As I was thinking about the theme of “mirrors” in general and in Through The Looking Glass, I came across an interesting thought. When Alice gets sucked in to the mirror, she carefully approaches it and as she does, she sees her self getting closer and closer to her own reflection, as any of us would when we are trying to look at ourselves in the mirror.
Well, my interpretation of the mirror is this: Alice is now older and she is of high stature. However, I believe that she is not so happy with her self and her life and she gets closer to her own reflection in the mirror, she sees the imperfections, which she would like to fix, more and more. It's the same process as when you look at yourself in the mirror from a distance, everything looks fine but as you get closer, you may notice, that the cloth is not such a great fit, just as you may start to see all the imperfections which you may have.
The mirror always reveals everything, as Alice looks at herself, she has to face what is not as it should be in her life. Therefore, she enters a world in which she can fix her underlying conflicts and is able to come back to her own time and start a new.
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To respond to Yelena, I think it is also interesting to try to analyze Tenniel's illustration of Alice going through the mirror. Of course this could be me reading too much into the drawings from a "meaning" perspective. Nevertheless, in the "real" world (p. 125) Alice has her knee down on the ledge, almost as if she is resting and conceding to defeat. In the Looking Glass world (p. 126) she is resting on her foot in what looks like the process of standing up, as if on a mission as Yelena said to fix something in herself. In the image of her entering the mirror Tenniel chose to draw it from behind, we don't see her facial expression, but we can tell her head is pointed downwards as if in sadness or in disappointment. The Looking Glass world, however, is allowed to witness that disappointment by seeing Alice's facial expression, namely the eyes in the way they are drawn. Finally, on the first image there is something about Alice's right hand that perplexes me and I cannot put my finger on it. Is she praying to g-d? Is she leaning for support? Is she banging against the glass in anger as we would against a door when we slam it shut?
ReplyDeleteOh well. I just over analyzed a pretty cool picture of a mirror drawn on the front and back of a page that probably means nothing.
I'm not sure if it's Alice showing disappointment in herself than with the world at large. What I mean is, if her adventure through the rabbit hole showed a case against growing up int he purely physical sense (in changing sizes, she lost her ability to connect with nature (as with the bird-mother's attacks) as well as simply experience it (as seen through her first inability to access the Queen's garden)), then the Looking-Glass offered a criticism of maturation by showing the absurdity of the world around her changing size and age.
ReplyDeleteWe start with the Jabberwocky, a tale of obvious epic and ancient tendencies, and are suddenly and very unapologetically introduced to the modern age through Alice's experience on board the train. We see the Tweedles' perpetual youth and innocence contrasted with Humpty's strict interpretative examinations of language and life. Essentially, I think that both books attack the act of growing, AAIW hitting it from the personal front, and TTLG from a comparative point of view.
I think the mirror interpretation is a good point. The point of not seeing flaws in a mirror until being up close is like that joke about Monet's paintings, which is that from far away they look real nice but from up close they're a big mess. When Alice looks through the mirror it's like she is staring into the abyss, hoping that there will be something special staring back at her. She hopes that the reflection won't be "empty" and that she will be perfect in it. Of course, she's just a vain little girl and isn't thinking so philosophically about it, though. It's almost as if the mirror might be somehow signifying Alice's vanity, which is immense, and might have disgusted Caroll about the real Alice who was growing up and was no longer the sweet, innocent girl she once was, and would ultimately no longer care too much about him. She's stuck in the mirror, as most teenaged girls usually are. And Caroll was disgusted.
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