. This excites Alice, as she exclaims, “why, it’s my un-birthday, too!” (Disney 44:09) and she is given the un-birthday cake. In comparison to Carroll’s novel, Disney’s March Hare, the

Mad Hatter, and the Dormouse act more silly than rude to Alice. They still participate in nonsense logic that Alice does not understand nor recognize as they attempt to have tea, but never do partake drinking tea or eating the un-birthday cake. Each time they go to have a drink the Hatter or March Hare scream, “Clean cup move down, move down, move down!” Alice only gets up to leave the party when the White Rabbit appears, seeking help to fix his watch while he yells, “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!” The Hatter informs the White Rabbit that he is three days behind as he smears butter, jam, and other tea things in the White Rabbit’s watch in an attempt to fix it. This alarms the White

Rabbit and he scurries off, making Alice jump up and yell after him, “oh, Mr. Rabbit!” only to look back to shake her head at the March Hare and Mad Hatter resuming their unbirthday celebrations. This scene is strictly meant for entertainment and a means to get

Alice from one place to another until she reaches the Queen of Heart’s castle instead of being used as a vehicle of understanding time and logic amongst madness. These two chapters showcase Alice’s growing anxiety regarding time. She does not want to lose out on her childhood, though she once had the desire to have a world of her own where

everything would be nonsense. Carroll’s novel illuminates to Alice that she can leave

Wonderland whenever she wants. She is not stuck in time forever, as the Mad Hatter and

March Hare believe they are.

Conclusion

Finally, it may be concluded that Alice’s self-consciousness regarding her ever- changing identity leads to her seeking authority figures in Wonderland to provide her with specific instructions, which leads to a panic about losing precious time in her childhood. Alice’s initial desire for adventure, curiosity, and escape from the mundane everyday becomes overshadowed by the overwhelming nonsense she encounters in

Wonderland, leading her back home where she is much more comfortable with her sense of identity, authority, and time. Alice desires to take back the power Wonderland has over her, and by forcing herself awake she escapes, succumbing instead to the realistic power dynamics of her reality. Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney’s adaptation provide an excellent example of how the lack of power relates to children’s literature, creating a building block for adaptations to come. Her lack of power derives from the way she and others perceive her expectations of identity, time, and authority. Her sense of identity, once connected to how others view her and her physical size now makes her realize that growing up is tied to growing mentally, not physically. Likewise, her anxiety of losing out on her childhood due her time spent in Wonderland reflects her inability to distinguish reality from a dream. In the end, her continued search for authority figures makes her miss her reality where she was able to predict what was expected of her. As

she returns home, she understands that she still has her entire childhood ahead of her. In children’s literature, children are learning language and figuring out how constructed societal norms operate.

In the next chapter, A.G. Howard’s Splintered trilogy and Tim

Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” follow the same model, focusing on Alice’s revisit to

Wonderland as it pertains to identity, authority, and time through relationships with characters and places. In doing so, readers will see how Young Adult literature is able to function as a separate category from children’s literature as Alice gets older with each retelling, gaining power as she navigates Wonderland with newfound maturity and expectations.

CHAPTER IV

TIM BURTON AND A.G. HOWARD

Background

“A darker chapter to a new story” -Susan Bye

Tim Burton directed Alice in Wonderland in 2010 with the intent to create an older, more mature and heroic Alice (Raphael np). Burton’s adaptation tells the tale of

Alice as a nineteen-year-old young woman caught between Victorian expectations of marriage and her desire for adventure and nonsensical curiosity. His version blends together live-action with CGI elements to create a “Burton-esque” film that compliments his reputation for outlandish sets, characters such as the Mad Hatter, the Red Queen, and

Alice Kingsley, along with stark contrasts between Victorian society and Wonderland.

Though Alice in Wonderland had already been adapted and retold a multitude of times,

Burton states that his decision to take on Carroll’s tale was because he had “seen mostly everything, but there’s never been a version for me that particularly works, that I especially like or that blows me away...It always ends up seeming like a clueless little girl wandering around with a bunch of weirdos” (Raphael np). Burton’s statement reveals his main reason for wanting to deconstruct Alice and create his own spin on Wonderland is because he felt there needed to be a newer Alice that would “correct” previous adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s text. Burton continues, stating, “...and the fact that there was no one definitive version was helpful” (Raphael np). Alice’s Adventures in

Wonderland is adaptogenic due to the countless versions in multiple mediums including

graphic novels, video games, and plays already created before 2010. While having so many different versions and types of adaptations can be overwhelming, it became beneficial to Burton because there is not a main adaptation that is looked to for direction, making Alice and her trip to Wonderland a malleable story. Burton goes on to explain that “it’s not like the Disney cartoon was the greatest. So, I didn’t feel that pressure to match or surpass” (Rother np). In fact, Burton admitted that he actually hated the character of Alice in other film adaptations stating, "she's a very annoying, odd little girl” and his rationale for adapting her into someone older and more mature, was “I wanted to make her into a character I could identify with: quiet, internal, not comfortable in her own skin, not quite knowing how to deal with things, being both young and having an old soul” (Raphael np). The decision to age Alice introduces a newer character to build upon in the realm of Young Adult literature. This Alice is meant for a new audience: Young

Adult consumers.

Burton’s blend of the gothic and fantastic worked out nicely for this particular adaptation and grossed over $1 billion worldwide and became the sixth film in the world to hit that number in 2010 (Forbes np). Six years after Alice in Wonderland was released,

Tim Burton released a sequel called Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) in which

Alice returns to Wonderland through a mirror to save the Mad Hatter by time travel via the chronosphere stolen from Time. In this way, Tim Burton becomes the creator of this retelling, transforming a children’s novel into an extravagant, action-filled piece of

Young Adult literature. This transformation is not an easy task. I argue that we cannot consider Burton’s Alice as simply another adaptation of a children’s novel, but rather we

have to view it as a text that not only stands on its own merits, but also adheres to the completely separate category of Young Adult literature, relying on tropes and characterizations found in fantasy. Burton’s Alice becomes a heroine that does have recognizable features from Carroll’s Alice, such as her lust for adventure and curious nature, but it is vital to separate the ten-year-old girl from the nineteen-year-old woman with her own voice, choices, and power, viewing her as a newer, additional character who is used for inspiration for other adaptations such as A.G. Howard’s Young Adult trilogy

Splintered.

