After Alice

Doubtless, that title’s been used before. I’ve been sitting on this plot bunny rabbit for ages, so let’s have it out. This is mostly just my notes, so it's rambling.

             Alice’s adventures in Wonderland took place on May 4th, 1862, on her birthday. Her journey into Looking-Glass took place circa June 28th of the same year. Alice Pleasance Liddell told her sister of her adventures in confidence--and then her sister told a family friend, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, during a boat outing between Dodgson and the three Liddell girls. Dodgson surprised Alice with a manuscript as a Christmas gift; these were the written adventures of Alice as he had been told (more or less). He requested that Alice share with him these wondrous worlds. Several chapters of the finished Wonderland book actually occurred to Dodgson, such as “Pig & Pepper,” “A Mad Tea-Party,” and “The Caucus-Race.” He either experienced or made up details of the croquet and trial scenes; for instance, Dodgson heard of cheshire cats, but neither he nor Alice ever actually saw one--which is, perhaps, the way the cheshire cat liked it.

                     Dodgson’s young friend and her family requested that the book go no further than themselves. He was happy to comply, until a tiny suggestion that he might like to marry Alice when she was of suitable age meant that he was cut off from Alice and her family, estranged and rejected and his letters to Alice burned. Then he changed his mind. When Alice discovered that the story was going to be published--thus throwing her into the spotlight and opening the wondrous, dangerous worlds of Outland to public scrutiny and interest, she was aghast. Pleading with Dodgson did little (by now, you see, the government was interested in colonizing the countries of Outland, and it was they who pushed for the books’ publishing in order to familiarize the English with these strange things), so Alice contacted the books’ illustrator John Tenniel and requested his help. 

                   By 1865, the copies were ready for print and advance copies for Dodgson’s friends and family had already been bound and handed out. Tenniel had the publishing halted (and the early copies recalled) under the guise of the art not being up to snuff. Dodgson paid out of pocket to give Tenniel the chance to have the quality of work he desired, because the government was going to go ahead anyway with the printing--new art or no. So, Tenniel made new art; this literary engine was going to go ahead either way, and he had too much respect for Dodgson to let him know he had been the butt of an expensive, well-meaning con.

                The books (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There) were published, and in 1887 cheaper versions were released for the sake of putting the books into the hands of the middle class--to prepare these people for the advent of the strange. Alice did become “Alice,” and Dodgson became the “Alice-man.” Some people never realized that the Alice books were based on a real girl’s adventures, but the government knew--and they needed Alice. Did she ever come back from being the gold queen in Looking-Glass? Can she be imprisoned (does she escape through the gleaming reflection on her metal shackles into Outland?)? Did her child (two of her sons died in the early 1900s in WWI), Caryl Liddell Hargreaves (dies in about 1955), sell her out to save himself from government conscription?

               Using her talents and those like her as glass-walkers, the English established great glass-backed wrought iron portals that gave entry to different points in the countries of the continent of Outland: Wonderland, Looking-Glass, and Fairyland (the Island of the Snark must be reached by boat, as it is an island on this same continent); one portal is in Hyde Park, London, where one such great glass and iron construct had been once before. By 1934, the English have used these portals to enter these countries to establish the further dominion of King and Country and further the reach of the empire--and to import some of the crazy, inane, wonderful items and creatures of Wonderland, Looking-Glass, and (once it is found) the Island of the Snark--and there are rumors of extending to the empire to “the land beyond the twin stars” and “the bottle-glass city.”

              Because of his guilt and his disposition as a genuine man who loathes the suffering he has caused to happen, Dodgson donates all of the profits of his works to sick children’s hospitals (which may be a cover, as he may actually be funneling money into resistance and rescue efforts to safe Outland creatures and to repel the English out of Outland).               The issues with such colonization are similar to such issues in other countries in which the empire has struck--and yet different.

• Issue One:

The English (and other foreigners) cannot build well in Outland. The buildings come out warped and wrong, no matter how carefully things are measured. This is because the numbers simply don’t make sense to foreign minds, in the countries of Outland--in Wonderland they make no sense at all, and in Looking-Glass the numbers are always reversed. Cities and places in Outland are not built--they’re grown. Castles and cities give birth (though not very often) to humanoid “larval cities” that, eventually, settle into a new place and grow into an organic city-shaped lifeform. The foremost city our piece concerns itself with is Gramercy, the child of the White Queen’s castle--the only current larval city, and one the English are very interested in, in the hopes of being able to settle without living in warped, useless buildings.

