The delusion of Wonderland

Abstract

This thesis seeks to address how Lewis Carroll’s novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland can be interpreted as a story about mental illness, where the main character is suffering from Schizophrenia. The story of Alice has been adapted many times since it first was published, even by Carroll himself who wrote three different versions of the Alice story. I will look into how children’s literature has been defined over the years, as well as address the emergence and acceptance of the fantasy story. Wonderland was quite controversial at the time it was published. Children’s literature was supposed to be of a moral character, always seeking to teach children how to be good, behaved persons. However, Carroll did not write according to these criteria. Rather, his writing appeals to the enjoyment of the child, and the adult, as I will address. The focus will be on how Alice’s Schizophrenia is making her imagine things and places, and that Wonderland and its characters are really not the fairy tale it appears to be. Rather, Wonderland is a mental asylum, and the characters she encounters are other, fellow patients of the mental asylum. Thus, I will also be addressing Schizophrenia and mental illness through the times. Through this interpretation of Wonderland, I will show how the reader is as much a part of creating the story as the author is. The author can have all the intentions they want, but in the end, it is up to the reader how they interpret it. They might see a whole different story than the author intended to write.