A.G. Howard is a New York Times bestselling author who specializes in Young

Adult literature. Howard has published eight Young Adult literary adaptations of different story worlds, including the Splintered series which deconstructs and retells

Carroll’s novel into a dark and twisted Young Adult literary adventure. The first novel,

Splintered, was published in 2013 and focuses on fifteen-year-old protagonist, Alyssa.

Alyssa is a descendent of the Liddells, making Alice Liddell, the muse for Carroll’s novel, her great-great-great-great grandmother. Howard has repeatedly stated that her inspiration for her adaptation was first and foremost Lewis Carroll himself, but a turning point that made her want to write a Wonderland series in the Young Adult category came after she watched Tim Burton’s 2010 film adaptation (Crutcher np). She states she was

“inspired” by the vivid nature of Burton’s film and began to imagine “scenarios” for her own Wonderland, thus giving way to her own adaptation, where she gives nods to both

Carroll and Burton as creators (Crutcher np).

In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Howard states one of her goals of

creating her own adaptation of Carroll’s novel is to draw attention back to him. She

claims “They [adaptors] make the most of the original author’s vision, craft their own

story as a tribute and a companion to the original, by giving the characters/details a

deeper meaning. When done right, it makes the reader want to revisit the original work”

(Crutcher np). The purpose of deconstructing Carroll’s work into a Young Adult fantasy trilogy is to draw relevance and relatable interpretation that appeals to Young Adult readers. While Howard’s adaptation is far from a line-by-line linear adaptation, she nods to Carroll and Burton’s works while putting her own spin on the Alice-verse in a way that is relevant to younger teenagers. This is done by introducing a brand-new protagonist called Alyssa and other characters such as Morpheus, a man/moth hybrid that is both

“brooding, and attractive” (Howard 135). Howard also places the story's timeline in 2013 instead of continuing the Victorian, England tradition with mentions of school dances,

American high school classes, and a complicated love triangle between Alyssa, her fully human boyfriend Jeb, and Morpheus. The major change in setting and introduction of new characters highlights Howard’s goal in adapting Carroll’s children’s novel for a new audience is to peak Young Adult readers’ interest in Lewis Carroll’s text. She states,

“that, to me, it is a successful story in its own right, when it whets the reader’s appetite to plunge into another book that might’ve been on their shelves for years, gathering dust”

(Crutcher np).

Howard has published five adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s work, but this thesis chapter focuses specifically on comparing the completed trilogy, Splintered (2013),

Ensnared (2014), and Untamed (2015) to Tim Burton’s film adaptation Alice in

Wonderland (2010). To accompany the trilogy, Howard has also published The Moth in the Mirror: A Splintered Novella (2013) told from the point of view of Alyssa’s two love interests, Jeb and Morpheus, and Untamed: A Splintered Companion (2015). This companion contains three novellas that explore Alyssa’s and her family’s memories of

Wonderland and how they each took control of their own destiny. While I recognize the above companions and sequel are a part of the many relevant and important adaptations of the Alice-verse that exist, this chapter will focus on the primary texts at hand, meaning

A.G. Howard’s original trilogy and Tim Burton’s first film adaptation. These texts showcase the evolution of Alice and Alyssa growing up and understanding the implications of getting older. The rest of this chapter will provide a comparative analysis between the texts and Alice and Alyssa’s relationship to places and people. This analysis focuses on three themes that are prevalent in each adaptation: identity, authority, and time. It is important to note that these chapters and scenes are not linear comparisons.

Instead, they focus solely on the scenes and chapters which guide the above themes illuminating the stark difference between children’s literature and Young Adult literature.

This is done to demonstrate Alice and Alyssa’s power gain during their time in

Wonderland and showcase the ways in which they have grown up since 1865 and 1951.

Though Tim Burton’s film was released first, I will be utilizing Howard’s text first and

Burton’s second in the comparative analysis because Alice Kingsley is older than Alyssa.

In doing so, I will establish a clear evolution of power based on age in these adaptations.

Identity

“Broken glass severs more than skin. It severs your identity” AG. Howard

The anxiety and fear of growing up, physically and mentally, has been and continues to be, a prominent theme in the Carroll’s books and its adaptations. Carroll’s

Alice and Disney’s Alice do not want to lose out on her childhood while she is lost in

Wonderland and often worries out loud that she may not find her way back to her normal,

Victorian childhood, and molds her identity on the ways in which people view her. In her

Victorian society, she is viewed as a child who should be polite and well-mannered. In

Wonderland, the creatures view her as curious and bothersome. However, in A.G.

Howard and Tim Burton’s adaptations, Alyssa and Alice despise their realities, as they do not fit in the molds that are expected of them and embark on a hunt that will reveal who they are as they are faced with challenges and destiny.

Alyssa, a descendent of Alice Liddell, exists in the twenty-first century and believes that all the women of Alice’s lineage are cursed and damned to a life in an insane asylum in which they speak of fantasies of Underland, a dark and twisted take on

Carroll’s Wonderland. Howard uses the terms Underland, Wonderland, and Netherling realm interchangeably in reference to the same place. Howard’s use of Underland is a nod to Tim Burton, whose creatures claim that is the real name of Wonderland. Alice as a child misheard the blue caterpillar, Absalom, and called it Wonderland. Wonderland is reflective of the curiosity, imagination, and adventure she recalls from her childhood visits. Underland, the actual place, is the opposite of what Alice remembers. Underland

reflects the darkness and destruction that has taken over since the Red Queen took the throne.

Alyssa is desperate to break the “curse” that riddles her mother, Allison’s, side of the family. However, the first chapter of Splintered reveals that she will not “beat the odds” and she knows this because insects speak to her. She silences the insects' voices by killing them and making art of their carcasses; the first sign of “madness” in her lineage

(Howard 1-5). In the first novel of the trilogy, Splintered, Alyssa learns that she is half netherling and half human and has to spend the novel accepting who she is and deciding where home is. Throughout the beginning of Splintered, Alyssa’s identity appears to be lost. She is described as a misfit as Alyssa is lured into Wonderland by netherling guide

Morpheus. Through Morpheus she learns that if she wants to save her fully human family and her friend, Jeb, she has to undo what her great-great-great grandmother, Alice, did before her including the tasks of undraining the pool of tears, destroying the rabbit hole portal, restoring order from Queen Red, and putting the violent and havoc-wreaking

Bandersnatch to sleep.

