FOOD (in Alice in Wonderland)

par · 7 janvier 2022

Answers

🔎 Also, take a look at the Canva presentation of this work: 🖱️click here

1) Read the website article: identify the main points about 

The Victorian Society

  • Victorian era trouble/ difficult situation = HUNGER (known as "The Hungry Forties")
  • Victorian society’s “effort to survive”
  • 1830’s and 1840’s = “The Hungry Forties” > a huge shortage of food, the prices increased dramatically, and people could not pay for their food anymore = a “starving society” (l.14)

Lewis Carroll’s ideas about education

  • He explores starvation and malnutrition through his works > through the character of Alice who constantly looks for food to eat in Wonderland.
  • The food she picks comes from nature (the mushroom, the “bread-and-butter-flies”) = a solution to save people from hunger.

2) Read the extract from Alice in Wonderland, and explain why it illustrates the points mentioned in the website article

  • THE GRYPHON asks Alice to recite a poem about a panther and an owl 🦉who share a pie🥮. We notice that the panther’s meal sounds delicious/ like a feast = ‘pie-crust, and gravy, and meat’😋 , while the owl’s meal is very meagre as he only gets the (empty) plate: ‘the dish’🍽 .
  • These two characters can represent:
    • one the one hand, the wealthy British citizens (the panther) who get their fair share of food and can thrive and,
    • on the other hand, the poorer hungry people couldn’t eat their fill and sometimes even starved (the owl).

The poem also denounces the hypocrisy of the Victorian elites who pretend to care about the poor’s plight (here, the panther pretends to be sharing a pie, but there is nothing in the plate for the owl to share!) and don’t do anything to find solutions to save people from hunger (the panther fools the owl by giving him a spoon 🥄 (when he gets the fork and knife 🍴) and finally eats him (as a dessert: “and concluded the banquet”).

  • Then, THE MOCK TURTLE sings his song called “Mock Turtle Soup.” The soup sounds delicious: “Beautiful Soup, so rich and green” and, according to the Mock Turtle, is even better than “fish, game, or any other dish.” The Mock Turtle wishes he could have a bit of this delicious soup, but, like for many people in the real Victorian world, there isn’t any soup. Maybe that is why he is crying and sobbing. Also, a mock turtle soup contains no turtle in it, so perhaps this is why the Mock Turtle is crying– he wishes he were a real turtle…

3. Observe the screenshots and then, develop the link between them and the texts.

  • The screen shots show the food that Alice finds (quite everywhere) in Wonderland. She finds appetizing little biscuits in a pretty box where you can read “eat me”, little “bread-and-butter-flies” flying around her, and even an (un)birthday cake. This “land of plenty” shows a deep contrast with the famine that plagued 19th-century British society.

👩🏼‍🏫 But like the “unbirthday cake” (or wine, tea or jam) at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, or like the magic cakes or drinks, food seems illusory and even deceptive in Wonderland. Finally, the frustrated Alice will have nothing to eat or drink (and like many of her contemporaries, she will have to make do with an empty stomach):

`Have some wine,’ the March Hare said in an encouraging tone. Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. `I don’t see any wine,’ she remarked. `There isn’t any,’ said the March Hare. (Chapter 7).

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