Alice in Wonderland – a survivor’s testimony? Part 2.

Chapter 1, continued. Rabbit Hole.

Alice picks herself up from the heap of sticks and walks into a hall of doors, where she finds a little key on the glass table. Then she begins a series of shrinking and growing. It's peculiar how all of her shrinking occurs in one fashion - not in scale, but rather as if she is being stretched out in length - as if a phallus. Alice says: "Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope!" In the course of the story, there are many instances where Alice stretches in the same fashion - her neck stretches out, one time she even looks like a snake - "...all she could see, when she looked down, was an immense length of neck, which seemed to rise like a stalk out of a sea of green leaves..." - a snake is a common symbol of penis in the victim's dreams.

Then Alice begins scolding herself for crying - which is what typically any abuse victim does - be it physical, emotional, or sexual: "Come, there is no use in crying like that! said Alice to herself rather sharply. "I advise you to leave off this minute!" She generally gave herself very good advice (though very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes..."

Chapter 2, The pool of tears.

Alice starts referring to herself talking nonsense, then wonders who she really is - when children who have been abused try to tell their stories, usually adults refer to them as nonsense, and tell them that they made it up. The child becomes confused and stops trusting herself, and later the multiple personality disorder might develop as a result - which happens to Alice: "...for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people...". When Alice slips into the pool of her own tears, she says: "I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears."

Chapter 3. A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale.

Alice meets the mouse, then is surrounded by all kinds of animals that exit the pool and try to get dry by listening to the mouse - in this chapter, nothing really touched me in a way other things did, so I will pass on commenting, although Alice is always in a position of being ordered around - though this was typical for little children of that time, I'm sure.

Chapter 4. The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill.

Alice lets herself being ordered about by the white rabbit - she just assumes the role of his maid - this is also a typical tendency of any abused child, but I don't want to go too far - this chapter didn't grab me, again, as much, as some others did.

Chapter 5. Advice from a Caterpillar.

This is personally a hard chapter for me, as for me the image of my father is the one of the worm - white hairless worm - connected to the images of his body. The male Caterpillar just throws me off - I might be totally wrong with this, again, because it is linked strongly to my own experience. Alice does turn into a serpent here (mentioned above), and then she comes upon a pigeon - they have a conversation about eggs. Coincidental? I don't know. Am I stretching it to far here? Maybe I am. But it got me thinking again about the same imagery as above.

Chapter 6. Pig and Pepper.

This is one of the most disturbing chapters. A duchess nurses a baby, calls it "pig", shakes it violently: "...she kept tossing the baby violently up and down, and the poor little thing howled so...", then throws the baby to Alice, verbally abusing her. One sign of child abuse victim in Alice is when she doesn't try to escape but rather freezes at the words of the duchess "Talking of axes... ...chop off her head!", then pretends like nothing happened. And what exactly did Charles mean by the words that the Cheshire Cat says? "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad." - "How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here." And I wonder what the grin (without the cat) meant to Charles - I have had the same with the eyes - I would see eyes on all kinds of creatures on my dreams, even just the eye alone in the ground - and me drowning in it. They were my father's eyes - I remembered them most because they scared me most. Why is it that the Cheshire's Cat's grin gives me shivers? I don't know, maybe another coincidence.

To be continued.