A large part of Alyssa’s identity is understood by the developing sense of belonging and familiarity she finds in Wonderland. As Alyssa enters Wonderland in the chapter entitled “Into the Rabbit Hole,” she decides to try to visualize Wonderland in an attempt to test out for herself what is reality and what is imagined. During her wish, she visualizes her boyfriend, Jeb, by her side for protection and they both end up down the rabbit hole. After wandering around and collecting Wonderland-esque items such as the

shrinking potion and the growing tea-cakes, Alyssa and Jeb encounter the White Rabbit, whose name was misheard by Alice. He is not a rabbit, but a “skeleton” with “antlers” called Rabid White (Howard 123). He greets Alyssa stating, “Alice Liddell...you not be.

Her hands, you have” (Howard 124). Alyssa tells him that she is not Alice Liddell, but her great-great-great granddaughter. This chapter is incredibly important to the development of Alyssa’s identity as she moves forward. Not only does it solidify to her that her lineage is not riddled with madness with a false sense of reality, but it marks a point where Alyssa is able to separate herself from Alice Liddell, and her mother in order to forge her own path on the quest to become the heir of Wonderland. As she continues to make sense of what is real, she feels a sense of relief, “my memories and online stories were true. We’ve stepped into a nether-realm and are face-to-face with a netherling. The strange melody that sings inside my heart...it’s even more powerful than the fluttery sensation I sometimes feel. It tells me to embrace my identity, to be proud of who I am”

(Howard 122). Before recognizing the truth, Alyssa’s identity relied on what she perceived to be shameful relationships. She did not quite fit in with kids at school because of her ties to Alice Liddell and felt shame due to the alleged family curse her mother could not escape. Her own fears of landing in the same insane asylum riddled

Alyssa with despair and shame. It is not until she recognizes that Wonderland is a comfortable memory for her that she is able to release the shame and become what she described as the “best of both worlds,” in which she is able to return home and participate in normal, teenage things such as high school graduation while having the mobility to go back to Wonderland for visitation after peace has been restored (Howard 322).

Burton’s Alice, now nineteen, is all grown up and despises normal, Victorian expectations of women. Burton’s retelling begins thirteen years after she is seen to be discussing her “nightmare” of Wonderland with her father, telling him of “strange creatures” she encounters in the dream such as the “dodo bird, a rabbit in a waistcoat, and a smiling cat” (Burton 1:30:15). After thirteen years have passed since Alice is a child dreaming of Wonderland with her father, she is seen at a well-to-do Victorian garden in which she learns from twins with much resemblance to Through the Looking Glass caricatures Tweedle-dee and Tweedledum, that the garden party is actually her engagement party where she is expected to say yes to marriage to a prestigious and high society lord called Haymish. In Burton’s retelling, Alice Kingsley takes the place of

Alice Liddell, who is on the bridge between childhood and adulthood. Her return to

Wonderland on her part is accidental, yet the White Rabbit’s mannerisms let the audience know that the return is anything but. After falling, shrinking and growing, Alice believes she is simply dreaming and having her childhood nightmare all over again instead of revisiting an actual place. She pinches herself and tells the creatures she encounters that this is her dream and she will wake up because she is the one who “gets to decide” what happens (Burton 15:10). To her dismay, she does not wake up after her fall and the dreams she had as a child are not really dreams, but rather a reality. This, in turn, results in an anxiety of her being the “wrong Alice,” a concern voiced by the White Rabbit, the dormouse, and the Cheshire Cat over and over again in the beginning of the film. This anxiety catapults Alice Kingsley into a childlike state, where she is not confident in who she is anymore and why she is in a strange land she does not remember physically

coming to as a little girl. In her childhood, Alice was able to wake herself up and escape her demise with the Red Queen, granting her power in the sense that she was in control of her own dream. However, her inability to snap herself out of it takes her power away that makes her yearn for that control back. She is no longer in charge of her own tale, but rather has to rely on strange creatures for clarity and direction. She apologizes profusely telling the disappointed creatures “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be the wrong Alice”

(Burton 20:03). It is in this moment of doubt and confusion that Alice does not have any power over what is going to happen, but rather, Wonderland holds the power and will not give it back to her until she realizes who she is and her prophetic destiny, which will reveal her to become the real Alice with “muchness” and the ability to stand up for herself back home against Haymish, his mother, and her own family. Tim Burton’s

Jabberwocky scene, like Disney’s 1951 animation, nods to Lewis Carroll’s Through the

Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. Burton’s Jabberwocky character is a speaking dragon used for evil by the Red Queen in order to terrorize the creatures of

Wonderland. It is in Alice’s prophecy to kill the Jabberwocky and restore Underland back to its original, peaceful state and bring the White Queen back to rule. The Jabberwocky is based off of Lewis Carroll’s nonsensical ballad published in 1871 in Through the

Looking Glass. The ballad tells a moral of good versus evil, which is only revealed after the slaying occurs. Burton takes this nonsensical poem and executes it in order to fulfill

Wonderland's prophecy, positioning Alice to be the “chosen one” heroine, as “if it ain't

Alice, it ain’t dead” (Burton 1:15:09). This scene in particular is a pivotal point in Alice’s search for identity. Alice, donned in silver armor and a magnificent sword, arrives at a

chess board battleground in which she will seek out and kill the Jabberwocky while other characters such as the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse, and other creatures of Wonderland take on the Red Queen’s pack of cards in a ruthless war. As the battle begins, Alice relies on the support of her late father’s advice and thinks of six impossible things to give her the strength to fulfill her prophecy. As she counts them out loud, the impossible things encapsulate all the trials and errors Alice has gone through at home in England, and in search for self in Underland. The sixth and final impossible thing Alice allows herself to believe is “I can slay the Jabberwocky” in which she promptly severs his head, fulling the poem and prophecy of Underland, “One, two! One, two! And through and through/The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!/He left it dead, and with its head/He went galumphing back” (Burton 1:27:44, Carroll 13-16). After the slaying of the Jabberwocky, the Red

Queen is forced to give up her crown and give it back to the rightful White Queen. The

Red Queen is not punished with her own cruelty of chopping one’s head off, but instead is damned to a life of isolation for eternity. The success of restoring peace back to

Underland proves that Alice has gone from “hardly Alice” to “Alice at last” in which she is empowered and independent from original obligations (Burton 1:10:12).

