How did Alice's Personality Change between Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass?

How did Alice's Personality Change between Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass?

Creators Shimogasa Tokuji

In our previous paper （”Aspects of Alice's Personality As Seen in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland”, Bulletin of The Faculty of International Studies, Yamaguchi Women's University, No.2, 1996, pp. 87-94）, we discussed Alice the heroine's characters or personality in detail. As a result, we found that Alice is a girl of 'multi-character'. Now, what about Alice's personality in the latter literary work? We readers are very much interested in how much Alice's personality has changed between these two masterpieces of juvenile literature. lt is of great importance to keep in mind that there is time span of six years between these two works：the composition date of the former work is 1865, and that of the latter is 1871. Despite this chronological fact, Alice has grown only half a year in the latter literary work. The fact that there is only half a year of time lag in Alice's age between these two works seems to have a connection with whether we can recognize some changes in her personality throughout these two Alice Books. Taken all in all, plus-oriented personality seems to be far more outstanding. Plus-oriented characters do not weaken even when she grows older. On the other hand, minus-oriented characters tend to lessen toward the latter work. As there is time lag of six years between the two works, Alice should be fairly grown-up or maturer. Nevertheless, Alice's characters haven't changed noticeably. lt is just because she has grown only half a year old from the former to the latter work. We find that Mr. Dodgson wanted Alice to remain pretty and naive for any length of time. Mr. Dodgson didn't want her to get older. He wanted her to be an eternal little girl or child.

[ISSN]1342-7148