Alice

What does this mean for you? You are an imaginative dreamer with the capacity for great ideas and fantasies. Although you may prefer fiction to reality and may be a bit mad, you find healing in the dreams you bring to life. 

The story of Alice in Wonderland goes like this: One day, young Alice sat beside her elder sister on the banks of a babbling river, only to suddenly spot a white rabbit. “Oh, I’ll be late!” the White Rabbit said, and glanced at his pocket-watch in a hurry. Then he bounded off and Alice’s curiosity got the better of her, and she followed at his heels. The White Rabbit jumped into a rabbit hole and Alice followed after him, falling. Falling. Falling. Falling…The fall lasted so long that Alice fell asleep! Landing in a soft pile of leaves, she found herself in a long hallway with a series of doors, but the White Rabbit was nowhere in sight! 

What a coincidence it was that she found a key to a fifteen inch door situated on a small table alongside a small bottle that said ‘Drink Me.’ With a swallow, Alice shrunk until she could walk through the small door. But this door was locked. In despair, she looked around only to spot a small cake that said ‘Eat Me’ and considering the circumstances before, she assumed that it would make her grow up again. And so she did, until her small head reached the ceiling and she could barely fit into the room. 

She grabbed the key on the table, but now she was far, far too big to go through that tinsy, tiny hole of a door. Despair set in once again, and now Alice cried. And cried. And cried. She ended up crying so much that a pool formed around her. But then, she heard the White Rabbit down the hall and she called out to him, which startled him, and he ran away, throwing his gloves at her in his fright. Talking to herself and wondering what to do, she found that she put the gloves on and was growing smaller again and was swimming in her own tears. 

Then there was a mouse swimming in the water who unwittingly led her to shore. As it turned out, there were many animals on the shore, all soaked from the pool of her tears and wondered how to get dry. They talked and it all seemed oh so natural to her. While the Mouse suggested politics, the Dodo suggested running around in circles and by the time thirty minutes swept by, Alice and all the animals were dry once again. Apparently all the running about turned out to be a race they all won, and Alice was awarded her own thimble, which had been in her pocket. Soon Alice told a story about her cat which spooked all the animals and they ran away from her. 

But it was amid this lonely hour that Alice spotted the White Rabbit who thought Alice was his maid and demanded she find his fan and gloves. Without a thought, she ran and found the White Rabbit’s house and inside was a bottle that she drank, and once again Alice grew until the house could no longer fit her! Because the White Rabbit and his servants thought she may be a threat, they threw rocks at her that turned into cakes, and Alice wondered if they would make her small again, so she ate one, minimized, flew past many animals, and ran into the woods. 

There she met a caterpillar, who made her question many things, including who she was. After all, she’d changed many times since the moment she arrived in this strange place. Who was she to say what she was anymore? But eventually the caterpillar gave her some advice and Alice turned back to her original size, only to realize that she was nearing a house nine inches tall, and ate a bit of mushroom and voila, she was nine-inches. 

As it turned out, the house belonged to a frog-footman that housed many strange inhabitants–from a soup-making Duchess with a baby to a grinning Cheshire Cat. Unfortunately for Alice, the baby was actually a pig that she had to hold while it snorted and writhed in her arms. Helpfully or unhelpfully, the Cheshire cat was curled on the branches of a tree outside, and Alice asked him for directions. In one direction laid the March Hare and in the other laid the Mad Hatter. 

“Well, I don’t want to be around mad people!” Alice cried. 

“‘You can’t help that. We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’”

“‘How can you know I’m mad?’” Alice demanded.

“‘You must be,’” said the Cheshire Cat. “‘Or you wouldn’t have come here.’”

Alice, of course, did not know what to do with this whimsical nonsense of a statement, but the Cheshire Cat went on, “‘Will you be playing croquet with the Queen today?’”

“I would love to, but I wasn’t invited.”

“Don’t worry. I shall see you there!” And vanished. 

And with a shrug, Alice set off in the direction of the March Hare. Once she arrived, she found the March Hare and the Mad Hatter together, chatting and having tea outside. The Dormouse sat between them fast asleep. The table itself was set, far too small for three people, and displayed mismatching sets of tea kettles and cups. While the strange lads were initially alarmed to have another guest, the March Hare and Mad Hatter screamed into the ear of the Dormouse so he could tell a story. Alice, ever curious, asked so many questions and interrupted on numerous occasions, but found the Dormouse rude. He grew angry at her many questions and she stormed off until she found a garden–the Queen’s garden. 

