Sarah Shafer Shafer 1

English 114 B

Professor Lewis

3 April 2015

Alice’s Multiple Personality Disorder

Alice is such a unique and interesting character. In the book Alice in Wonderland by

Lewis Carroll, the reader does not only start to question Alice’s multiple personalities but it

pushes themselves to ask questions about their own personality. Alice’s character comes off as

helpless, innocent, and sweet, but she does not let those characteristics fool anyone. She also can

be seen as extremely emotional, confused, and rude. Sigmund Freud has the idea that there are

three stages a person goes through in life, the id, the ego, and the superego. As we dissect Alice’s

personalities and character, we discover that she goes through each stage of life in this book.

The book Alice in Wonderland starts off by Alice chasing a white rabbit that is in a hurry.

He runs down the rabbit hole and Alice looks inside and ends up falling in; she discovers a land

called Wonderland. While she is down there, she has tea with the Mad Hatter and the March

Hare, she participates in a Caucus-race, she meets the Queen of Hearts and almost gets beheaded,

and does much more. The whole story Alice is changing sizes from giant to very small all be-

cause she wanted to get into this garden behind a small door. No size for Alice is ever good

enough, she is either too big or too small. Alice talks to herself throughout her adventures in

Wonderland, and this causes the reader to begin to question who Alice really is and why she is

always so confused and hard to keep up with. If a reader would describe Alice, they would de-

scribe her as unpredictable. She flips a switch from feeling one way to another really quickly

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and one can assume that Alice is insane and has multiple personalities. As Alice goes through

each stage of Sigmund Freud’s three stages id, ego, and super ego, we discover all of her differ-

ent personalities.

The first stage that Alice goes through is the id. Sigmund Freud explains the id as the idea

of wanting immediate gratification or satisfaction, regardless of the consequences. Alice’s char-

acter is one that does what she wants when she wants. There is quite a few times that Alice de-

cides to ignore the consequences she might face, like when she runs away from home and into

Wonderland. She does not think about how her family may feel when she is gone or if chasing

after the white rabbit is a safe choice.

Once she falls into Wonderland, the only thing Alice wants to do is shrink and grow so

she can fit into the beautiful garden. She does not consider the consequences of what all these

potions can do to her, she just wants her size to change immediately. Another example of her

putting herself first is when she is at the tea party with the March Hare and the Mad Hatter. She

sits down at their table and interrupts their tea party simply because she wants to be included.

First of all, Alice does not think about if these animals could be dangerous and secondly, that she

may be interrupting their gathering. When the other characters call her out on her rude behavior

she puts the blame back on them.

Alice never thinks she is doing anything wrong. When she falls into her pool of tears af-

ter crying, she meets a mouse. She tells the mouse about herself and then begins to talk about

how she misses her cat Dinah and that Dinah loves to eat mice (Carroll 18-19). We are not sure if

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Alice was trying to be playful, but the mouse took offense and swam away. In the beginning of

this book, Alice’s personality is very inconsiderate, selfish and rude. She does not know when

she crosses the line or has gone too far with the other characters. That may be because she is

young and immature but it can also be a cause of her having so many personalities.

The second stage that Alice goes through is the ego. Ego is described as the decision

making stage where one starts to consider the consequences of their actions. This stage is seen as

more realistic and rational than the id stage. In the middle of the story, Alice still has some trou-

ble realizing that there are consequences for good and bad behavior. When Alice finally gets into

the garden, she meets the Queen of Hearts. Throughout the story the Queen of Hearts yells, “Off

with their head!” (62-92), Alice learns quickly that if she upsets the Queen she will be beheaded.

Although she acknowledges her potential consequences, Alice still does not feel threatened by

her. In the beginning of Chapter 8, “The Queen’s Croquet-Ground” the Queen announces that she

wants Alice’s head cut off, Alice yells the word, “Nonsense!”. She still had the nerve to yell at the

Queen and basically tell her no, even though she knew that the consequence could be getting be-

headed.

When they all start to play croquet, Alice’s personality starts to change and she begins to

feel unsure about being around the Queen. She starts asking herself what were to happen if she

were to disagree with the Queen. This made Alice feel so uncomfortable that she tried to find a

way to escape, then the Cheshire Cat appears and almost gets beheaded too. Alice speaks up and

saves him from getting executed. In this part in the book, she still is outspoken but she now starts

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to rationalize her thoughts. The reader begins to see a new side of Alice, a side that is not so self-

ish.

