Jacob Strick

Critical Essay: Why Size Matters in Wonderland

Ask any person who’s read Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”

to explain its plot, and it’s expected that they’ll be at a loss. They might recall the

eccentric menagerie of characters, perhaps a snatch of verse or a famous line of dialogue.

Most likely than not they will relate to you the image of Alice growing and shrinking, of

the cake that says “EAT ME” and the potion labeled “DRINK ME.” But it’s the context

of Alice’s metamorphoses that concern me. I returned to this childhood favorite with an

agenda of my own: to find whether Alice’s changes in size were governed by a consistent

set of laws -- and if so, what consequences did they have for her and the denizens of

Wonderland? Furthermore, I wanted to understand what greater meaning lied behind

these differences in scale. In typical Carrollyn fashion, I was rather surprised and amused

by my findings.

Alice experiences her first change in size immediately upon entering the rabbit

hole. This is not made explicitly clear by the text, but Alice’s shift in demeanor is in full

support of my claim. The hole is simply described as “large,” and since Alice is a child

there’s no reason to assume that she has shrunk, but how then to account for the long fall

and the subsequent safe landing? Alice assumes that she’s falling either very far (“four

thousand miles down”)i or she’s somehow discovered a novel way to fall slowly. The

only working explanation would be that she has decreased in size. When Alice initially

falls, it’s far too dark to see anything. Alice needs the visual element to orient her to her

surroundings; temporary blindness would render her unaware that any internal

transformation has taken place.

her defined sense of self. Memory is closely linked to identity, and throughout Alice’s

time in Wonderland she struggles with both. Alice, as its been remarked, also goes

through a succession of physical metamorphoses. I will argue that all of these things is of

equal importance, both to the story and to the internal geographies of Wonderland. Again,

we are searching for the “why” when it comes to Alice’s changes in size and her failure

to remember any facts immediately after the fall. The darkness she experiences is quite a

literal one, though it’s not enough to account for her total loss of identity:

‘Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went
on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: I was
the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a
little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am
I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!’ And she began thinking over all the children she
knew that were of the same age as herself, to see if she could have been changed
for any of them.ii

Upon landing, Alice follows the White Rabbit down a passageway that leads to a

hall of locked doors. The passage is either badly lit or the ceiling is very high, because it

“was all dark overhead.” However, the hall is defined as “long [and] low,”iii something

around nine feet in height. The rabbit is missing – assumedly he’s gone to his house to

fetch his kid gloves and fan. Alice peeks behind a curtain in the hall, discovering a hidden

door only fifteen inches tall! But like the others there it is locked, and requires a key –

from atop a table completely made of glass – to unlock it. Behind the door is a garden,

though it’s not made immediately clear whether the garden matches the scale of the

door1. It is here in the hall that Alice undergoes her first conscious size metamorphosis.

1
We’ll learn that the garden is apart of the palace grounds, so everything within it must
be playing card sized.
 While not immediately noticed by Alice, the glass table also features the infamous

bottle with the label ‘DRINK ME’ tied around its neck. Alice ponders its contents, and

then quickly finishes the potion off. The result is that she shrinks down so that she’s

perfectly sized to enter the garden. The problem is, she’s forgotten the key! We can thank

the glass table for clarifying Alice’s folly. I’d even suggest that if the table weren’t glass,

Alice wouldn’t even have the memory of the key being on it in the first place. Upon

realizing her error, Alice cries a little, but then discovers a tiny cake with the words ‘EAT

ME’ spelled out in currants. She wonders to herself, “Well I’ll eat it… and if it makes me

grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the

door.”iv Alice puts her hand on the top of her head to judge which way she will grow, and

ends up growing leagues beyond her natural size. At this point we only have enough

evidence to assume that drinking certain liquids make you shrink and eating certain foods

make you grow. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Aside from the food and drink, there are other means – that we’ll call objects of

power – that facilitate the transformation process. One of these is the White Rabbit’s fan,

which Alice acquires in her giantess state. She doesn’t understand the fan’s power, which

is why she nearly fans herself out of existence. This is to say, the fan allows her to shrink

smaller than four inches. But a fan can blow hot air as well as cool, so might we assume

that it has the ability to grow the user as well? Consider that the White Rabbit likely uses

it upon entering (and exiting) the palace grounds, though he generally takes the form of a

normal-sized rabbit. Could this strange power be coming from the fan alone, or have we

misread prior events too shallowly? Is it possible that Alice makes the unconscious

choice to shrink as she is fanning herself?