• Issue Two:

The English are terrible for remembering nobility not their own. They never can remember all the royalty of Outland, and even of the queens mentioned in the Alice books, the White Queen is almost always forgotten, and the Red Queen is almost always mixed up with the Queen of Hearts--despite the fact that the Red Queen is clearly a chess piece, not a playing card. The White Queen’s daughter, Lily, is always upset at these misunderstandings. Due to the interruption of the Looking-Glass game by English colonization, Lily has never managed to become a queen like her mother; she is still a pawn, since she was too young to play during Alice’s adventures, and had not yet become old enough by the time the English started kidnapping chess piece-people and rerouting the brooks that made up the board boundaries. Gramercy is Lily’s companion and guardian; the only thing that will make the stony creature react fiercely is danger to Lily.

• Issue Three:

Outland has a strange relationship with the English world, and the aforementioned blurring of people and places (such as thinking that all of Outland is Wonderland) has lead to an actual, geographic blending and blurring of places--the countries of Wonderland, Looking-Glass, and Fairyland are grinding together and overlapping, and beginning to combine. Gramercy’s parent, the White Queen’s castle, has already been lost in such an event.

• Issue Four:

The enslavement of creatures of Outland is more heinous than any other act committed against Outland. Creatures and items taken out of Outland slowly, but surely, become normal, mute creatures no more intelligent or clever than their native English counterparts. This has more effect than simply leaving an Englishman out of coin on a talking rabbit; once the sapience has fully left the animal (or plant, or chess piece), no return to Outland will restore it. Conversely, merely being in Outland will exaggerate a particular trait of anyone (after all, the Queen of Hearts wasn’t always completely obsessed with taking off heads, and the White Queen was never absolutely untidy). The White Rabbit is neurotic, the Queen of Hearts is violent, the King of Hearts is a spineless nice guy, Bill the Lizard just has utterly rotten luck and is in the worst place all the time, and someone with a tendency to misplace things misplaces everything. The fading of talking animals’ and flowers’ sapience once in England means that more and more must be imported into Britain. Some manage to escape to America, or with Irish or Scottish sympathizers--but their intelligence still fades, all the same. The talking animal working to end English domination in our piece is a hummingbird (and no bigger than other hummingbirds) whose name is a sort of sound like “hm-hm.”

                  Lily (Looking-Glass), Gramercy (Looking-Glass), and hm-hm (Wonderland) intend to end the English destruction and desecration of Outland by destroying the glass portals and the English method of creating them. Which, of course, are people, glass-walkers such as Alice--and her children.

            And not everyone wants these portals closed. While there are sentiments that this new domain is a waste, or degrading the quality of England, and new worlds are not without their risks (someone tried to train a bandersnatch… once), there are those profiting mightily off of Outland’s resources--with the use of “eat me” and “drink me,” food and drink, people can be as big or as little as they like… including a size-changing assassin who makes use of a vorpal knife for break-in and slaughter, and would rather not see his methods dry up. (Knave of Hearts? Unnamed Englishman who emulates the Knave?)

            But then, some people really do want the old England back--such as a low-class servant who was turfed out of a job for a succession of talking animal servants. Just as it goes with everything, new wonders and toys don’t help the poor to survive--and in fact, when the urchins and homeless now have to compete with feral dogs and cats that used to be upstanding talking servants, it makes everything so much worse. Some people don’t want the old world--such as the higher-middle class child who grew up being mostly raised by “Mrs. Row” the brown rabbit. He only wants to find Mrs. Row again--by the time he finds her she is not speaking, but she stays with him anyway--and maybe he takes her back to Wonderland in the hopes that she’ll come back to herself.

                  Other talking animals are (unfairly) prejudiced against rabbits in general and white rabbits in particular, as the first source of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland--even if it was on accident. At one point, gregarious hm-hm attacks a brown or white rabbit.

                Throughout Looking-Glass, it comes up more than once that Alice might be a figment of the Red King’s dreaming--or that he might be a figment of hers. The main characters may eventually use this to their advantage (or try) and wake the Red King--thus negating the glass-walkers’ powers (or the glasswalkers altogether?), closing the portals and leaving the English in Outland to slowly go mad, and the Outlanders in England to slowly go totally… completely… normal.

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