Finally, in the last scene in which Alice contemplates life back home, Alice is presented with the choice of staying in Wonderland or returning back home to Victorian

England where she left her family, friends, and a dreaded wedding proposal. After great deliberation, Alice decides to return home because there is something she “must do”

(Burton 1:35:35). However, she does not return to get married to Haymish; rather, she decides to continue to be “Alice at last” full of “muchness” and resumes her father’s

legacy, proposing England begins trading with China and she be the one to lead the expedition. This scene is entirely made up by Tim Burton and has received criticism from adaptation and children’s literature scholars due to the ad-libbed, extremely progressive plot twist given to Alice at the end of the film (Crutcher np). Instead of being forced to marry a Lord, she is able to take her newfound confidence from slaying the

Jabberwocky and becoming the true Alice and make a choice for herself: One that

Carroll’s Alice most likely would not have been given at all. Alice and Alyssa both come into their own as they receive the power lost in the beginning of the stories and carry it with them back to their own story worlds, where they will both indulge in an adventure- filled life rather than a loveless marriage and promise of a life in an asylum where their imagination and wonder are not welcome. Both of these texts illustrate the complexities of bridging the gap between childhood and adulthood by having Alice and Alyssa navigate Underland in search for their identity. While Alyssa is much younger and more stubborn than Alice, she still manages to eventually fulfill her prophecy and save

Wonderland and the human realm as well. Figuring out who they are is a pinnacle of

Young Adult literature, and it results in an increasing desire for respect and freedom while including the frustrations of constantly being told who they are, who they should be, and how they should go about things. Yet, as Alice and Alyssa grow and gain independence, they create their own paths and become comfortable in the skin they wanted to hide and conform in the first place.

Authority

As seen in Lewis Carroll’s and Walt Disney’s 1951, Alice views certain creatures as authority figures that she believes should tell her how to behave and how to get from one place to another in Wonderland. However, A.G. Howard and Tim Burton take a more grown-up view of how Alyssa and Alice view authority through a teenager’s eyes and focus solely on relationships between parents and friends. Alyssa is a reserved fifteen- year-old who has a hard time trusting the creatures of Wonderland, as she sees that

Morpheus, the shape-shifting man/moth hybrid who guides and actively pursues her, is not always truthful and often plays mind games resulting in bloodshed in Unhinged and

Ensnared, the final two installments of Howard’s Splintered trilogy. During the final two installments, Alyssa believes that her work in Wonderland is done, as she had already undone all of Alice’s mistakes and was eventually crowned Netherling Queen. However,

Morpheus refuses to let Alyssa be a normal, fully human teenager. His return to the human realm indefinitely to tell Alyssa she has to kill Queen Red, rather than simply isolate her. There is a sense of desperation and urgency because Queen Red has emerged from isolation once again and is putting Wonderland in danger of the deadliest war yet.

Alyssa initially refuses due to her mother being released from an insane asylum, her parents separating, and trying to navigate her relationship with her new boyfriend, Jeb.

However, Morpheus wreaks havoc on Alyssa’s life in the human realm whilst threatening the humans she cares about until she agrees to return once again to restore order by killing Queen Red.

Alyssa’s adventures and search for authority figures to guide her are much different than Tim Burton’s view on authority figures in his film adaptations. While both rely on a heroine to restore Wonderland back to peace, it does not come as easily for

Alyssa, as she would be the first since Alice Liddell to successfully survive the horrors of

Wonderland long enough to restore it for the creatures that reside there. The creatures of

Alyssa’s Wonderland are weary, desolate, and are much more violent than the ones Tim

Burton reimagined from Carroll. The changes to a darker, more violent, and despair ridden Wonderland is an important shift that showcases how malleable and adaptogenic

Lewis Carroll’s text is. Alyssa and Alice Kingsley’s ability to mold into a heroine in the midst of darkness gives them a valuable space in Young Adult literature.

Alyssa is a high school student around fifteen years old and has to navigate not only the creatures of Underland but also her father and her mother, Alison, who has been released from the insane asylum she had been admitted to for the majority of Alyssa’s life. In the chapter entitled “Shattered Images” in Unhinged, Alyssa has begun to trust her mom when she is released from the asylum and comes to understand that Underland is a real place. However, Alyssa walks in to find her mother profusely bleeding and her portal mirror and insect mosaics smashed. Morpheus, a netherling who has accompanied and manipulated Alyssa’s lineage makes it obvious that he knows Alison very well and begins to tell Alyssa that her mother has been lying to her since she was a little girl.

Alyssa is confused as to how they know one another and expects her mother to react like any mother would: with shock and a series of questions. However, Alison does not do that, and instead tells Morpheus that “this isn’t like the past. I’m older. Wiser. I don’t

need your help anymore” (Howard 159). This leads Alyssa to connect the dots that they know each other and Morpheus may have “seduced” all her “predecessors” (Howard 159-

60). As Morpheus’s claims leave Alison with no choice but to explain to Alyssa that she had been to Wonderland before, and she did almost become Queen Red, and she lied to

Alyssa her entire childhood in an attempt to protect her from Wonderland. Alyssa does not take this sentiment well, and exclaims, “It could’ve changed everything. Wonderland wouldn’t be in this mess” (Howard 167). Alison tries to tell her nothing was her fault, but

Alyssa can only see her mother now as a “traitor” and someone who would betray her “in the worst possible way” (Howard 167). Alyssa had begun to trust Alison with her knowledge of Wonderland and the battles that occurred in Splintered as Queen Red was released by accident. However, her mother’s betrayal is too much for Alyssa to understand why her mother would return to Wonderland to do anything but try to become the Queen once again.

Alyssa once thought her mother was willingly admitted to the asylum to protect her, but Alison’s undisclosed past in Wonderland causes her to push her mother away from her and disregard any advice she can pass on stating, “you’re a bigger liar than

Morpheus ever was” (Howard 168). What Alyssa believes to be a mother-daughter betrayal as a result of a violent battle, Alyssa believes that she is being pulled in two directions: the human realm and the netherling realm, when she and her mother have ties to both. In doing so, Howard depicts two things about growing up: 1) teenagers have to learn that they make choices for themselves and those choices have consequences, 2)

sacrifices in relationships are not always rewarded, as seen with Alyssa and Alison’s argument.

Burton’s Alice Kinglsey takes a slightly different approach to authority figures than Alyssa. Alice seeks continued advice from the creatures. Instead of trying to drive her into madness, they become her friends and act as a council. For example, in the scene entitled “Alice Decides,” the blue caterpillar, renamed to Absalom, comes to Alice as she contemplates her destiny of being a chosen one. She sits and cries, hoping for a moment to herself to process her time in Wonderland. Absalom does not view this behavior as acceptable and states, “nothing is accomplished with tears” (Burton 1:20:36). Absalom is wrapped in a cocoon and is ready to “transform” to the next life, to which Alice cries more, asking him not to go, because she does not know what to do (Burton 1:20:37).

