Alice's Trip to Wonderland

Written by Ali Wagman, Contributing Writer | Photographed by Hannah Ritvo, Contributing Photographer Modeled by Isabel Bog and Charlene Hunyh | Styled by Ava Beydoun, Fashion Editorial Team

As children, we are encouraged to use our imagination. We play house, build Legos or create paintings that despite looking like a blob of colors, remain hung on the fridge. But as we get older—and life gets a little harder—our imaginations are used differently. Just for a moment, we find other ways to lose touch with reality.

Lewis Caroll plays with this idea in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” where little Alice’s curiosity brings her down a rabbit hole into an entirely new world made up of all sorts of fantasy characters. Upon closer inspection, even though Carroll’s story was written for children, the way he chooses to explore altered perceptions may represent more mature themes than what appears in the charming Disney version. Was Alice really in a fantastical world full of magical creatures, or did she take psychedelics that altered her reality and reflect Carroll’s severe mental illness? Is what Alice saw in Wonderland real, or was it something else entirely?

The last time I watched the movie “Alice in Wonderland,” I was probably five-years-old. So, I decided to rewatch some scenes through my much older and wiser 19-year-old lens. From the “drink me” scene in which Alice ingests an elixir that causes her to grow and shrink, to the hookah smoking Cheshire Cat, the movie appeals to both stoners and children alike.

Initially made in the ’50s, the movie’s high provided by psychedelics include the distortion of size, such as when Alice grows into a giant after eating a cake. Another similar instance occurs in Chapter Five of Carroll’s book when Alice eats the caterpillar’s mushroom and her head falls to her feet. The “trippy” nature of the story has also influenced music, such as Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” which uses the story of “Alice in Wonderland” as a representation of drug culture in the ’60s.

However, research has disproved the theory that Lewis Caroll wrote “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” under the influence of psychedelics—which would have made a great piece, to my disappointment. But Carroll may have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, and it is possible that his neurological condition inspired the book. His diary records him seeing “disordered fortifications,” similar to the growing and shrinking that Alice experiences.1 Given that the book was written in the late 1800s, it is unlikely that he could blatantly write about mental illness. Instead, he may have chosen to reflect his illness through his characters: the White Rabbit’s “I’m Late” represents general anxiety disorder, the Queen of Hearts narcissist syndrome and most importantly, little Alice, whose hallucinations prevent her from existing in reality. 2 Sound familiar? In the 1950s, Carroll’s work even inspired the name of a rare psychological disorder known as “Alice in Wonderland Syndrome,” in which people perceive the size of their body parts incorrectly.3

For many of us, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” will always hold a sense of nostalgia and playfulness. We can remain fans of this classic and acknowledge how our favorite childhood authors are simply adults with the same hunger for creativity as children. Carroll’s work demonstrates this, transforming the harsh realities of adulthood into something a lot more fun, like a trippy cartoon cat who uses a hookah pipe. ■

Narrative.eu., 2018 2 “The Neurological Disorders in Alice in Wonderland,” The Tutor Pages, NeuroscienceNews, Jan. 12, 2018. 3 Ibid.