house and the Caterpillar’s mushroom. Alice magically transitions from the long hall to

outside the White Rabbit’s house. The rabbit has mistaken her for his maid – Alice is still

very tiny at this moment – and has requests that she collect a fan and a new pair of gloves

for him. Strangely, Alice is properly sized for the rabbit’s house while just a moment ago

she was no bigger than a mouse. I call this The Wonderland Effect, and will return to it at

a later time. Moving on with the tale, Alice finds the gloves and the fan, but she also

discovers an unmarked potion near the looking-glass. Now the bottle has no obvious

function – not even a label – in the White Rabbit’s home. Yet when Alice drinks it, it

perfectly goes with her wish that “it’ll make [her] grow large again, for really [she’s]

quite tired of being such a tiny little thing.”v But things are even curiouser than first

imagined. When giant Alice is bombarded by pebbles that turn into cakes (don’t ask),

Alice gets an idea: “If I eat one of these cakes… it’s sure to make some change in my

size; and as it can’t possibly make me larger, it must make me smaller, I suppose.”vi She

swallows a cake, and shrinks to a manageable size and escapes the house.

If you have been paying attention, the last time Alice drank from a bottle she

shrank, and the last time she ate a cake she grew. Now this time the two objects have

switched their effects. A continuity error, or is this deliberate on Carroll’s part? I think

it’s rather suspicious and worth investigating the fact that neither the cakes or the drink

that Alice consumes in the White Rabbit’s home are labeled like their counterparts in the

hall. Yet, as before, they do exactly the thing that Alice was hoping they’d do. As the

Caterpillar will prove, this is no mere coincidence.

are you?” By this point, Alice has hardly sorted her proper size, much less her true

identity. His question calls into sharp relief the difficulty Alice has had remembering

even simple facts during her time in Wonderland. The Caterpillar doesn’t offer much

advice aside from “Keep your temper,” vii which is ironic in light of the events that close

the story. The Caterpillar tells Alice that in time she will get used to her new size, but

Alice shows great distress at this notion, so the Caterpillar takes pity and gives her an

enormous nudge in the right direction. While making his exit, the Caterpillar mutters to

himself, “One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow

shorter.” He is referring to the mushroom, which as we all know is round and has no

“sides” to speak of. This is a knowing contradiction, as well as the answer to all of our

questions. Like the fan, the mushroom causes Alice to shrink (only at first, in her

uncertainty of the mushroom’s power) and to grow – seemingly without bounds!

Alice may not realize just how important this development is, but we as readers

should. When I began my study into Alice’s adventure in Wonderland, I came looking for

insights into the function and mechanics behind Alice’s changes in size. What we’ve seen

so far is a portrait of inconsistency: food occasionally makes Alice grow and at other

times shrink, and drink has shown inverted properties as well! But the one thing in

common during all these changes is that Alice was hoping for the specific changes that

would occur to her. With the aid of these objects of power, Alice wills her

metamorphoses into being. The talk of “one side makes you grow/shrink” simply means

that it’s in Alice’s power to decide how she will change. In the end, when she reclaims

her identity, Alice will learn that she doesn’t require any objects to invoke change.
Two things preoccupy Alice during her time in Wonderland:

‘The first thing I’ve got to do,’ said Alice to herself, as she wandered
about in the wood, ‘is to grow to my right size again; and the second thing is to
find my way into that lovely garden. I think that will be the best plan.’viii

And indeed, for the better part of this story Alice will struggle with her surroundings and

changes in size until she reaches the garden. But to “grow to my right size again” is a

completely different task. Her “right size” is her true size – her true self – and is not to be

found in Wonderland. To paraphrase the Cheshire Cat, Alice wouldn’t be down there

unless she was mad. I have found no evidence to equate size to madness in Wonderland,

but consider how almost nothing there is properly sized: the Mad Hatter and March Hare

are much larger than the Queen of Hearts, and the Caterpillar – possibly the most sensible

creature of them all – is also the smallest. But aside from being small, the Caterpillar is

properly sized (and aware of his height): exactly three inches. What does this mean for

Alice?

