Growing from Innocent to Authoritative
Throughout Lewis Carroll’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland the main character Alice, goes through a variety of size changes that can be compared to her transition from childhood into adulthood. Alice stumbles into a rabbit hole as an innocent 7-year-old girl who discovers her identity crisis and who leaves Wonderland as a mature young adult with nothing more but the memories of the “dream of Wonderland” (Carroll 110). We can see Alice’s struggle to identify herself as her body size keeps changing just like a kid who is going through puberty, she does not know what to expect next. These experiences provide Alice with a different perspective on Wonderland and lead her to a maturing process from the crying, stubborn Alice in the beginning to the self-powered Alice who stood up for herself in the final trial. The transition has been represented in some of the different adaptations the book has had. Although Alice’s size changes in Carroll's text Alice in Wonderland illustrate her maturation, in both Disney's (1951) and Jan Svankmajer's adaptations, size changes do not emphasize maturation; they have a different purpose. Alice grew and shrunk throughout various scenes in both adaptations, but at the end of both movies she remained the same childish Alice that once stumbled upon a rabbit hole. Both adaptations emphasize Alice’s childishness in order to attract a larger audience, but at the same time a younger audience that can relate with what Alice is going through.

Figure 1: (Leavens)

In the first chapter of Carroll’s book, Alice finds herself alone in a dark hall, where we see a very child-like scene as she cries from her struggles and frustrations “…when she got to the door, she found that she had forgotten the little golden key, and when she went back to the table for it, she found she could not possibly reach it: “…the poor little thing sat down and cried” (Carroll 14). Alice wants to get into the garden through the small door, but since she drank the bottle, which changed her size, she could not reach the key on top of the table. Her impotence and small size reflect childhood, where children get the feeling of being ignored due to the fact that their opinions are not taken seriously most of the times. We later see a glimpse of her acting like an adolescent undergoing puberty in the scene when she meets the pigeon and her neck grows terribly long: “ all she could see, when she looked down, was an immense length of neck…” (Carroll 47). In puberty you notice how your body parts start to grow without coordination, for me it was first the change of my tone of voice, then came the hairs. This is precisely what Alice is feeling right there, a loss of control over her body. Her puberty lead to an identity crisis as the pigeon confuses Alice for a snake as seen in figure 1, she is not sure what she has become and doubts her identity.

Figure 2: (Crubellier)

Towards the end of the story we spot several scenes where we see a change in Alice’s behavior, as it seems that she has taken a leap into adulthood. The last chapter is called “Alice’s Evidence”, and although you can analyze the name directly and say it’s called like that because of the trial, this chapter provides us with “Evidence that Alice” left childhood behind and is now a mature adult who defends herself from the Queen: “Who cares for you…You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” (Carroll 108). The fact that Alice speaks in such an authoritative voice to someone who is royalty demonstrates her empowerment and introduces us to the adult Alice. Alice is done with this dream world and is ready to wake up and face reality as a mature young woman.
Figure 3: (Svankmajer)

Even though Svankmajer’s Alice does not undergo a maturation process as she did in Carroll’s Wonderland we see dramatic size changes in the movie. Svankmajer uses his amazing talent to do animation in such a way that when Alice grows she’s human, but when she shrinks she’s a doll who frame by frame is carefully positioned to go along with the script. In the movie, human Alice has the small key in her hand and after having a drink from the bottle she shrinks and becomes the doll. As the doll she tries to jump and reach the table to grab the key she left there as seen in Figure 3. Svankmajer’s purpose is to portray small Alice as a doll and grown Alice as a human so that the audience struggles to make the connection between a girl and a woman. Svankmajer has to let Alice’s actions reflect her maturity due to the limited dialogue she has, and therefore we see how she remains child-like as she crawls up the stairs into the red queen’s castle, something only a baby would do. Furthermore, throughout the movie Alice is really never afraid, she is always in control of the situation as she narrates the story: "Now you will see a film," she begins. It is hard to learn from this experience and mature as she is not threatened and dictates what happens next. On the other hand Disney, in it’s 1951 adaptation, portray Alice only as a human who does have very dramatic size changes, and struggles to find her way out.
While it may seem that Alice has matured because initially she is portrayed like an eager and curious child who chases the white rabbit down the hole, and by the end of the movie she is more contemplative, more reflective as she sits down in Tugley woods and says: “…being patient is a very god advice…I went along my very way and never stopped to reason, I should have known they’ll be a price to pay…” she ends the scene just as she began the movie; a childish, crying, sobbing, frustrated Alice that wants some answers. Most importantly, in the trial scene at the end of the movie the audience realizes that indeed she has not matured like she did in Carroll’s book. In the Disney movie when she is in the trial she is her normal size, but the Cheshire cat helps her out and causes a distraction so she can eat the mushroom and grow gigantically. As she begins to talk rudely to the queen she starts shrinking and shrinking, to the point that she has to run away before Wonderland creatures catch her and follow the queens orders and cut her head off. This is a very different ending to the trial scene we see in Carroll’s work, as Alice was mature enough to realize that the characters are “…nothing but a pack of cards!” (Carroll 108). That young woman has grown-out of the dream, as opposed to Disney’s Alice who remains a young girl running for her life.
In Carroll’s work Alice wakes up from her deep sleep, she leaves Wonderland with nothing but the mature wisdom that the characters throughout the book provided her with and leaves behind that childish nonsense. She went to sleep as an innocent girl and woke up as an innocent woman. Even though Alice did not age, she “grew up” both physically and mentally. She gained strength and adaptability that will be applied in the adult world. In both Disney’s and Svankmajer’s adaptations Alice changed dimensions, she went from being as small as the flame of a candle, to being a gigantic creature who barley fit inside the white rabbit’s house. Although these size changes are similar to the ones that take place in Carroll’s text, they are not used to emphasize a maturation process for Alice. The two adaptations were able to tie themselves to the original work using these size changes, but in both cases Alice wakes up unchanged, she is still this immature little girl who dreams of the land of wonders.

References:
Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventure in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Ed. Hugh Houhton.The Centenary Edition. London, England: Penguin Group, 1998. 26-110. Print.
Crubellier, Simon. “Nothing bit a pack of cards.” Display. 1 Jan 2007. Flickr. Web. 1 Feb 2010. <http://flicr.com/photos/simon-crubellier/341087870>
Chris. “Advice from a Caterpillar.” Digital Image. 28 September 2008. Unloosen. Web. 2 Feb 2010. <http://www.unloosen.com/thestuff/archives/photos_art/chris_leavens_p/>
"Alice - Jan Svankmajer - 1988 Subtitulada Español Parte 1." Youtube. Web. 22 Mar 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F697NEsX-I>
Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (Part 6). Dir. Clyde Geronimi, David Hand, Hamilton Luske, Robert Florey, and Wilfred Jackson. Perf. Kathryn Beaumont. 1951. YouTube. Web. 3 April 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MNYyB163Es&feature=related>