you to go on crying in this way’(2) and ‘Stop this moment, I tell you!’ (2). It could be argued here that Alice shows an internalised sense of gender norms, as she takes on the role of an adult or a doctor (in telling herself off) as well as the crying patient. In an era that sought to stifle and repress emotion,Alice’s crying would have been diagnosed as a mental illness with the condition of hysteria – yet Alice recognises her display of emotion as unacceptable, socially and medically, ‘just as a Victorian doctor would have’ (3).Alice then continues to expect capital punishment for her behaviour,‘I shall be punished for crying now I suppose by being drowned in my own tears!’ (2), revealing her negative view of excessive emotion and the social constraint she was under. Carroll is quick to refute the idea of excessive tears deserving capital punishment; although Alice expects to have to ‘drown in her own tears’, the consequence of her crying is in fact the opposite of what she expected – her tears float her to the liberation of the hallway.This escape is a subversion of Victorian social and emotional norms, as Alice’s freedom is not gained through the correct procedure (the placement of a key in a lock) - leaving the hallway in the correct social way would have required Alice to control her emotions, and her body to fit through the door the appropriate way by using the key.The key here is a loose metaphor for social constraint and norms, and when Alice floats on her tears she is no longer held back by the constraint of Victorian society and can metaphorically float to freedom. The majority of people that Alice encounters in Wonderland are male, which makes her encounters with women even more telling; Carroll uses characters such as the Duchess and the Queen of Hearts to critique the strict social norms expected of women in Victorian England. Both female characters come off as inexplicably and incurably violent, and it has been said that ‘Carroll focuses on creating a dysfunctional and violent burlesque of a domestic setting, parodying the traditional role of a woman in the household and subverting the trope of a woman as a mother’ (1), in an attempt to illustrate how strict social constraint can lead to rebellion, and even violent madness. Carroll introduces the Duchess as a woman who cannot control her own household: the cooking has gone wrong; the cook violently throws kitchenware at the Duchess and her baby and the entire setting is chaos. In the private setting of the home, a Victorian woman should be gentle and nurturing: the ideal mother – yet the Duchess sings a song about beating her baby and relentlessly ‘tosses the baby up and down’ (2), displaying the ultimate cruelty and insanity of a mother mistreating an infant.The irony here is that Alice, still a child herself, is more worried about the care and treatment of the baby than the adults – she exclaims ‘Oh please mind what you’re doing!’(2) and ‘jumps up and down in agony and
terror’ (2).When Alice cradles the baby, she becomes the figure of responsibility in the scene – ‘subverting the normal schema for rationality that would have had an adult as the responsible figure, not the child’ (1).The Duchess is reduced to childlike, (self-centred and careless), and Carroll implements her presumed insanity by suggesting she is functioning as the child, rather than the actual children in the scene – and so Victorian psychology would consider her mentally ill. However, her violence and insanity are shunned in the outdoor setting, where the Duchess appears to have much more freedom: no baby, no furious pots and kitchen staff – and no symbols of domesticity and motherhood surrounding her. She greets Alice like an old friend,‘you can’t think how glad I am to see you again, you dear old thing’ (2), and by doing so ignores her previous violent and shocking behaviour. Carroll directly links the Duchess’s violence and insanity to the domestic sphere, as he juxtaposes her ‘violent madness’ in the home-setting to her ease in the outdoor environment; she is happier and less destructive as a result, governed by far fewer social norms and rules.This explanation of the Duchess’s insanity actually attacks the Victorian notion of hereditarianism, which defined mental or physical conditions as inherent to the person and often linked to that person’s family history or social status. Arguably, it is only when the Duchess escapes her social status and maternal role that she is alleviated of her ‘violent madness’ – critics have argued that ‘The Duchess is far less dangerous when allowed to escape her constrictive responsibilities’ (1), revealing Carroll’s argument against the strict regulations that Victorian society implemented and, in this aspect, the domestic constraint inflicted upon Victorian women. Part 2 - Historical factors At the time ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was published, mental illness remained very much a taboo topic, despite the string of “lunacy acts” published by doctors and physicians to control what was clearly a growing crisis. By the mid-19th century most insane asylums had abolished the older forms of physical restraint, and the ‘shackles and chains of lunacy’(4) were discarded to make way for new forms of therapy. Medical treatment for mental disorders included the use of purgatives, diuretics, sedatives and stimulants, while moral treatments included the control of behaviour and discipline through manual labour. Despite what could be seen as an advancement in treatments for the mentally ill, the former physical restraint of patients had merely been replaced by psychological constraint and manipulation – with a complete loss of freedom being the basis of all Victorian treatments.A historical analysis of the Alice books would look upon the influence of Sigmund Freud in Carroll’s
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