Alice takes on many sizes, by accident and on purpose. Alice is even influenced

by Wonderland itself to go through changes. In these moments there is nothing that Alice

has ate or drank to cause a change: she has allowed herself to be influenced by the

environment. These changes are what I would call The Wonderland Effect, because it

doesn’t require conscious approval to occur. I would say that this is the true cause of

madness in Wonderland. If size is equated to memory and self, then the slow degradation

of identity leads to eventual psychosis. A child may turn into a pig; an eccentric tea party

may proceed ad infinitum. Even the Queen herself experience screaming fits (“Off with

her head!”), while no one is actually ever harmed at all. We see now that size plays a far

greater role for the denizens of Wonderland than previously imagined.

with the reappearance of the Mad Hatter. In the overall scheme of “Wonderland,” it is

rare for Carroll’s narrative to revisit locations or characters, though at times it does. The

denizens of the Mad Tea Party provide an interesting bit of continuity – or discontinuity.

It’s all too easy to forget that Alice transitioned directly from the tea party to the hall of

doors (thanks to a conveniently located portal in a tree) in order to reach the garden. We

can only assume that the Hatter and company took the same route, but since the “DRINK

ME” potion is exhausted (Alice uses her mushroom the second time), they must have had

some help. While the Dormouse says, “I grow at a reasonable pace,”ix he really should be

remarking on how he shrinks. Unlike madness, change isn’t a constant in Wonderland.

Alice regains her true size (and her true identity) but once in this story, at the trial

that concludes her time in Wonderland. Alice begins the trial in a shrunken state, which is

how she was sized to enter the beautiful garden. However, the garden proved to be an

enormous disappointment, as it was filled with just as much madness as the rest of the

world. During the trial it’s clear that Alice has become totally fed up with the rudeness

and the nonsense of the locals, because as she sits in the juror’s box she begins to grow in

size. I think that on one hand she’s inspired to grow when she sees the Mad Hatter take a

bite out of his teacup – an object you’re regularly supposed to drink of – and that it’s a

reminder she doesn’t have to remain in her station if she chooses not to. On the other

hand, she by this point has begun to reclaim her old identity as Alice. She has overcome

the influence of Wonderland2 to the point where she is nearly her old self again. I say

nearly because in order to truly be Alice, she must be sized like Alice.

2
Unlike the poor Mock-Turtle, who once was “a real turtle” but has devolved.
 And so Alice begins to grow, eventually “to her full size,” when she is attacked

by the armies of Wonderland in a desperate attempt to maintain disorder. But Alice

brushes them off: “you’re nothing but a pack of cards!” x Alice has regained clarity, and

it isn’t too long before she exits Wonderland and re-enters reality. Alice then departs the

banks of the river, where she has fallen asleep and experienced her adventure. We are left

with a final thought, presented to us by Alice’s sister. It is the sister’s honest wish that

Alice is able to retain the simple joys of childhood as she grows into womanhood, with

all of its changes. Alice’s sister is able to perceive Wonderland in a half-dreaming state,

so we as readers can rest easy knowing that Alice can fall back upon this nonsense-land,

should she ever need a reminder of who she is truly meant to be.

i
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (London: Penguin Books, 1962), 25.
ii
Ibid., 36.
iii
Ibid., 27.
iv
Ibid., 31.
v
Ibid., 54.
vi
Ibid., 60.
vii
Ibid., 65-67.
viii
Ibid., 61.
ix
Ibid., 144.
x
Ibid., 157.