In the chapter “Pig and Pepper”, Alice walks into a house hoping to find some directions

but ends up finding a bunch of mad people. As she opens the door, she finds two woman busy

working in the kitchen. One woman is stirring a pot and throwing dishes at the wall, while the

other woman who is the Duchess is nursing a baby (Carroll 45). The baby would not stop crying

and so the Duchess threw the baby to Alice; she catches the baby and decides it is not a safe en-

vironment for this child. As she leaves with the baby, the baby morphs into a piglet. This is

where Alice’s personality now moves from rude and selfish to sweet and innocent. In this part of

the book, Alice’s way of thinking changes drastically. She begins to put others before herself and

becomes more mature. She is not so much of the id anymore but now is moving into the ego

stage.

As we move into the last stage, the superego, it is discovered that Alice never really com-

pletes this stage. The superego is the part of a person’s personality that provides guidelines for

judgments in situations. It is also when one learns what morals and standards their society is

holding for each member. This is the stage that one establishes the difference between right and

wrong. Towards the end of the story in the chapter “Alice’s Evidence”, Alice’s size is quite large

and when she walks up the the jury-box she knocks people over. “Oh I beg your pardon!” ( 90),

she says as she tries to fix the mess she just made. Although Alice bumped someone she did it on

accident and she knew that it was not right of her and that the right thing to do is apologize. For a

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girl that was all about herself in the beginning of her adventure, apologizing is a very mature step

for Alice.

As Alice is being interrogated about what happened with the missing tarts, the Queen and

King start to blame her for them being missing. When the Queen makes Alice upset she says

“Who cares for you? You are nothing but a pack of cards!” this upsets the Queen of Hearts and

she tells the court room that Alice needs to be executed (95). The whole pack of cards start flying

around her and attacks Alice. Right when the reader thinks Alice has finally matured and learned

how to behave appropriately, she ruins her progress by yelling at the Queen. Most people know

that it is inappropriate to yell at anyone or to speak to someone with that tone. When behaving in

a courtroom, most people also know when you speak it should strictly be facts and not emotions.

This is where Alice’s last few personalities come into play. The reader now dis-

covers her helpless and confused personality. When she starts getting questioned that is when she

looses her composure and flies off the handle. She again, does not care who is around or what

people think of her behavior. We start over from the beginning and Alice is back to only thinking

about herself and therefore never completely finishes these three stages.

When trying to uncover who Alice really is, she can be compared to the author Lewis

Carroll. In the article “Lewis Carroll and psychoanalysis: Why nothing adds up in wonderland”

by Christopher Lane, his main argument is that Lewis Carroll does not fit into his own society

(Lane 107). It was said that Carroll had a hard time relating to adults and he made stronger con-

nections with children. Carroll may have felt a connection with Alice because they both could

have felt like outsiders in their society.

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A possible theory is that Carroll made Wonderland so he could escape the real world, just

like Alice does in the book Alice In Wonderland. When examining Carroll’s personalities, we

also could interpret his behavior as young and immature just by the book he wrote and who he

decided to spend time with. In this article, it is explained that Lewis Carroll has two identities, he

was known as Lewis Carroll and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Carroll is responsible for the fan-

tasy novels and writing and Dodgson is a mathematician and poet, he kept the two identities very

separate. Just like Carroll having multiple personalities, Alice does too. One can interpret Alice’s

character as a representation of Lewis Carroll. They both struggled with their identity and did not

feel connected in their own world causing them to want to escape to Wonderland.

In the last two pages of the book, Alice wakes up and we come to find out that all of her

adventures in Wonderland were all just a dream. After trying to figure out what Alice was really

all about, the reader may start to doubt her character and who they thought she was. Each person-

ality that was described was the Alice in Wonderland, which was all a dream, so who is the real

Alice? The end of the book does not give us much information on who Alice is in real life. But

what is real, her in Wonderland or her when she wakes up? This can be interpreted many differ-

ent ways and that is why this book is so unique. After reading and researching this book and its

history, one starts to question their identity and ask themselves “Who am I?”. Alice never fully

discovers who she is and neither do we because we do not know what is a dream and what is re-

ality.

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Works Cited

Carl, Senna. “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland.” Cliff Notes. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, n.d. Web. 23

Mar. 2015.

Carroll, Lewis, and Donald J. Gray. "Down The Rabbit-Hole." Alice in Wonderland. New York:

W.W. Norton, 1971. 7-12. Print.

Kenny, Emma. "And The Secret Hell of Disney Characters." And The Secret Hell Of Disney

Characters. News International Trading Limited, 16 Sept. 2014. Web. 23 Mar.

2015.

Lane, Christopher. "Lewis Carroll and Psychoanalysis: Why Nothing Adds up in Wonderland.”

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 92.4 (2011): 1029-045. Web. 23

Mar. 2015.