like the largest telescope that ever was!’ (2); the extended metaphor of a telescope here suggests Alice’s ambivalent relationship towards her own body shape and size, as though it is something she can change dependent on her situation or mood, and this illustrating a loose definition of an eating disorder. Kasey Deems suggested that ‘Alice’s inability to enter or leave spaces such as the tiny doors or the suddenly too big hallway speaks of an inability to cross borders and to transition between social and upper-class spheres with ease’ (1).At a superficial glance one might look at Alice’s bodily transformations as an imaginative interpretation into the mind of a child with an eating disorder – since Alice is never happy, or able to achieve what she wants in her own body size, yet a deeper analysis could read into the effects of a restrictive and suffocating class hierarchy. Later on, at the White Rabbit’s house,Alice undergoes another ridiculous body transformation,‘she still went on growing, and growing and very soon, as a last resort, she put one arm out of the window, and one foot out of the chimney’ (2) and Carroll continues to describe her situation as ‘very uncomfortable… no wonder she felt unhappy’ (2). Here it is clear that whenever Alice changes body shape, the focus is on her not being able to fit in the environment – metaphorically the social norms of society.As her body shrinks and grows impossibly, Carroll’s phrasing and emphasis on Alice’s thoughts deems her different body – i.e. those who didn’t fit into society – as monstrous and disabled, and her unhappiness is the result of the tightness of the room, not her inability to fit into it.The tightness of the room is a metaphor for the restrictive nature of Victorian society. Carroll creates an image of Alice in a tangled heap, with ‘one arm out of the window’(2) and ‘one foot out of the chimney’(2), her sprawled limbs in the too-small environment reflect the entrapment and suffocation felt by people in Victorian society, as well as the lack of space to move being a comment on social mobility, and the difficulty faced by those who wanted to move classes.
Carroll uses Alice’s growth as a ‘metaphor for social transgression’ (1); whether it be her taking a potion with “drink me” on its label that shrinks her to just ten inches tall, eating a magic cake with the opposite effect, or consuming part of a mushroom to change her neck size, these scenes are among the first to grab the attention of the reader. During Alice’s encounter with the Caterpillar, she finds herself trying yet another means of changing her body size and is ‘delighted to find that her neck would bend easily in any direction, like a serpent’ (2).The simile comparing Alice’s neck to a ‘serpent’ which could ‘curve down into a graceful zigzag’ (2) and ‘dive among the trees’ (2) creates an almost hallucinogenic or psychoactive image of a person intoxicated and experimenting with their body. Here Alice isn’t hiding, or in fear of her abnormally large neck, but it is a cause of delight – in contrast to The White Rabbit’s house, she has no physical barriers to trap her body or cause her discomfort (the chimney). By not trying to conceal her serpent neck and showing enjoyment in what would be considered a
physical deviancy, Carroll suggests the possibilities of a society without social
constraint.A social reading of this scene would reflect on Alice’s happiness in her body size without physical constraint, there are no man-made structures (houses, hallways, doors etc) as a means of confinement, which works as a larger metaphor for the social structure of Victorian England trapping its population. For a long time, children’s literature has been used as a didactic medium to instruct children around the rules of what is right and wrong; children’s stories became moral lessons used to influence and mould young minds into the socially and morally correct way of behaving. In this sense,Alice’s behaviour during the book establishes Carroll’s own interpretation of the strict social and moral codes of his time – as Alice’s body grows and shrinks uncontrollably, she begins to shame herself for crying,‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, a great girl like
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