<br><center>I wrote this paper in High school. It got an A. With use of this essay cite works to "Kristin's People Places and Things" Tewksbury, MA: Free paper Inc., 1999.</center>
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<br>Lewis Carroll's works Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There are by many people considered nonsense books for children. Of course, they are, but they are also much more. Lewis Carroll had a great talent of intertwining nonsense and logic, and therefore creating sense within nonsense. If you look past the nonsense you can find a new meaning other than the one you found completing your third grade book report. You find that the books are full of references and parallel aspects of Victorian Society such
Also poking fun is the scene where the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon try to explain the Lobster Quadrille, a parody of a Victorian dance. Ballroom etiquette, should be conducted "with becoming politeness; avoiding, at all costs, the appearance of indecorous behavior."(Gardner, 118) Even the how they describe this "mad romp" dance would be considered as "indecorous behavior" with their screaming, shouting, crying, and yelling as they dance around Alice interrupting the other at each chance. Another rule of etiquette was that Victorian children were expected to behave at all times. "Argument and ‘answering back' were never permitted, and indeed, they were seldom attempted"(Gardner, 118) When Alice is at the trial of the Knave of Hearts, Carroll parodies this sort of rule and the expected behavior by having Alice "talk back" to the King.
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<br>"At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily writing in his note-book, called out "Silence!" and read out from his book, "Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court." Everybody looked at Alice.
<br>"I'm not a mile high," said Alice.
<br>"You are," said the King.
<br>"Nearly two miles high," added the Queen.
<br>"Well, I shan't go, at any rate," said Alice; "besides, that's not a regular rule: you invented it just now."
<br>"It's the oldest rule in the book," said the King.