JUSTICE (in Alice in Wonderland)

par · 7 janvier 2022

Answers

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

The Victorian Society

  • The tyrannical Queen of Heart represents Queen Victoria.
  • At that time, the queen (or king) of England and the aristocrats had all powers and imposed their rules: “the rules of superiors.”
  • A poor man had little chance in court against a rich man since everyone knew that the rich man’s word was always better than the poor man’s…. Someone who disobeyed authority would be sentenced.
  • Justice in the Victorian era depended on your birth (and your wealth), it served the elite, and therefore, was not a fair system/ = a failed system.

Lewis Carroll’s ideas about education

  • Carroll denounces unjust illogical rules dictated by the upper-class.
  • He questions the idea of “right and proper” with Alice. The little girl tries to follow the rules that she has learnt but is torn between what she thinks is acceptable and what is not.
  • Carroll calls the Victorian rules: ‘whims’ or the ‘senseless’ ‘obscure’ ‘irrational’ ‘rules of superiors’. Like Alice, he looks for logical conclusions but there isn’t any. The powerful individuals dictate ‘what things shall mean’ and sometimes these things are absurd. Distinctions between right and wrong, logic and illogic are not that clear cut.

👩🏼‍🏫 Finally, Carroll uses Alice to show that “independent thought and the ability to rise above the senseless rules” is more important. Alice ‘struggles’ with the rules, but finally, she has the guts to defy the queen and ‘rise’ above her to denounce the nonsense of her rules!

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

a) Alice surveys the room and takes great pleasure in identifying the various features of a court of law that she has read about. Alice notices that all of the jurors are writing things down on their slates which surprises her as the trial has not started yet.

b) the King calls for a verdict. The Queen demands that the sentence come before the verdict. Alice chaffs at this proposal and criticizes the Queen, who calls for Alice’s beheading.

  • Alice has failed to find meaning in Wonderland but hopes that she will find logic and order in the trial. She sees the Wonderland court as a true court of justice, viewing the institution of law as a refuge of sanity in which an objective and undeniable truth will prevail. She excitedly identifies the various components of a court of law, such as the jury box and the jurors. The similarities of the Wonderland court to an aboveground court reinforce Alice’s faith in the sanctity of law and the trial becomes to the last opportunity to realize her need for coherence and sanity.
  • But Alice quickly realizes that in a world without meaning, the search for truth and order can only be a sham/a fraud. The trial mocks the legal process. The absurdity of the legal trial > 👩🏼‍🏫 Carroll indicts the legal system in Wonderland as a way of critiquing the legal system in our own world.

👩🏼‍🏫 To conclude, Carrol uses his character, Alice, to denounce the notion of justice in the Victorian Era: Alice finally defies the queen: “Stuff and nonsense!’ said Alice loudly. ‘The idea of having the sentence first!’… ‘Who cares for you?’ said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) ‘You’re nothing but a pack of cards!’

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

  • Picture 1: the trial of a pickpocket (a child). Pickpocketing was regarded as a ‘petty crime’ and the young pickpocket in the picture may be sentenced to criminal deportation (for life), probably to New South Wales, Britain’s antipodean penal colony.
  • Picture 2: the public hanging of Marie and Frederick Manning.

👩🏼‍🏫 FYI:

  • On November 13, 1849, a crowd of over 30,000 people gathered outside a prison in South London to witness the public execution of Marie and Frederick Manning. Marie and Frederick, a married couple, had recently murdered Marie’s wealthy former lover, Patrick O’Connor. Given that this was the first married couple to be hanged in over a century, the publicity was intense, and it became known as “The hanging of the century.”
  • Charles Dickens, the famous author, attended the execution and wrote a letter to the Times expressing his revulsion at the proceedings.

“I was a witness of the execution at Horsemonger Lane this morning” “I believe that the a sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the crowd collected at that execution this morning.” “When the two miserable creatures who attracted all this ghastly sight about them were turned quivering into the air there was no more emotion, no more pity, no more thought that two immortal souls had gone to judgement, than if the name of Christ had never been heard in this world.”

Dickens was one of a number of influential people who campaigned against public hangings and they were finally abolished in 1868.

  • At that time, trials were quick and did not serve a fair legal system. The most powerful beings (e.g. The Queen, the King) were often innocent while the poorest, less fortunate people were considered guilty (and had to prove their innocence). They also made the rules (no matter how absurd and illogical they were).
  • The punishments were merciless. The capital sentence was often pronounced. Though a public hanging provided a sort of entertainment to the crowds, the executions were the target of harsh criticism, cf. Dickens’s letter to the Times: https://fs.blog/2014/11/charles-dickens-to-the-times/
  • The last executions by hanging in the UK took place in 1964.

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