During their talk, Alice realizes that her time in Underland was not a “dream at all” but a

“memory” and her place in battle is indeed on a time crunch if her creature friends are going to live (Burton 1:20:47). Alice, since her childhood, has relied on his advice, and he departs her with the final advice on how to win the battle, stating “I’ll see you in the next life” indicating that as we grow up, death is inevitable no matter where she is

(Burton 1:22:13). Thirteen years prior to reentering Wonderland, Alice lost her father, whom she relied on for advice and good will. Since then, Alice’s montage of growing up has shown her to seek out the caterpillar to take the place of wisdom, guidance, and practicality that she is missing from losing her father.

Alyssa’s view on authority and who to trust to guide her are much more complicated than Alice’s. Alice is seen to quickly trust creatures such as Absalom and view them as guides who wish her no harm. Absalom in particular is nostalgic in nature and mimics her late father’s practical guidance, leading her to not fight his advice, but accept what must be done she has to do on her own. Alice has grown and matured since the last time she was in Wonderland and comes to realize she has the ability to be independent and make choices for herself. Alyssa, however, is much younger and lacks the maturity Alice Kingsley has. Alyssa’s view on authority follows a series of betrayals from her mother and Morpheus. Because of the constant betrayal Alyssa feels, she does not receive the same guidance and advice Alice Kingsley gets from the creatures of

Wonderland. Instead, in an attempt to protect her childhood and innocence, she is kept in the dark about what she must do until the last minute when she needs to act, whereas

Alice Kingsley receives advice and time to prepare and reflect before she rides into

Battle.

Time

Time in both Tim Burton and A.G. Howard’s adaptations are incredibly tricky and dangerous. There is not necessarily the fear of losing out on a childhood the longer time is spent in Wonderland, but rather time is used to save Wonderland as both Alice

Kingsley and Alyssa come to the realization Wonderland is not a reoccurring dream or a product of familial madness, but a real place. Likewise, Alyssa and Alice both use

Wonderland to buy themselves time in their own realities. Alyssa needs to return to

Wonderland to buy time for her family as Queen Red seeks to destroy both the netherling

realm and the human realm, while Alice needs to buy time to escape a marriage proposal and the stifling duties of a Victorian woman. In both cases, they run the risk of not being able to return to familiar lands.

In A.G. Howard’s second installment, Unhinged, time travel occurs as Alyssa, like Burton’s Alice, realizes that Wonderland is not a dream to escape, or an imagined bout of madness, but a memory and a place to save. During this installment, Howard borrows ideas from Carroll’s sequel, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found

There and introduces a way for Alyssa to navigate both realms as she has destroyed the previous rabbit hole portal in an attempt for peace: through a mirror. The rabbit hole, though the most convenient way to travel, had to be destroyed because Queen Red had plans to use it to begin a deadly war with the human realm. Since the rabbit hole was opened and used primarily by Alice Liddell, it was added to Alyssa’s list of things to destroy in an attempt to right the wrongs her ancestors caused by entering Wonderland in the first place. Since the original rabbit hole no longer exists, travel by mirror is one of the main ways Alyssa is able to keep her two realities separate without her parents finding out where she goes when she escapes to her room. This mirror is guided by

Howard’s version of Carroll’s Cheshire Cat, renamed Chessie, leading on that Alyssa is not the only one who knows how to manipulate time through the mirror: the creatures do too and they are not afraid to use it frequently to show up in Alyssa’s room unannounced.

Chessie is the one who shows Alyssa where she needs to go for a split second, “the reflection shows his destination: a metal bridge over a dark, misty valley and a quaint

village on the other side. Then the glass splinters and crackles, showing only broken images of me” (Howard 142). The glass in the mirror operates as a keyhole, in which

Alyssa learns she can stick her body through and time travel from Underland to home.

However, there are different rules between the two worlds: “in the human realm, one mirror can take you anywhere in the world, as long as there’s another mirror big enough to fit through at the destination you’re aiming for;” however, in Wonderland, “the glass there can spit you out anywhere in the netherling realm, whether there’s a mirror on the other side or not” (Howard 142-43). Time travel into Wonderland is much more dangerous than time travel in the human realm, as the only way to come back to the human realm is “via one of the two portals: one located in the Ivory castle, and the other in the Red” proving Wonderland to be incredibly dangerous (Howard 145). Alyssa runs the risk of not being able to return to her own realm if the portals were destroyed by

Queen Red in the same way she has destroyed the rabbit hole in Splintered.

Burton’s Alice Kinglsey utilizes time in a different way than Alyssa. For Alice, her adventure in Wonderland is about prophetic destiny, but it is also about escapism, a key feature of Young Adult fantasy (Beeler 40). This is first made evident as she chases the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole to escape her mother-in-law lecturing her about

Haymish and what she will be expected to do once they are wed (Burton 8:35). After this first instance of running away, Alice consistently uses time to her advantage to escape with the help of the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse. This is seen particularly in the tea party scene in which the Hatter, the Dormouse and a rabbit are seen sleeping at the tea table. Upon Alice approaching, the Hatter wakes up, smiles, and walks across the table to

greet her. As he picks her up, he says, “as you can see, we are still having tea...we were waiting for your return. You’re terribly late you know, naughty” to which Alice replies

“time has been funny to me” (Burton 31:42). As soon as Alice sits at the tea table, the

Dormouse and Hatter’s watch begins ticking again, indicating that they have not left the table since her last return thirteen years prior. The Hatter then goes on to tell Alice about how Wonderland used to be, where he would dance a dance called the flutterwacken for all of Wonderland until the “bloody big head” came into power and turned Underland into a “desolate” place destroyed by the Red Queen and her Jabberwocky (Burton 37:06).

This backstory is provided to Alice because she still believes Wonderland to be a dream at this point, and the Hatter needs Alice to understand it is a real place, and at that very moment, time is of the essence and death will soon be inevitable to all of the creatures she grew up with. As he is still explaining what Wonderland has become, the Knave approaches, and the Hatter frantically tries to hide her. The Knave is the Red Queen’s romantic and professional partner and is on the search to bring her to the Red Queen so she can have her head. Alice, at this point, is very small and as the Hatter hears horses approaching their tea table, he forces Alice to drink a mysterious potion that shrinks her to three inches high and shoves her into a tea kettle that he then places in his lap as the

Knave approaches stating “well, if it’s not my favorite trio of lunatics” (Burton 35:01).

