You Are Prudish, Father William: Rhyme and Respectability in Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

The Victorian Era was marked by a heightened sense of moral responsibility. People living during this time felt it necessary to live up to the highest expectations of respectability. They had many conventions and rules to follow in order to meet these expectations. Learning how to be respectable began at a very young age and was emphasized in school through learning and reciting rhymes and poems. In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Alice attempts to recite her lessons a number of times but cannot seem to get the words right. Alice’s lessons and rhymes are included in the novel to contradict and poke fun at the Victorian value of respectability through the nonsense verse that replaces the original respectable text when she attempts to repeat them in Wonderland.

At the beginning of Alice’s adventure, she decides that she must try to remember some of her lessons in order to determine that she is still herself. She attempts to recite a poem written by Isaac Watts entitled “Against Idleness and Mischief.” The opening lines of Watt’s poem read “How doth the little busy bee/Improve each shining hour/And gather Honey all the Day/From ev’ry op’ning Flow’r!” (Watts 332). It upholds Victorian respectability because it insists that one must remain busy in order to be good. When Alice begins, the words get confused and she recites:

“How doth the little crocodile/Improve his shining tail/And pour the waters of the Nile/On every golden scale!/How cheerfully he seems to grin/How neatly spreads his claws/And welcomes little fishes in/With gently smiling jaws.” (Carroll 19)

Idleness and mischief are two behaviors that directly contradict Victorian respectability. Alice’s unconscious rewording “attacks the anticomic stuffiness and prudence of Watt’s [poem] and promotes by implication the important values of comic anarchy” (Kincaid 96). Alice’s reading is also uncommonly dark for what would be considered respectable during the Victorian era. The final two lines leave the reader with a dark, yet slightly comical feeling. Carroll wants the reader to recognize the contrast, but does not want it to be completely serious at the same time.

During her adventure in Wonderland, Alice comes across many interesting characters. One of the most memorable is the Caterpillar. While she is having a conversation with this character, he asks her to recite another one of her lessons, which he calls “You are old, Father William” (Carroll 42). What Alice recites is a parody of a poem written by Robert Southey. Southey’s Father William is the picture of Victorian respectability. He tells the young man that "I remembered that youth would flyfast/And abused not my health, and my vigor at first/That I never might need them at last" (Southey 401). The poem emphasizes the respectability of taking care of your health—to the point where you do almost nothing in order to preserve your health and energy for later in life. “Alice’s Father William seems the antithesis of Southey’s pious, temperate old man who has come gently to the end of his days” (Rackin 318). Father William is supposed to represent the type of person you will be if you follow Victorian values. In Alice’s rendition, however, Father William is a silly and ridiculous.

In Through the Looking Glass, Alice journeys back to the magically land of the Looking Glass and encounters many interesting characters as she did in Wonderland. Two rather odd characters, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, relate to her a poem entitled The Walrus and the Carpenter. Carroll uses this poem differently here than how poems were used in the previous novel. The twins’ recitation “prompts Alice into revealing just how much she has grown up. She ignores the victims of the poem, the oysters, and immediately searches for one of the power figures with whom to identify” (Kincaid, 95). Rather than contradicting Victorian respectability directly through the words of the poem, Carroll uses Alice’s reaction to make his point about it. The twins are disappointed with her attachment to the Walrus character. Alice seems to believe that she must choose a character to identify with. Tweedledee and Tweedledum don’t understand why she does not feel sorry for the oysters. In the end, she decides that both the Carpenter and the Walrus were equally unlikable. The poem emphasized “false sympathy and cruelty” (Kincaid, 95), and Alice finally realizes this. Carroll uses Alice’s realization to make a statement about Victorian society: it can be extremely fake and cruel.

Alice came to discover a lot about herself and the society she lived in through her adventures. Lewis Carroll used these discovers to convey his own points about Victorian society. He uses Alice’s adventures, specifically the poems she attempts to recite, to contradict and mock Victorian respectability and prudishness.

Works Cited

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Ed. Hugh Haughton. London: Penguin Books. 1998.

Kincaid, James R. “Alice’s Invasion of Wonderland.” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. 88.1 (1973): 92-99.

Rackin, Donald. “Alice’s Journey to the End of Night.” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. 81.5 (1966): 313-326.

Watts, Isaac. “Against Idleness and Mischeif.” A Collection of English Poems 1660-1800. Ed. Robert S. Crane. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1932. 332.

Southey, Robert. “The Old Man’s Comforts And How He Gained Them.” English Poetry and Prose of the Romantic Movement. Ed. George Benjamin Woods. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Co. 1916. 401.

Myth Retold and Fulfilled: Converting Myth into Religion in C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces

C.S. Lewis is generally not considered to be an author of brilliantly influential and deeply profound literature. Many know him for his children's books, The Chronicles of Narnia. He is better known for these and other non-fiction books such as Mere Christianity than he is for his fiction; his more mature and esoteric work. He wrote primarily during what most scholars would consider the end of the Modernist era, and his final novel, Till We Have Faces, reflects it wonderfully. Modernism is characterized by a search for deeper meanings throughout life, generally sought out by a return to the archaic. Lewis' retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche certainly qualifies. Lewis does not simply retell the myth in his own words; rather he uses the form of the myth to convey his own beliefs about Christianity, thus drawing attention to the arching and inseperable parallels between myth and religion.

