Andrea Goh
Phone: 07490169816 E-Mail: andreagohsh@gmail.com
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was written by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll) in 18651 - the novel had so much success as a children’s book that it has been recreated several times in film. The book tells of a girl named Alice falling into a deep rabbit hole and into a fantasy world that is inhabited by anthropomorphic characters – a massive cat, caterpillar and hare to name a few. The narrative, characters and the imagery especially depicted in film, have been enormously influential in popular culture and is considered a prime example of the literary nonsense genre. Although the book was written as a children’s book, it is widely popular with adults as the novel uses intriguing symbolisms that are typically only noticed by adults. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland would be considered far from an architectural text, in this discussion however, I would like to explore how Dodgson’s novel is set in a world that weaves between reality, simulation and simulacra and attempt to look at his work with a wider “architectural eye”. Firstly, as a starting point, I would like to first simply define some terms using Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation2s – starting from one extreme, Baudrillard defined “real” as something that exists as it is and does not exist as a symbol for potential existence. On the other hand, the “hyper-real” is a system to signs relating to that which is within imagination. According to Simulacra and Simulations, “simulation” happens in 4 stages, the first – “the reflection of basic reality” before it proceeds to the second stage where simulation “masks and perverts reality” and then “masks the absence of a basic reality”, and finally, the simulation would “bear no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum”. The final stage results in the simulation becoming a simulacrum, the simulacrum grows into its own reality. In the sixth chapter of the book, Alice encounters the Cheshire cat and asks him “would you tell me… which way I ought to go from here?” where the cat responds, - “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go”. The literature suggests the architecture in Wonderland is a labyrinth with spaces without names. What Alice needs is a name to attach to a place – Dodgson is showing here that in the real world, naming of a space creates the location as a place. Wonderland is a continuous simulacrum in this respect. As the story unfolds, Wonderland is unveiled in symbols and words ahead of Alice, without a basis of reality. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is an almost perfect example of how it starts with the real and slowly progresses into a simulation and then simulacra. Dodgson even described in his novella that the world Alice was in was getting “curiouser and curiouser”3 – evident of the concept of the self and the loss of identity as the fantasy world fights to become real. We then can look at this as simulacra and an architecture of a wonderland as presented through symbols by the author. Dodgson was a mathematician by training and although no empirical information was mentioned about Wonderland, there were many references to scale and relativity. An example is in the fifth chapter of the book where Alice asks for advice from a caterpillar because Alice was trying to find a way to return to her normal size while her height fluctuates between 9 feet and 3 inches. “Being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing,” she complains. “It isn’t,” replies the Caterpillar. The Caterpillar then warns Alice – “Keep your Temper”. Alice then presumably assumes that she was to not get upset. However, it is plausible that the word “temper” has another meaning in mathematics – the proportion in which quantities are mingled. This would mean that the Caterpillar could be telling Alice to keep her body proportion constant while her actual size did not matter – Euclidean 1
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Bristol: Paragon Books, 1993. Jean Baudrillard , “Simulacra and Simulations”, in Modern Literary Theory and Criticism: A Reader, ed. David Lodge and Nigel Wood (Harlow and New ork: Longman, 1988) p423. 3 This is seen in the opening of Chapter 2 of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – The Pool of Tears by Lewis Carroll. 2
geometry! Dodgson’s work was riddled with a multiple of symbols and abstractions, similar to what Charles Jencks would have called “Symbolic Architecture” (1985) 4 . How Alice viewed the architecture of Wonderland was dependent on her size and scale and how she experienced the architecture and encountered characters also changed with her ever-changing scale while she existed in the simulacra. Dodgson uses concrete/visual poetry repeatedly throughout the book where he designed the words of the poem into meaningful related shapes. This formed an additional layer of symbolism alone, however, the use of poetry brought about more ambiguity in meaning - one of the mechanisms of poetry. The ambiguity is also followed through in the descriptions that made the description of the surrounding architecture to likewise be seemingly mysterious and whimsical. John Tenniel did the illustrations in the first published version of the book, under the author’s strict instruction. The images appear alongside the texts and provide a point of reference to the ambiguous text. The images do not give much direct reference to Wonderland but clues are given by the representation shown in the appearance of the imaginary anthropomorphic characters. Although Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland does not explicitly discuss architecture, architecture is definitely present as the Wonderland – the made up dream by Alice herself. Dodgson uses literature to construct a whole new architecture around a world that is far from real but a fantasy world within a fictional tale. The use of symbolism throughout the book is reflective of the architecture of the time the book was written. In addition, the ambiguity added to the sense of confusion and whim in the imaginary architecture we recreate in our minds like a phantasmagoria, while we devour the book. What cannot be avoided is that every time we read the book again at different stages of our lives, our perception of Wonderland changes in relation to our own experience of our surrounding reality – very much like how we might experience architecture.
4
Charles Jencks, “Towards a Symbolic Architecture”, (Rizzoli; First Edition, 1985). 2