What the Heck Does Alice Mean?

Children’s literature has always been mined for deep, hidden meanings. The most famous examples of this are the thousands of analyses of Lewis Carroll’s novels Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. And between the hookah-smoking caterpillars and deranged nursery rhyme characters there is, admittedly, a lot of room for interpretation. 

For 150 years these stories have been read as sexual allegories, drug-filled fantasies, political commentaries, and critiques of everything from the monarchy and capitalism to the church and, believe it or not, symbolic algebra. 

As long as the books remain in print (which they have been since 1865 and 1871 respectively), and as long as film adaptations continue to be made (the latest one, Alice Through the Looking Glass, was released just this week), we can be be assured that new interpretations will continue to emerge. Maybe it’s not entirely our fault. Writing to a friend about one of his other works, Carroll himself admitted, “I’m very much afraid I didn’t mean anything but nonsense. Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them.”