While biographical information alone cannot solely be used to interpret a piece of literature, it is vital that Lewis' religious affiliation be known when analyzing his work. Lewis was an atheist for the majority of his life, but later became a devout Christian. He studied many of the world's religions in his search for God and came to know, as Doris T. Myers states, “the pagan myths that seem to foreshadow Jesus and [as well as accept] the Gospel as fact” (“In Context” 190). It is within this context that the work must be analyzed in order to fully understand it.

In the beginning of the novel, strong religious references are cemented with the reader. The story is narrated by Orual: daughter of King Trom and half-sister of Psyche. While it is important to remember that “Lewis's story is a "novel," not an allegory, which should remind readers that things in [Lewis’s] fiction are meaningful in themselves just as much as they may mean other things” (Arnell 1), the reader cannot help but make allegorical associations. Orual can be identified with the whole of humanity. She struggles with the question of faith. She feels that her ugliness, her sin in allegorical terms, separates her from others in the novel. The main events in the beginning (her father's new marriage, the arrival of the Fox, her discovery of her own ugliness):

point to three major themes of the book: Orual's need for love, her struggle with the faith of the Old Priest versus the enlightenment of the Fox, and the meaning of Glome's paganism within the larger context of the Incarnation of Christ. (“Bareface” 14)

In the first chapter, Orual states, “I…have not much to fear from the anger of gods…I will accuse the gods, especially the god who lives on the Grey Mountain” (Lewis 3), establishing her struggle with faith. Myers tells us that Orual “sees herself as a plaintiff against the god, but she does not hope for a divine answer” (“Bareface” 14). Lewis is drawing the reader's attention to Orual's hopeless outlook and struggle with faith in order to parallel the struggles that he himself faced as a young man. It also brings to mind the feelings that so many of his generation had: can religion provide the answers for the most profound of life's questions? Lewis would argue, yes.

The other major allegorical reference is made through the characters of Psyche and the Fox. Both represent aspects of Jesus: Psyche, the compassionate and the Fox, the philosophical. Psyche is described as beautiful from the moment she is born. Orual tells us that, “She made beauty all around her. When she trod on mud, the mud was beautiful; when she ran in the rain, the rain was silver” (Lewis 22). She catches the attention of everyone whom she meets. Jesus, who radiated spiritual beauty, captured people’s hearts in the same way.

Psyche also has a desire to help all people. She nurses Fox back to health after he nearly dies from a fever that has plagued Glome. Following this, the word spread quickly through the kingdom and “Within two days half the city was at the palace gate,” shouting, “ 'Heal us, heal us. The Princess with the healing hands!' “ (Lewis 30-31). The similarities between these events and events from Jesus' life are obvious. She is like Christ in her “determination to touch people who need healing” (“Bareface” 24). Her ministry, like Christ's, is “physically demanding…Her willingness to sacrifice herself is equaled only by her compassion for other people” (“Bareface” 24). Psyche also becomes a sacrifice at the hands of her own father, leaving Orual riddled with guilt through the rest of the novel. This, again, is used to demonstrate a fallacy in humanity's, particularly Christians', view of Jesus' sacrifce: it is not guilt, but gratitude, thankfulness and even reverence that Orual should have.

The Fox is brought to the kingdom by the King to be a tutor for Orual. Myer’s points out that “In the Fox, Lewis shows us a man who aspires to be a true Stoic but falls short of his goal,” and that, “The Fox is ashamed of his emotions; Jesus accepted his” (“Bareface” 20). The Fox seems to contrast Jesus in many ways, yet in the end, they are comparable. Jesus most certainly was not “Stoic.” Lewis tells us he was “a man of delicate sensibilities who wept at the grave of Lazurus and sweated blood in Gethsemane” (qtd. in “Bareface” 20). This is the opposite of the Stoic man that the Fox attempts to be. He, as do most men, wants to be a man of noble bravery. As Myers points out, “when [Fox] says, ‘The body is shaking. I needn’t let it shake the god within me’ (Lewis 18)[...]Parodixically, in his fear, his failure to be a perfect Stoic, the Fox was a precursor to Jesus” (“Bareface” 20). This comparison parellels Lewis’s belief that people do not need to aspire to stoicism; rather, they should follow Jesus’ example of humbleness.

Myth and religion are inseperable for Lewis. He calls “the Incarnation [of Jesus] ‘myth become fact’ “ (“In Context 190). Lewis used pagan myths in order to explain and “foreshadow” the coming and crucifixion of Christ. It was useful to do this because it connected the archaic and fantastical to the fundamentals of Lewis’ own beliefs, thereby bringing a certain familiarity and credibility to Christianity. Lewis wanted the reader to realize that Christianity is not an isolated belief system; it has values that can be applied in every walk of life.

Works Cited

Arnell, Carla A. “On Beauty, Justice, and the Sublime in C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces.” Christianity and Literature 52.1 (2002): 23.

Lewis, C.S. Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. New York: Harcourt Inc., 1956.

Myers, Doris T. Bareface: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s Last Novel. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004. 13-24.

---. C.S. Lewis in Context. Kent: Kent State University Press, 1994. 190.