She was met with the sight of a rose garden, every petal white, but three gardeners with the look of playing cards were painting them all red. Apparently the Queen had requested red roses, but they made a mistake and now they painted them red to compensate. 

Then one of the gardeners/playing cards cried out, “The Queen!” and threw themselves on the ground. A procession of royalty marched into the garden. The entire court, including the Knave of Hearts and the White Rabbit followed in tow of the King and Queen of Hearts.

“And who are you?” the Queen of Hearts demanded before pointing to the cards. “And who are they?”

A spike of brazenness lit up her heart. “Well, how should I know?”

Infuriated, the Queen shouted, “Off with her head!”

“That’s nonsense!” Alice declared. 

The strange confusion of the moment then manifested into Alice playing croquet with the Queen. The moment only grew stranger still. The balls were hedgehogs, the mallets were flamingos, and the card solidres used their bodies to create the arches. It was the oddest sight, and the hardest game, for her flamingo kept turning its head and the hedgehog kept running away. All of it made Alice laugh. Out of nowhere the head of the Cheshire Cat appeared, who angered the king and vanished before his head could be cut off. 

Out from the distance, a voice called out, “The trial is starting!”

Alice found herself walking up to the King and Queen of Hearts, seated at their heart-shaped thrones. The entire court had been assembled for the trial of the Knave of Hearts who had stolen some tarts from the Queen. The White Rabbit called everyone to order and the King of Hearts acted as judge. During the Mad Hatter’s moment as witness, Alice felt herself growing again. Various useless witnesses went by until the White Rabbit unexpectedly called out, “Alice!” 

Startled, she stood straight up and cried, “Here!” Unused to her height, she ended up knocking over the jury box, and begged for forgiveness before approaching the witness stand. The King tried some nonsense to sentence the Knave of Hearts, but Alice would have none of it. 

“Off with her head!” the Queen cried out, and the card soldiers descended on her. She screamed and tried to beat them back–

Only to wake up on the riverbank. 

So ends the story of Alice in Wonderland.

Without knowing the history, one would wonder where this world and character could possibly come from. As it turns out, this masterpiece of a story was created by the mind of one Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), more famously known by his pen name and alternate persona, Lewis Carroll. Oxford grad and Oxford professor of mathematics, Carroll was an eccentric personality to say the least. With a “predilection (innocent or otherwise) for the companionship of young girls,” and a strange split of personality by his two names–Carroll and Dodgeson–perhaps only someone with as strange a mind as Carroll could fashion a story that is both dreamy and mad at the same time. Eccentric, lonely, genius, inventive, curious, skeptical, vengeful, and otherworldly imaginative, the story for Alice in Wonderland came to Carroll while in the company of one Alice Liddell (1852-1934). 

The daughter of an Oxford professor, Alice was ten-years-old when the thirty-year-old Carroll (who she knew as Charles Dodgson) came up with the character she inspired him to write. Having been friends with the family for a while, it was no unordinary day when Alice and her two sisters were rowing down a river and Alice asked Dodgeson to tell them a story. This, too, was an ordinary event amongst them, but it was the first time Alice asked for Dodgeson to write it down after. And so he did. It became what we know as Alice in Wonderland. 

But what does this mean for you, dear reader and established Alice? You are a dreamer, curious about all, skeptical about some, but live within the dreams you call home, whether they be future visions for yourself, daydreams of somewhere far, far away, for a fantasy reality. You also may be an artist, but your strongest predilection is towards creating and feeling the intensity of your very own Wonderland. You have an unrivaled creativity and curiosity. Many people undoubtedly envy this trait. 

That said, because of this you may find yourself in strange circumstances from time to time due to your innate curiosity. You are subject to rabbit holes, figuratively and maybe literally, and can spend hours lost in finding new things, knowledge, and ideas. You thrive on the unreal, but this is not always the healthiest thing. While active imagination and dreaming can help you in real life and show you deeper aspects of yourself you unwittingly hide, you may find yourself escaping from reality and forgetting to live. It is good to find a balance between the thrall of fiction and the waking world we call home. Fiction can heal, but it can also be disastrous if that is all you find joy in. Alice had to wake up from her dreams too after all. 

Alice’s dreams of Wonderland called her towards an adventure all her own. Characters and craziness abound, and while she may be a bit mad as the Cheshire Cat says–in the end, all the best people are.