During this interaction, the Hatter and the Dormouse feign extreme madness to get the

Knave to leave and buy themselves and Alice time so she can later understand that she must be the one to save Wonderland. In order to do this, the Hatter dodges questions about whether or not he is hiding “the girl,” and instead leads his friends into a song he

used to sing for the Queen. The Knave gets frustrated with the trio and leaves as the bloodhound used to sniff out Alice aligns himself with the Hatter and does not blow the hiding place.

For both Alyssa and Alice, time is used to draw attention to the horrors of what

Wonderland has become under the reign of the Red Queen and Queen Red. These corrupt monarchies illuminate to both of them that prophecy waits for no one, not even the

“chosen one.” If the creatures of Underland in both story worlds are to survive another bout of terror, Alyssa and Alice must act fast, forcing them to put aside their confusion, pain, and misunderstanding to selflessly mature and save their story worlds.

Conclusion

“Nothing can break the chains you have on your heart. For you are Wonderland.” -

A.G. Howard

In summary, A.G. Howard and Tim Burton’s retellings show off Alice’s

Adventures in Wonderland all grown up. Alyssa and Alice both maintain their curious nature and adventurous spirits throughout the retellings, but they are not so overwhelmed by it that they wake themselves up and escape Wonderland. Instead, they stay and fight for what is good and right, while building meaningful relationships with the creatures of

Wonderland. In building these relationships, Alyssa and Alice do not fear crossing the bridge into adulthood. Instead, they embrace what is to come next with open arms and without fear. Alyssa is able to successfully undo Alice Liddell’s mistakes in Wonderland and set it free from Queen Red’s reign of terror more than once, while making amends

with her netherling mother, gaining family in both Wonderland and in the human realm.

Likewise, Alice is able to muster up the strength to stand up for herself against Victorian ideals, saying no to an unwanted marriage proposal and leading her late father’s trade expedition into uncharted territories without fear. These conclusions to Howard and

Burton’s retellings provide a great example of how power is gained through age, maturity, and relationships in Young Adult literature.

By building upon the works of Carroll and Walt Disney, Burton and Howard have both created complex heroines that are awarded conflicts, choices, and lessons of independence that a younger Alice could not have had. It is when Alyssa and Alice

Kingsley take their stories into their own hands and no longer care what the creatures or the humans back home think of them that they are able to come into their own to defeat evil. The dark, destructive, and mature nature of the texts that help consumers distinguish between Burton and Howard’s works as Young Adult literature separated from Lewis

Carroll and Walt Disney Children’s literature.

These two Young Adult adaptations are constructed to be appealing to an older audience through the content of the works and the ages of the protagonists. Alice

Kinglsey appeals to a much older audience because she is on the bridge between childhood and adulthood, and she must make life-changing decisions about her future such as whether or not she should accept a marriage proposal or follow in her father’s footsteps through trade. At the same time, Alice Kingsley experiences valuable friendship with the creatures of Wonderland, specifically the Mad Hatter. This friendship shows

Alice that she is not a misfit in the world but loved and cared for. Lastly, Burton’s film 82

displays violent content that is meant to showcase Alice as a warrior. For example, in the

Jabberwocky slaying scene, Alice Kingsley successfully beheads the Jabberwocky, and the audience can see the bloody head tumble down the stairs. This moment is particularly gruesome and graphic, demonstrating that this film is not meant for little kids. Instead, it is meant for Young Adults who can identify with a misfit turned victorious warrior.

In the same way, A.G. Howard’s trilogy is also meant for an older audience through darker content and the age of Alyssa. Alyssa is in high school and begins her journey at fifteen years old. During this time, she battles common struggles teenagers can identify with including bullying, parents separating, first loves and heartbreak, and what to wear to prom. Alyssa is seen as an outcast throughout the trilogy at high school and gets made fun of for her relation to Alice Liddell, having a mom in an insane asylum, and for wearing goth-punk clothing. It is through her time in Wonderland that she becomes comfortable enough in her own skin that she does not let her bullies get the best of her.

Like Alice Kingsley, Alyssa is able to experience valuable friendship with

Chessie and Morpheus during her time in Wonderland, who show her the ropes of undoing Alice Liddell’s curse and becoming the heir of Wonderland. Lastly, Howard depicts violence during multiple battles Alyssa fights in throughout the trilogy. For example, in the prom battle that unleashed Wonderland havoc on the human realm, the rabbit hole portal is opened again by Queen Red and releases killer creatures to set fire to the school and harm humans. Battles such as these reveal the violent and destructive turn

Wonderland has taken. The wars, love triangle, and familiarity with a misfit turned warrior is appealing to Young Adult audiences in a way that is not meant for children.

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

Prophecy

Having a designated hero/heroine or “chosen one” to fulfill a prophecy has been a common trope in Young Adult Fantasy and it is one of the main things that is vastly different from children’s literature. In 1954, J.R.R Tolkien published Lord of the Rings, sparking an emergence of the fantasy novel. Likewise, Tolkien’s longtime friend and fellow author, C.S. Lewis, would also dabble in this upcoming fantasy novel, publishing a seven-part series entitled The Chronicles of Narnia. While Lord of the Rings is one of the most popular fantasy series of all time, Narnia took a different approach, marketing itself toward younger audiences (Clute 62). Many scholars look to these two authors when pinpointing where exactly fantasy began, highlighting the origins of the fantasy genre (Clute 62). Fantasy critic John Clute breaks down seven points that are used to evaluate certain characteristics of fantasy. These characteristics apply to Tim Burton’s

Alice in Wonderland and A.G. Howard’s Splintered in the following ways:

The first characteristic of fantasy is called thinning, in which a decline from a story world’s formal state occurs. This occurs when Alice Kingsley and Alyssa go back to Wonderland as young adults and see the destruction that has occurred since their childhoods. Next, there is a sense of wrongness in the world, and it demands healing, which leads to a need for a hero to complete this quest. This is seen primarily after Alice

Kingsely has fallen down the rabbit hole and is introduced to the White Rabbit, Tweedledee

and Tweedledum, and the Dormouse. She and the creatures come across a highly coveted

scroll called the “Oraculum.” The Oraculum is a detailed, illustrated calendar-like

prophecy that illustrates Alice slaying the Red Queen’s beloved, monstrous Jabberwocky,

restoring Wonderland back to peace with the White Queen as its rightful ruler. Alice, in

true Young Adult literary fashion, does not accept this prophecy right away and instead

fights it at every turn until she sees firsthand the damage the Red Queen has inflicted upon the innocent creatures of Wonderland and is forced to choose between good versus evil.

