Freud meets Alice

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice enters a confusing and curious dream world. Analysis from Sigmund Freud’s lecture “Symbolism in Dreams” can be applied to many elements that appear in Alice’s Wonderland. In chapter four, Alice is mistaken for the White Rabbit’s housemaid, and demanded to fetch the Rabbit’s gloves and fan. Alice enters the house and finds a bottle, which she decides to drink. “‘I know something interesting is sure to happen,’ she said to herself, ‘whenever I eat or drink anything: so I’ll just see what this bottle does. I do hope it’ll make me grow large again, for I’m really quite tired of being such a tiny little thing!’” (32).Alice does grow larger. Freud notes that “dreams aim at being the fulfillments of wishes” (155), and Alice is thus given the opportunity to fulfill her wish of growing larger by drinking from the bottle. She grows more than she would like, however, and is too large for the White Rabbit’s room, her arm out the window and her foot in the chimney. This can be alluded to Freud’s first symbolic representation in dreams: “representation of the human figure as a whole is a house” (153). Alice grows so large that her body is the house, carrying Freud’s symbolism even further. The White Rabbit sees Alice as a monster in his house, and has his animal friend Bill into the house through the chimney. This breaking into the house can be seen as an attempted rape of Alice, using Freud’s symbolism of the house for the body. Alice kicks Bill out of the chimney, sending him flying, and saving herself and the house from the invader. She is then thrown cakes, which allow her to grow small again and escape the house.