Chapter: 'Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that
for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English); 'now I'm
opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!'
(for when she looked down at her feet, they seemed to be almost out of
sight, they were getting so far off). 'Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder
who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears? I'm sure
_I_ shan't be able! I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble
myself about you: you must manage the best way you can;--but I must be
kind to them,' thought Alice, 'or perhaps they won't walk the way I want
to go! Let me see: I'll give them a new pair of boots every Christmas.'

And she went on planning to herself how she would manage it. 'They must
go by the carrier,' she thought; 'and how funny it'll seem, sending
presents to one's own feet! And how odd the directions will look!

     ALICE'S RIGHT FOOT, ESQ.
       HEARTHRUG,
         NEAR THE FENDER,
           (WITH ALICE'S LOVE).

Oh dear, what nonsense I'm talking!'

Just then her head struck against the roof of the hall: in fact she was
now more than nine feet high, and she at once took up the little golden
key and hurried off to the garden door.

Poor Alice! It was as much as she could do, lying down on one side, to
look through into the garden with one eye; but to get through was more
hopeless than ever: she sat down and began to cry again.

'You ought to be ashamed of yourself,' said Alice, 'a great girl like
you,' (she might well say this), 'to go on crying in this way! Stop this
moment, I tell you!' But she went on all the same, shedding gallons of
tears, until there was a large pool all round her, about four inches
deep and reaching half down the hall.

After a time she heard a little pattering of feet in the distance, and
she hastily dried her eyes to see what was coming. It was the White
Rabbit returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid gloves in
one hand and a large fan in the other: he came trotting along in a great
hurry, muttering to himself as he came, 'Oh! the Duchess, the Duchess!
Oh! won't she be savage if I've kept her waiting!' Alice felt so
desperate that she was ready to ask help of any one; so, when the Rabbit
came near her, she began, in a low, timid voice, 'If you please, sir--'
The Rabbit started violently, dropped the white kid gloves and the fan,
and skurried away into the darkness as hard as he could go.

Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot, she
kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking: 'Dear, dear! How
queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual.
I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the
same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a
little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who
in the world am I? Ah, THAT'S the great puzzle!' And she began thinking
over all the children she knew that were of the same age as herself, to
see if she could have been changed for any of them.

'I'm sure I'm not Ada,' she said, 'for her hair goes in such long
ringlets, and mine doesn't go in ringlets at all; and I'm sure I can't
be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh! she knows such a
very little! Besides, SHE'S she, and I'm I, and--oh dear, how puzzling
it all is! I'll try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me
see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and
four times seven is--oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!
However, the Multiplication Table doesn't signify: let's try Geography.
London is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the capital of Rome, and
Rome--no, THAT'S all wrong, I'm certain! I must have been changed for
Mabel! I'll try and say "How doth the little--"' and she crossed her
hands on her lap as if she were saying lessons, and began to repeat it,
but her voice sounded hoarse and strange, and the words did not come the
same as they used to do:--

     'How doth the little crocodile
      Improve his shining tail,
     And pour the waters of the Nile
      On every golden scale!

     'How cheerfully he seems to grin,
      How neatly spread his claws,
     And welcome little fishes in
      With gently smiling jaws!'

'I'm sure those are not the right words,' said poor Alice, and her eyes
filled with tears again as she went on, 'I must be Mabel after all, and
I shall have to go and live in that poky little house, and have next to
no toys to play with, and oh! ever so many lessons to learn! No, I've
made up my mind about it; if I'm Mabel, I'll stay down here! It'll be no
use their putting their heads down and saying "Come up again, dear!" I
shall only look up and say "Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then,
if I like being that person, I'll come up: if not, I'll stay down here
till I'm somebody else"--but, oh dear!' cried Alice, with a sudden burst
of tears, 'I do wish they WOULD put their heads down! I am so VERY tired
of being all alone here!'

As she said this she looked down at her hands, and was surprised to see
that she had put on one of the Rabbit's little white kid gloves while
she was talking. 'How CAN I have done that?' she thought. 'I must
be growing small again.' She got up and went to the table to measure
herself by it, and found that, as nearly as she could guess, she was now
about two feet high, and was going on shrinking rapidly: she soon found
out that the cause of this was the fan she was holding, and she dropped
it hastily, just in time to avoid shrinking away altogether.

'That WAS a narrow escape!' said Alice, a good deal frightened at the
sudden change, but very glad to find herself still in existence; 'and
now for the garden!' and she ran with all speed back to the little door:
but, alas! the little door was shut again, and the little golden key was
lying on the glass table as before, 'and things are worse than ever,'
thought the poor child, 'for I never was so small as this before, never!
And I declare it's too bad, that it is!'