The same type of “chosen one” prophecy occurs in Howard’s Splintered trilogy. Alyssa is to not only become the heir of Wonderland, but to fix the mistakes her great-great-great

grandmother, Alice Liddell, made when she first fell down the rabbit hole. Alyssa’s journey

to fulfilling her decades-long prophecy includes defeating Queen Red from destroying all

of Wonderland in Splintered and then doing it again in Unhinged when Queen Red emerges

from isolation with a revenge mission of taking down

Wonderland and the human realm. In order to not let everyone she loves die, Alyssa must complete a series of tasks including closing the rabbit hole portal and draining the pool of tears. As Alyssa ticks off each task at hand, she concludes that Wonderland is real, her ancestors did not deserve to rot in an insane asylum, and she is part netherling, which gives her an obligation to restore Wonderland back to peace and become the rightful queen.

Fourth, the hero moves from their familiar world into an unfamiliar one, where they learn about the unfamiliar one from the explanations of a mentor-figure. This is seen

as Alice Kinglsey and Alyssa have stumbled back into Wonderland, and they enlist the help of creatures there. Alice Kingsley is specifically mentored and protected by the Mad

Hatter and the White Queen while Alyssa is mentored and protected by her mother,

Alison, Chessie, and Morpheus, the man/moth hybrid. These characters help Alice and

Alyssa shift themselves into the unknown and prepare them for their respective battles against the Red Queen and Queen Red. As they navigate Wonderland and develop a sense of belonging, Alice and Alyssa recognize that if this place they have grown to care for ceases to exist, so will their friends and loved ones. It is through these relationships built that Alice and Alyssa accept that they are the “chosen ones” and choose to fight for

Wonderland.

Next, in the course of the quest, the characters reach recognition of their purpose in the story world. And finally, they reach eucatastrophe (a term Tolkien invented).

Eucatastophe is a final turn in the plot which brings “a catch of the breath, a beat and a lifting of the heart” (James 64). For instance, Alice Kingsley must learn who she really is and gain the strength to stand up for herself before she can slay the Red Queen’s

Jabberwocky. Alyssa, on the other hand, must undo the damage Alice Liddell caused during her initial fall into Wonderland before she can truly defeat Queen Red from destroying Wonderland and invading the human realm to do the same thing. Through these last three characteristics, Alice and Alyssa are able to gain the power from

Wonderland to fulfill their prophecies. Finally, Alice and Alyssa reach eucatastrophe when they are successful in their endeavors and Wonderland is restored back to peace and they return home.

Laying out the characteristics of fantasy and prophecy is vital to the understanding of how power evolves from Children’s literature to Young Adult literature because the events that occur in the process of obtaining enough power to be capable of fulfilling a prophecy are violent, desolate, and include death and destruction. These themes are not so prevalent in Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney’s versions. While there is a presence of a

Queen of Hearts who abuses her court and likes to shout, “Off with their head!” and implies brutality, the actual act of beheading creatures is neither shown nor is it explored in depth. Instead, the Queen of Hearts is much more light-hearted and comedic, tasked with the purpose of driving Alice mad with nonsense croquet playing and a disillusioned court until she is able to wake herself up from Wonderland. This is to be expected of

Children’s literature because it is predominantly about morals, lessons learned, is humorous, and typically has a happy ending (Talley 228-29). However, While

Burton and Howard’s adaptations do have a happy ending where the protagonists are able to return home and redirect their lives with newfound confidence and power over themselves, the journey to get there is much different than what ten-year-old Alice would experience. This reveals two truths about the main difference between Children’s literature and Young Adult literature. The first being that death, war, and destruction are a part of the world, and as one gets older, the harder it is to not notice it. The second is that sacrifice is not always rewarded, and even when it is, it can be painful. These differences are important because it proves that Children’s literature and Young Adult literature cannot exist in the same category. They exist for different audiences who can relate to the protagonists in different ways. Children can relate to Alice because of her

curious nature and playful disposition. Older teenagers can relate to Alice Kingsley because she is constantly being told how to live the rest of her life according to societal standards, yet she rebels and becomes the heroine; younger teenagers can relate to Alyssa because she is stubborn, unapologetically herself, and is experiencing things such as familial problems and first relationships while becoming the Queen of Wonderland. As

Alice and Alyssa progress and grow in the tales, they are given back her power through the support of Wonderland and their embrace of being the true Alice capable of becoming the heroine she was prophesied to be. Burton and Howard’s deconstructed retelling demonstrates that power in Young Adult literature can and will be taken and transferred, resulting in a successful adaptation that can hold its own, much like its protagonist.

Questions and how they were answered:

In the beginning stages of this thesis, I aimed to answer these two research

questions: 1) how does the adaptogenic nature of Lewis Carroll’s text help illustrate how

power evolves within three deconstructed adaptations based on age? 2) how does that

help us understand the ways children’s literature and Young Adult literature are

fundamentally different and should be classified as separate categories instead of genres?

These questions were answered by utilizing aspects of adaptation studies, such as what it

means to be an adaptogenic text. The term adaptogenic refers to the way in which Alice’s

Adventures in Wonderland goes through a spectrum of modes and frequencies to be

adapted, textually or visually. Carroll’s text is shown to be adaptogenic in nature due to

the ever-evolving and vast numbers of adaptations that have come to fruition since the

original publication on November 26, 1865. Since then, directors and authors such as

Walt Disney, Tim Burton, and A.G. Howard have deconstructed the iconic and malleable

character of Alice, showing that she is able to reach and relate to audiences of all ages

through film and literature.

