The Role of The Monarchy in Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through The Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There‪'‬

Alice’s adventures begin when the curious little girl follows a “white rabbit with pink eyes” down a rabbit-hole, “never once considering how in the world she was to get out again” (Carroll 10). At the end of her fall, Alice enters a dream world full of curious creatures and characters. But as Alice feels as if she were “in the middle of” (Carroll 33) a fairytale, she is ready to take all the characters seriously and deal with them as if they were real people. It is not until the end that she realises that all the characters have merely been part of her “wonderful dream” (Carroll 110). On her journey through Wonderland Alice also meets the King and Queen of Hearts. Soon Alice finds out that getting along with the two monarchs happens to be particularly challenging.

Alice doesn’t meet the Royalty until Chapter XIII when she is invited to the Queen’s croquet-ground. At first Alice overhears a conversation of three of her majesty’s gardeners. Alice finds out that the Queen thinks people deserve to be beheaded for little trifles like “bringing the cook tulip-roots instead of onions” (Carroll 69) or for not planting a red rose-tree and “(putting) a white one in by mistake” (Carroll 69). Carroll knew that children with their strong sense for justice would immediately notice that the Queen of Hearts treats people unjustly.

Furthermore, Lewis Carroll probably expected Alice Liddell, the little girl whom he told the story of Alice before it was published, to notice the parallel in English History, since he had a knowledge of what the children were learning at school. Queen Margaret wanted to maintain the Lancastrian monarchy and not share her power with the Duke of York. This event is reflected by The Queen of Heart’s wish to have all the white roses in the garden painted red. (Carroll 257).

“THE KING AND QUEEN OF HEARTS” (Carroll 70) arrive in a spectacular parade accompanied by their entire court. The author stresses the great power of the monarchs by printing their names in capitals although they are all but part of a set of playing cards: “oblong and flat, with their hands and feet at the corners” (Carroll 70). With this technique Carroll can make clear that the Royalty possess a certain authority. At the same time he enables Alice to question the absolute power of the monarchs. The three gardeners throw “themselves flat on their faces” (Carroll 70), for fear of this “blind and aimless Fury”, as Lewis Carroll described the Queen in Alice on the Stage.