It is no accident that the grotesque style in literature tends to be
prevalent in eras marked by
radical change and stress. Such was the Victorian period, within which
a whirl of social, economic
and religious change took place that pulled the rug from underneath
the British people, then
struggling to find meaning in a world they no longer knew. The French
revolutionaries, who
guillotined the last noble head before the advent of the eighteenth
century, continued to impress
the British world during the Victorian age and are thought to have
"certainly influenced the thought
and the works of every major English author for the remainder of the
eighteenth century and
beyond" (DC, History). In the nineteenth century came Industrialism
and, in the eyes of
Victorians, its predominantly negative consequences; then, the discovery
of scientific proof relating
to evolution, which forced the people to question the existence of
God, a solid cornerstone of
British history; and the Reform Acts, a set of unprecedented laws that
gave voting privileges to the
deserved
These events and more uprooted all that had meaning to the Victorian,
leaving him with a world of
chaos, a grotesque world devoid of meaning. Lewis Carroll, greatly
frustrated by this chaotic
nature of existence, endlessly and futility sought for order, just
as his character Alice searches for
order in this grotesque Wonderland. Referring back to the above passage,
Alice must learn to
play croquet in this grotesque and ridiculous fashion, with flamingos
as mallets and hedgehogs as
balls.
Whereas the game of croquet itself possesses meaning, this absurd way
of playing in Wonderland
leaves Alice struggling to find order: as she finally "succeeds in
getting its [the flamingo's] body
tucked away, comfortably enough," it would untwist itself. And time
after time, after Alice
establishes and re-establishes order with one facet of the game, another
would break down again
into its chaotic state. These futile efforts only end in greater frustration
and finally submission.
Although the tone of this passage seems light and comical, its message
is wholly serious. This
scene, one of many in Alice in Wonderland, perhaps symbolizes the author's
hopeless struggle and
consequential anxiety in his quest to discern meaning in a world that
has reduced itself to the chaos
and perhaps the absurdity comparable to that of Wonderland.