Expanding upon children’s literature scholar David Rudd’s definition of power, in which he makes the claim that as the child gets older in each adaptation created, the more power and responsibility is given (Rudd 112). This definition shows that as Alice ages in her adaptations, she receives more power in Wonderland and at home through mental growth and maturity. As Alice gets older over the course of the three adaptations, she evolves from a little girl learning morals and lessons to take with her as she grows up, to a young woman who learns the hardships of growing up including death, destruction, and the consequences of losing people. During this progression of age Alice gains the power she lacks as a child and is able to fulfill a prophecy and restore order both in Wonderland and back home. The reason scholars must separate Lewis Carroll’s Alice and Walt

Disney’s Alice from Burton’s Alice Kinglsey and Howard’s Alyssa, is because first and foremost, these texts are not meant for the same audiences. Lewis Carroll and Walt

Disney are much more whimsical in nature with humorous elements meant for entertaining and teaching children while relating to them. Both employ riddles and musical numbers that escalate silliness. Alice is seen learning and reciting lessons, looking to creatures for guidance, and missing her cat. In contrast, Alice Kingsley and

Alyssa in the two later adaptations enter a Wonderland that is not whimsical, humorous, or silly. Instead, Wonderland reveals that the world is much darker as one ages and can be

full of chaos and destruction. Alice Kingsley and Alyssa are also more relatable to young adult audiences. Alice Kinglsey is on the bridge between childhood and adulthood and has to decide whether or not she wants to settle down and get married to a Lord or create her own path on her own. Alyssa, on the other hand, is a high school student trying to make sense of Wonderland while still attending prom, experiencing dating for the first time, and having parents separate while she is in the midst of becoming the heir of

Wonderland. It is because of the age of the protagonists and the content of the stories that children’s literature and Young Adult literature absolutely have to be classified as separate categories.

I have looked at Lewis Carroll’s text as an adaptogenic work that allows

interpretations of power through age progression in an attempt to differentiate Children’s

and Young Adult literature as categories. I have chosen to examine Walt Disney’s

animation Alice in Wonderland, Tim Burton’s film Alice in Wonderland, and A.G.

Howard’s Young Adult fantasy trilogy Splintered. Thought I have chosen this specific

route of adaptations, I recognize that it is not the only thing one could do Carroll’s text.

Literature does not exist in a vacuum, and my interpretation and method of understanding

adaptations of a children’s novel is not the only one. Scholars can and will continue to

use Carroll’s text and its many adaptations to understand Children’s and Young Adult

literature through a variety of lenses; including, but not limited to: psychoanalysis to

understand children’s mental development, as well as pedagogical purposes for educators

and parents. Scholars have also applied discourse theory, gender studies, and modern

neuroscience that emphasizes “memory, language, and consciousness” to Carroll’s text

and a wide variety of adaptations (Gardner np). While all of these methods of analysis are

relevant to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and give the opportunity to better

understand the purpose and intent of Children’s literature, I found that they lacked a

discussion on Young Adult adaptations, and at times lumped the two together. There was

a space in scholarship where Children’s literature and Young Adult literature can and

should be separated as different categories. This is why the adaptations I chose, though

many more exist, most effectively aides my initial argument that Alice’s Adventures in

Wonderland sheds light on an adaptogenic work whose adaptations allow viewers to

clearly draw the line between Children’s literature and Young Adult literature through

the analysis of three adaptations ranging in age from ten to nineteen on power gain.

Other Directions

Each protagonist navigates three themes: identity, authority, and time. While these three themes are prominent in each adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the ways in which the protagonists react to the happenings of Wonderland reflect their age, maturity, and growth in their search for power. Likewise, Carroll and Disney’s Alice do not necessarily seek out meaningful and long-lasting relationships with the creatures of

Wonderland, while Alice Kingsley and Alyssa rely heavily on the relationships built to navigate their prophecies.

For further study on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for a larger project, it could be helpful to include a wider variety of media adaptations including plays, graphic novels and video games. It would be interesting and beneficial to my analysis to expand upon the mediums in which Carroll’s text is deconstructed and retold in order to see an

evolution of power. It could also be helpful to expand this thesis into a larger work to include the sequels Carroll, Burton, and Howard have already produced based on

Carroll’s sequel, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There in comparison to Burton’s Through the Looking Glass and Howard’s Untamed. It would be interesting to apply the same three themes of identity, authority, and time to the sequels and analyze how they aid their primary texts whilst still contributing to power gain. The weakness of doing so, however, lies in the fact that Walt Disney did not create a sequel to Alice in

Wonderland. Instead, he opted to leave his adaptation as a singular one.

Beyond Wonderland

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has had a grip on the collective

imagination, burrowing itself deep into popular culture since its initial publication. It has

inspired an extensive list of adaptations in various mediums such as books, graphic

novels, film, plays, and video games. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’s significance is

relevant to the overall existence and importance of children’s literature because it green

lighted an era in which children could be seen as developing, imaginative individuals

rather than tiny adults. Carroll’s work opened the door for other authors to create

children’s books that children actually wanted to read. As Douglas-Fairhurst points out:

"Carroll’s stories would permanently alter how readers thought about children on and off

the page” (Douglas-Fairhurst 203). Books like Carroll’s matter because they create a new

world for children to explore and learn from. Riddles, singing, dancing, and the

consistent growing and shrinking entice child readers into the unknown and encourage

them to explore their imaginations to see what they can come up with, just as Alice does.

If anything, Carroll’s text is laced with encouragement to dream even if its nonsensical logic drives one mad.

While Young Adult literature is not as commonly studied as an area of scholarship in comparison to Children’s literature, it is just as relevant and important to study. It is important to note, however, that the two must be separated as two different categories but valued equally. Young Adult literature is of utmost importance because young adults see themselves represented through the pages of a book or on screen. Young

Adults desire a sense of belonging and community during a time of life that focuses on developing individuality and independence. Seeing characters such as Alice Kingsley and

Alyssa who are clumsy, awkward, and do not quite fit in with their community turn into an independent, confident warrior shows young adults that they are not alienated in feeling clumsy, awkward, and like a misfit. For those who do not have those feelings,

Young Adult literature fosters a sense of understanding and empathy for others. Young

Adult literature also matters because it often displays the differences between right and wrong in a more abstract way than children’s literature. Oftentimes, literature such as

Tim Burton’s film and A.G. Howard’s trilogy illuminates good versus evil and allows readers to see the protagonist struggle over these choices and their impending consequences of choosing either side. Likewise, “another value of young adult literature is its capacity for telling its readers the truth, however disagreeable that may sometimes be, for in this way it equips readers for dealing with the realities of impending adulthood and for assuming the rights and responsibilities of citizenship” (Cart 274). Young Adult literature is a category that explores deep and sometimes dark aspects of life. Though the

intended audience is ages 12-18, adults and scholars can and should recognize the importance of such literature because it is not going anywhere. The sense of belonging, increased empathy, and conversation surrounding tough topics is as necessary for young adult consumers as it is for adults and scholars. Young Adult literature is a rabbit hole that leads to different aspects and perspectives of the world and grouping Young Adult literature with children’s literature is a loss in the sense that the Young Adult demographics experience is dismissed. To ignore its existence or even group it in with children’s literature is a grave mistake.

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