The theme of the research paper is “Child in the novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll”. The reasons for writing a paper on this topic can be named numerous.
Nowadays, when there is so much information available and the access to this information is very easy, it is becoming more and more popular to study the life in the previous centuries, to discover the different opinions and attitudes, to find out the real situation of life conditions and to compare all those facts with contemporaneity. Scholars in very different fields have been studied and still are studying psychology, the way of thinking of a child, his abilities to invent, to play, to conclude in the early childhood, his attitude to several things, and so forth. Scholars are also investigating the role, the social status of a child, the attitude towards him in different centuries. At the beginning of the 19th the children were expected to work already at the age of three in the facturies and the mines. The rate of mortality at this time was very high and that is one of the reasons why the attitude towards children changed. Nowadays, children have as many rights as an adult if not even more. Scholars are trying to identify all the reasons that influenced the attitude’s change towards the children.
Also in literature children as main characters received attention relatively recently. Before the 19th century books devoted to children were only moralizing and teaching them how to behave. Later writers started to create a child as a main hero who is living through the reality of life (for example, Dickens “Dombey and Son”) or who is taking part in different adventures. Therefore, the aims of the paper are:
to study social situation in the 19th century Britain
to study the literature in the 19th century Britain
to identify the reasons for creating the image of Alice by Lewis Carroll
The objectives:
study and analysis of literature on the history, social life, education system, women’s role, children in the 19th century Britain
study of gathered information on literature in the 19th century Britain
study the materials about Lewis Carroll’s biography, creative writing
study of the origin of Lewis Carroll’s book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”
determining peculiar features of the child as represented in the book of Lewis Carroll “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”
suggesting possible reasons for creating such a child’s image as Alice in the Victorian age
The research question:
What is a child in Lewis Carroll’s novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” in comparison with the developed stereotype of a child image in the 19th century Britain?
The hypothesis:
The Wonderland was created for children to escape from reality where they should work hard in order to earn some money for surviving. Lewis Carroll’s intention in creating Alice was to show real nature of a child.
The methods of the research and data collecting:
the study and critical analysis of scientific literature, internet websites on the topic
comparative analysis of literary sources and Lewis Carroll book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”
making conclusions
This research is based on forty-two bibliography sources, the essential ones being:
Safra, J. E. (2003) The New Encyclopaedia Britannica. Micropaedia. Chicago.
Carroll, L. (1991) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Oxford: Oxford Press.
The outline of the chapters: the paper consists of three chapters in which the author tries to find out the possible answers of the research question. In the first chapter the author describes the history, social life and situation, educational system, women role in the 19th century. In the second chapter the literature of the 19th century is overlooked, the biography of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and the origins of book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” are studied. In the third chapter the author of the research is analysing the Lewis Carroll’s book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”; here the analysis of the setting and a short plot, and the chracters’ drawing is provided. The last chapter is devoted to the discovery of the child image in the novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.…