As she said these words her foot slipped, and in another moment, splash!
she was up to her chin in salt water. Her first idea was that she
had somehow fallen into the sea, 'and in that case I can go back by
railway,' she said to herself. (Alice had been to the seaside once in
her life, and had come to the general conclusion, that wherever you go
to on the English coast you find a number of bathing machines in the
sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row
of lodging houses, and behind them a railway station.) However, she soon
made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she
was nine feet high.

'I wish I hadn't cried so much!' said Alice, as she swam about, trying
to find her way out. 'I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by
being drowned in my own tears! That WILL be a queer thing, to be sure!
However, everything is queer to-day.'

Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way
off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was: at first she thought
it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then she remembered how small
she was now, and she soon made out that it was only a mouse that had
slipped in like herself.

'Would it be of any use, now,' thought Alice, 'to speak to this mouse?
Everything is so out-of-the-way down here, that I should think very
likely it can talk: at any rate, there's no harm in trying.' So she
began: 'O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired
of swimming about here, O Mouse!' (Alice thought this must be the right
way of speaking to a mouse: she had never done such a thing before, but
she remembered having seen in her brother's Latin Grammar, 'A mouse--of
a mouse--to a mouse--a mouse--O mouse!') The Mouse looked at her rather
inquisitively, and seemed to her to wink with one of its little eyes,
but it said nothing.

'Perhaps it doesn't understand English,' thought Alice; 'I daresay it's
a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror.' (For, with all
her knowledge of history, Alice had no very clear notion how long ago
anything had happened.) So she began again: 'Ou est ma chatte?' which
was the first sentence in her French lesson-book. The Mouse gave a
sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver all over with fright.
'Oh, I beg your pardon!' cried Alice hastily, afraid that she had hurt
the poor animal's feelings. 'I quite forgot you didn't like cats.'

'Not like cats!' cried the Mouse, in a shrill, passionate voice. 'Would
YOU like cats if you were me?'

'Well, perhaps not,' said Alice in a soothing tone: 'don't be angry
about it. And yet I wish I could show you our cat Dinah: I think you'd
take a fancy to cats if you could only see her. She is such a dear quiet
thing,' Alice went on, half to herself, as she swam lazily about in the
pool, 'and she sits purring so nicely by the fire, licking her paws and
washing her face--and she is such a nice soft thing to nurse--and she's
such a capital one for catching mice--oh, I beg your pardon!' cried
Alice again, for this time the Mouse was bristling all over, and she
felt certain it must be really offended. 'We won't talk about her any
more if you'd rather not.'

'We indeed!' cried the Mouse, who was trembling down to the end of his
tail. 'As if I would talk on such a subject! Our family always HATED
cats: nasty, low, vulgar things! Don't let me hear the name again!'

'I won't indeed!' said Alice, in a great hurry to change the subject of
conversation. 'Are you--are you fond--of--of dogs?' The Mouse did not
answer, so Alice went on eagerly: 'There is such a nice little dog near
our house I should like to show you! A little bright-eyed terrier, you
know, with oh, such long curly brown hair! And it'll fetch things when
you throw them, and it'll sit up and beg for its dinner, and all sorts
of things--I can't remember half of them--and it belongs to a farmer,
you know, and he says it's so useful, it's worth a hundred pounds! He
says it kills all the rats and--oh dear!' cried Alice in a sorrowful
tone, 'I'm afraid I've offended it again!' For the Mouse was swimming
away from her as hard as it could go, and making quite a commotion in
the pool as it went.

So she called softly after it, 'Mouse dear! Do come back again, and we
won't talk about cats or dogs either, if you don't like them!' When the
Mouse heard this, it turned round and swam slowly back to her: its
face was quite pale (with passion, Alice thought), and it said in a low
trembling voice, 'Let us get to the shore, and then I'll tell you my
history, and you'll understand why it is I hate cats and dogs.'

It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded with the
birds and animals that had fallen into it: there were a Duck and a Dodo,
a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice led the
way, and the whole party swam to the shore.

