‘Off With Their Heads!’: Violence and Aggression in the Worlds of Wonderland and The Looking-Glass

In Lewis Carroll’s books about Alice and her adventures in two unlikely and fantastic worlds, the writer draws a lively picture of a young girl’s dreamland. Yet when she enters the worlds of Wonderland and the Looking-glass, she accidentally becomes a threatening figure who herself presents possible dangers for the inhabitants of these places. The violence and aggression directed to the occupants of these lands manifest themselves in different forms within cultural interactions such as greetings, introductions, court gatherings, and garden parties. However, she expresses counter aggression on certain occasions. This aggression appears to be not only a defensive attitude against Alice, but also towards the other inhabitants of the same society. For both parties, the violence is usually hidden behind polite manners or established cultural values that are unquestionable for the given societies. Therefore, these examples of aggression are somehow tolerated in a humorous and fanciful way since the novels were written for young bourgeois children. This work scrutinizes the examples of cultural violence and aggression in the books Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass