Why Does Alice Shrink And Grow In Alice In Wonderland?

For those familiar with literary devices, it’s interesting to note that while Victorian children’s literature featured children who grew up as they behaved well in stories, Carroll of course reverses that. Curiousity drives Alice’s changes, and, in a delicious scene, she haggle with a mushroom for a single extra inch. A single extra inch: that’s how children negotiate autonomy.

In symbolic terms, the changes in size represent Alice’s changing perspective or view of the world. The tiny Alice fears being extinguished like a candle and battles with feelings of inadequacy and false pretenses (or imposter syndrome as it is known today). The bigger Alice may weep tears of sadness and insecurity but the moment she grows in the courtroom to be able to say “You are just a pack of cards!” and mean it, it’s every marginalized kid’s dream. The changing size of characters is used by Carroll to expose and weaponize power dynamics between them. In the scene with the Duchess, Carroll uses size to explore the way we make ourselves small in ‘spicy’ situations.

Observations about Alice’s growth and shrinkage in this chapter fall into two categories. First, all of these changes to Alice occur when she is alone. She drinks a strange potion without anyone to stop her; she is put into a small room with no lock on the door. The model for preteen anxiety is given literal form in the figure of Alice, who at the same time is too visible and not visible enough. This is also the effect of adults, even the Duchess, who are powerless.

This was one of the issues that really used to bug me when I was a kid. I think that the strange inconsistencies of the potions in Wonderland and the strange and irregular sides of the mushroom that looks like a cap on a stick would make for a great children’s book. The reason for this is that puberty is just as unpredictable as Wonderland. For example, you could wake up one day to find that your feet have grown and you can no longer wear your shoes. Then, you go to the movies and you get carded for a PG-13 movie because you look so young. ‘EAT ME’ foods in Wonderland have a habit of commenting on how girls’ appetites are policed in our culture. In this way, girls who are too hungry are perceived as being fat, while girls who are too cautious or choosy are perceived as having disappeared.

This is why Alice’s changing size in Through the Looking Glass is so brilliant as a metaphor for childhood. In one scene she is too short to reach the top of a cupboard to get a cookie; in the next she collides with her head on a low ceiling as if she were a giraffe. The way he has managed to convey the feeling of growing up and losing control of things as he crashes from one sudden change to another is, I think, quite brilliant. And the way the events are literalized – her shrinking and growing as she eats a cake and some bottles – is wonderful. It physicalizes feelings that children know well: that of being treated like a baby and then almost at once expected to behave like a grown-up.

It also seems to reflect Alice’s growing sense of confidence as she grows. In the courtroom scene she is depicted as a tall, elegant young woman. Not only has her body matured, but her voice too. Her fluctuating size seems to reflect her testing of boundaries, in both body and mind. The arbitrary rules in Wonderland that govern the EATING of things and the dosing of mushrooms from which one gets to grow seem to mimic the often-arbitrary rules of adult life. And it is these same rules that seem to govern when a child is ‘big enough’ to be given certain privileges.