 As things turn out, the magic cake has a delayed effect. Suddenly, Alice's neck shoots up like a telescope, unfurling until her head touches the ceiling. "Curiouser and curiouser!" she exclaims. But that is all she says; she isn't angry, and her ungrammatical outburst is merely indicative of her being a surprised child. Her emotion is one of awe. That is all, and it shows her inherent self-control. However, she clearly realizes again that a serious problem is going to be her new size. And because size is related to what one eats or drinks, her concern is to eat and drink properly, but that seems almost impossible down here. One can't trust what one reads on little signs. Note that the extension of Alice's neck has had an inverse effect on the other limbs of her body. Her arms now appear to be small stumps, her head seems miniscule, and, without relatively-sized shoulders or hips, her trunk resembles a frame minus any curves. In the John Tenniel illustrations , Alice appears almost phallic looking, much like a totem figure. But whatever the connotations imply about Lewis Carroll's fantasies, they are certainly unknown to Alice. Nothing in the story suggests that the pre-pubescent heroine has any self-consciousness about her oddly elongated, phallic-looking neck. If Alice has any serious hang-up at this point, it is related to food, because food always seems to produce trouble. Whenever Alice eats something, she becomes alienated from her body and her sense of who she is. After eating the cake, she wonders how amusing it will be to communicate by mail with her feet! Carroll is a master at reproducing the curiosity that can only surface in dreams. This is a child's world of the Absurd, and Alice is speculating on possibilities. Then, her Victorian training checks her whimsy: "Oh dear, what nonsense I'm talking!" In despair again because the "proper" and rational side of her has come to the fore, Alice begins to cry, and again her "super-ego -- the voice of Authority -- intervenes: "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, a great girl like you . . . to go on crying in this way! Stop this moment, I tell you!" There is often this two-voiced sense of herself in Alice's soliloquies; there is the sense of propriety, as well as the voice of a separate child-self which keeps emerging, the latter growing stronger and stronger. It is the voice of a slowly, gradually maturing Alice as she becomes more adult, but note that she is very much "her own" adult as the story unfolds. At this point, of course, Alice is not aware that this shifting identity is a problem. That awareness will come later, after many more confrontations in Wonderland. The humor that manifests itself in her talks to herself is mainly produced by her solemn attitude, when compared to her child's attitude and reaction to whatever queer situation she finds herself in. In spite of what has happened to Alice, she tries very hard to be totally serious about it and to try and make sense out of all this nonsense. Nonetheless, the laugh is on her, for the narrator's third-person voice always plays up Alice's childlike, comic aspects. He makes Alice's credibility at trying to be rational -- despite her deep curiosity -- ridiculous. This, of course, is the core of Carroll's humor in the novel. One consequence of this two-voice structure is that Alice has no terribly strong emotions either way; her responses to the creatures in Wonderland seem totally cerebral. But she tries, as we have said, to deal with them as though they were logical and thinking beings -- even though they are "creatures" and although they make no sense at all. Alice forms no lasting relationships with any of them. In fact, in the climactic last chapter, she displays inflamed anger toward the Queen of Hearts; her only real expression of sympathy is for the Knave of Hearts. As French philosopher Henri Bergson once observed, laughter and emotions are incompatible -- which is perhaps why jokes by people who laugh while telling them are seldom as funny as jokes told without expression or those which are told with deadpan expressions. And inasmuch as the mad creatures of Wonderland never laugh or ever seem amused , the comic effect of Alice's dream becomes highly enhanced -- that is, the story becomes funnier to the reader, even though at times it must seem scary to a child. But when the creatures are the saddest , or anxious , or enraged , or frightened , they seem all the more amusing and comic. The parenthetical comments that the narrator sometimes inserts into the text greatly assist the graphic relationship between comedy and horror. The style and tone of the narrative is usually lucid, calm, a bit condescending, and even snobbish at times, but it is also loving and indulgent. And then at other times, it is distant and hostile. The writing in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, you should note, is always on the edge of hysteria. So intense is it, that the split between humanity and nature is implicit in all of Alice's encounters with the creatures in Wonderland. Part of the humor of cruelty -- and the creatures of Wonderland are sometimes extremely cruel -- is to maintain the balance between sadism and sentimentality. In this case, the split effect provides a proper tension and gives the writing a subtlety and a sober delicacy. The double consciousness in the character of Alice is also a structural motif -- a duality reflecting Alice's regression, at times, to a small child, and then a reversal, when she becomes a stern, Victorian moralist. At times, Alice's willfulness provides an escape from boredom. It irritates her to be corrected by creatures who sound irrational. Then, at other times, she wants to sink into the ground. Here, Carroll sharpens the opposition of the two opposing impulses within Alice. Later, even Alice realizes that part of herself scolds and is very much