Literary Theory: Critical Race & Alice in Wonderland

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:
Perpetuating Racial Discourse

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland provides a vivid display of racial discourse in action when Alice encounters and converses with the Caterpillar. It is an interaction that at a first superficial glance appears to be nothing more than a demand for self-identification; however, Alice’s conversation with the Caterpillar combines Said’s modern day concept of Orientalism with racialization and results in a clear representation of Westerners’ inferior views of Easterners, as well as their superior views of themselves. Specifically, the Caterpillar represents Westerners’ false and stereotypically inferior views of people in the Middle East and further perpetuates the negative racial discourse Westerners direct at Middle Eastern people; conversely, Alice represents Westerners’ stereotypically superior views of themselves and further perpetuates a positive Western discourse in this East and West binary.  

At the time Carroll wrote Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland, the British Empire was a force to be reckoned with, ruling almost one-quarter of the Earth’s land and population (Parker 286). This colonial conquest and the people colonized by Great Britain were undoubtedly forefront in the mind of Britons, including Carroll. Although Edward Said did not coin the term and concept of Orientalism until many years later, it was during this time of colonization in the early nineteenth century that Westerners began to develop preconceptions regarding the colonized people of the East to include, among other attributes, lazy, exotic, irrational, cruel, and inscrutable (Parker 294). These negative stereotypes worked to further devalue and dehumanize people of the East, and created a racialized discourse that continues to permeate the West to this day.

The racialization of the Caterpillar is immediately made apparent when Carroll introduces him as taking “the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her [Alice] in a languid, sleepy voice” (Carroll 57). This one portion of the sentence includes two negative racial stereotypes that Westerners associate with Easterners: hookahs and laziness. The hookah is a water pipe that Westerners distinctly associate with India and other parts of the Middle East. Many Westerners view the hookah as an exotic or unusual instrument for smoking equally exotic or unusual substances. While the idea of smoking cigarettes, cigars, and even pipes is not uncommon to people in the West, the use of a hookah is uncommon and not generally accepted among Westerners as a cultural norm. As a result of this difference and nonconformance to Western culture, Westerners consider the hookah a negative symbol of the East. The Caterpillar’s hookah and its well-known distinction, therefore, instantly signals to Western readers that the Caterpillar is of Eastern descent. This distinction, due to Westerners’ deeply ingrained ideology of Middle Eastern people, as established by Said, racializes the Caterpillar and elicits negative feelings about the Caterpillar before he says even one word.

After immediately establishing the Caterpillar’s association with the Middle East through the inclusion of the hookah, Carroll does not delay in further cementing the Caterpillar as a representative of Westerners’ vision of someone from the Middle East through use of another negative stereotype that Said noted in his Orientalism concept as one of the main attributes of Eastern people: laziness. Carroll’s use of the word languid, which is defined as “having or showing a disinclination for physical exertion or effort,” to describe the Caterpillar in first sentence of the chapter provides the reader with an unmistakable image of the Caterpillar as someone who lacks ambition or desire to work—the same image Westerners have of people in the East (“Languid”). By also including the word sleepy, Carroll emphasizes the Caterpillar’s lack of ambition and further paints him in a negative light, thereby continuing the negative discourse Westerners developed for Easterners.

Carroll quickly follows his description of the Caterpillar as lazy with a description of the Caterpillar as behaving cruelly, which is another attribute Said noted in his definition of Orientalism that Westerners have associated with people in the East. Having only met Alice for the first time in this chapter, Westerners would expect the Caterpillar to act in a polite and courteous manner toward Alice because that type of behavior aligns with Western culture; however, contrary to Western culture and behavior, Carroll describes the Caterpillar as speaking to Alice “sternly,” “contemptuously,” and “angrily” throughout their conversation (Carroll 57, 59, 64). To paint the Caterpillar in an even greater negative light, Carroll also makes him argumentative and contradictory to Alice at every opportunity. For example, in the first exchange between Alice and the Caterpillar, the Caterpillar argues with and contradicts Alice three times:

                        “’…I’m not myself, you see.’”

                        “’I don’t see,’ said the Caterpillar.”

                        “’…being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.’”

                        “’It isn’t,’ said the Caterpillar.”

                        “’I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, wo’n’t you?’”

                        “’Not a bit,’ said the Caterpillar” (Carroll 57-59).

Positioning the Caterpillar as inexplicably, innately, and consistently rude and argumentative not only reinforces to Western readers that the Caterpillar is a representation of Eastern people, but also continues to perpetuate Orientalism and the negative discourse Westerners created regarding people in the East.

To further highlight the Caterpillar’s representation of the East, Carroll provides a black and white example of the East and West binary when he portrays Alice as representative of the civilized and superior Westerner and everything the Caterpillar is not. Carroll shows Alice as overly polite, even when the Caterpillar is overtly rude to her. In their first conversation, even though the Caterpillar is speaking “sternly” to her, Alice replied:

“’I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir,’ said Alice, ‘because I’m not myself, you see.’”

“’I don’t see,’ said the Caterpillar.”

“’I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,’ Alice replied, very politely…” (Carroll 57).

Although the Caterpillar is being rude and argumentative to Alice, she continues to respond with politeness, as is expected of someone in the West. Alice even goes so far as to call the Caterpillar “Sir” on three occasions. Alice’s use of the term sir is one of the highest levels of respect she, as a Westerner following the West’s customs, could give to the Caterpillar. Later, when Alice is still exhibiting extreme politeness, still struggling to elicit even a modicum of politeness from the Caterpillar, who is in a “very unpleasant state of mind,” and “swallowing down her anger as well as she could,” she continues to act respectful of the Caterpillar and call him Sir (Carroll 60). Alice’s continued politeness in the constant face of rudeness exhibits the “kind” attributes of the West as developed in the Orientalism discourse (Parker 294). This continued perpetration of the West as superior to the inferior East promotes the Western culture in a positive light at the expense of the Eastern culture.

Carroll also depicts Alice as patient, determined, and willing to do whatever is required to achieve her goal. These attributes are, again, in direct opposition to the “languid” Caterpillar. When speaking to the Caterpillar, Alice is resolved to find a solution to her height—she wants to be taller than her current three inches. Alice believes the Caterpillar “might tell her something worth hearing,” so she answers all of the Caterpillar’s questions; responds to him with extreme politeness every time she speaks; acquiesces to his every request, whether he is demanding she not leave (“’Come back!’”) or asking her to “’Repeat ‘You are old, Father William,’” which is a lengthy poem that would require some time and effort to memorize; and waits “patiently until it [the Caterpillar] chose to speak again” (Carroll 60, 65). Carroll’s description of Alice’s willingness to work to achieve her goal of finding a solution to her height dilemma is one more example of Alice embodying the West’s discourse of themselves as defined in Said’s Orientalism and the continued dissemination of such discourse by people of the West.

The interaction between Alice and the Caterpillar presents a clear representation of the West and East binary discourse defined in Said’s Orientalism. Through the use of negative stereotypes developed by Westerners in the early nineteenth century, Carroll portrays the Caterpillar as representative of the inferior Middle Eastern people, while Alice is portrayed in a positive light as the superior Western population. This negative and positive representation of these two groups of people perpetuates the demeaning and devaluing discourse directed at the Eastern people at the benefit of the Western people.

Works Cited

Carroll, Lewis, and Mark Burstein. The Annotated Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass). Edited by Martin Gardner, 150th ed., The Martin Gardner Literary Partnership, GP, 2015.

“Languid.” Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 2018, www.oed.com/.

Parker, Robert Dale. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies. 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, 2015.