Ground Rules of Fantasy
Eliza Brownell '97 (English 61 1993)
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Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet ground in her life:
it was all ridges and furrows: the croquet balls were live hedgehogs, and
the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves
up and stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches. . .
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The players all played at once, without waiting for turns, quarreling all
the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs, and in a very short time the
Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting 'Off
with his head ! ' or 'Off with her head!', about once a minute. (p. 67)
This passage from Alice in Wonderland
perfectly illustrates why Alice's adventures are true Fantasy. The relationship
between the mad croquet game in the world of the Red Queen and a normal
croquet game in Alice's world in many ways parallels the relationship between
Fantasy and Reality. According to Eric Rabkin, (Quoted by George P. Landow
in the web) Fantasies may be generally distinguished from other narratives
by this: the very nature of the ground rules, of how we know things . .
. the problem of knowing infects Fantasies on all levels, in their settings,
in their methods, in their characters . The very nature of the ground rules
at the Queen's croquet party is strange indeed, totally unlike anything
Alice or any other dweller in the world of Reality has ever seen. In fact,
Alice cannot ÒknowÓ the rules of the game, or of the country
at all, no matter how she tries, for to her they appear to be utterly arbitrary
and inconstant. The characters also keep Alice firmly planted in the fantastic.
The people she encounters are talking animals, mythical beasts, and playing
cards who follow a code of conduct unique to their homeland and totally
foreign to Alice. The Queen is fond of sentencing her subjects to death
for no particular reason, and (although not at the croquet party) babies
turn into pigs, cats disappear but leave their smiles behind.
The Queen's party is a perfect summary of the way in which unusual
settings, methods, and characters in this strange kingdom are what set
Alice in Wonderland so sharply apart from realistic modes, and what make
it the epitome of fantasy.
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