like the critical creatures who live in Wonderland. Her search for true feeling and for some sanity in this strange world turns finally inward toward maturity, knowledge, and self-awareness, although she herself would not realize anything about herself unless it is involved in some sort of external experience. In order to know her true inner feelings, Alice will have to finally educate that other "scolding" Alice-voice which is confused by her estranged condition and trying always to cope with it rationally. Alice cries until she is sitting in -- what is to her -- a gigantic pool of tears, even though in reality, the pool is only four inches deep. The White Rabbit reappears, bewailing his reception by the savage Duchess. Alice, with her long neck, startles him so that he drops his fan and gloves and scurries off. Taking up the fan and gloves, Alice says: "Dear, dear! How queer everything is today!" Amid the fun, Alice is beginning to recognize something ominous; therefore, it is only natural that she tries to relate her present situation to the rigid, secure "order" of the past. She leapt down the rabbit-hole without any thought of how she would get out, and now her adventure has already begun to fragment her old structure of living a rather ordinary, boring, uninteresting day-to-day life. This disorientation is very much like a jarring fall -- which she would have had if she had actually fallen down a truly deep hole. Her old world is collapsing fast. She must simultaneously attempt to discover how to begin to understand her dream while, at the same time, try to determine how it will end. She attempts to re-establish her identity by asking herself if she could have become some other child. But her sensibility as a proper Victorian little girl and also as an intelligent, educated middle-class girl make her dismiss any of the children who come to mind. "I'm sure I can't be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh, she knows such a very little." Nor is Alice helped in trying to figure out who she is by recalling logical certainties -- such as arithmetic. When she attempts to establish who she is by reciting her multiplication tables from one to twenty, her uncertainty only deepens: "Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is -- oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!" Alice finds her distress unrelieved. She has no resources to help her. Wonderland is one enormous puzzle, and her solitude and alienation have now made her unsure whether or not she really exists as Alice! Her familiar, comforting world of facts and learning are no longer mentally true, and she wishes desperately for people whom she left behind to relieve her boredom. She knows that "It'll be no use their putting their heads down and saying 'Come up again, dear!' I shall only look up and say, 'Who am I, then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person. I'll come up: if not, I'll stay down here till I'm somebody else."' The most crucial aspect of her sanity -- her permanent self-identity -- seems destroyed. But her lonely cry does express her horrible loneliness: "I do wish they would put their heads down! I am so very tired of being all alone here!" All this while, Alice has been fanning herself and has put on one of the White Rabbit's gloves. Suddenly, she realizes that she has shrunk -- and is continuing to shrink! In alarm, she drops the fan, and the shrinking stops. She realizes in horror that she might well have vanished into thin air if she had held the fan much longer. As we have already noted, her trials have a serial nature, for no sooner has she stopped shrinking than she finds herself floating in the pool of her own tears. This is like a non-stop movie of horrors! In a single moment, she has passed from the threat of vanishing, and now she faces the prospect of drowning. Some critics have interpreted her sea of tears as a symbolic evocation of a Lethean bath from which Alice will emerge "reborn." But Alice does not change. She swims and frolics until she is joined by a Mouse. His appearance enables Carroll to now parody one of the Victorians' favorite pastimes in which they educated their children: by rote learning. In a soliloquy, Alice addresses the Mouse: "Oh Mouse," a phrase which reminds her instantly of a Latin grammar exercise in her brother's Latin textbook: amo, amas, amat. Then she recalls the English translation rather than the Latin conjugation of the verb for love, and what follows is a confusing of a noun declension: "A mouse -- of a mouse -- to a mouse -- a mouse -- O mouse!" All of this is absolute nonsense to the Mouse, and Alice's attempt at further communication with the Mouse becomes further complicated when she tries to converse with the Mouse in French. Tactlessly, she chooses the phrase "Ou est ma chatte?" Of course, absurdly, the Mouse understands "cat" in any language, and his initial apprehension of Alice quickly turns to fear and distrust. He swims away, very offended and very discomforted. Alice then realizes her blunder, but she keeps blathering away, describing her cat, Dinah. Alice is clearly out of control. And when she does fully realize the extent of her offense, she tries to switch the subject to dogs -- as if dogs might make the Mouse feel any better. Her tactless bungling then becomes a predominating pattern. Nonetheless, the Mouse offers to tell her his history and why he dislikes cats and dogs, and he forgives her. Curiously, his maturity and politeness is in sharp contrast with Alice's unthinking, cruel lapse of manners. Alice is redeemed here only by the Mouse's having an adult sensibility. He forgives Alice because, as a child, she does not know any better. Chapter II concludes, then, with the pool of tears becoming suddenly filled with a strange menagerie of Wonderland creatures: a Duck, a Dodo, a Lory , an Eaglet, and "several other curious creatures."

