Alice
Alice as illustrated by John Tenniel
First appearance	Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Last appearance	Through the Looking Glass
Created by	Lewis Carroll
Information
Species	Human
Gender	Female
Age	7 years old in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Address	Oxford, England
Religion	Christianity
Nationality	British

Alice is a fictional character in the books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, which were written by Charles Dodgson under the pen name Lewis Carroll. She is a young girl from Victorian era-England.

Development

The character has been said to be based on Alice Liddell, a child friend of Dodgson's. Dodgson said several times that his 'little heroine' was not based on any real child, but was entirely fictional.^[1] Alice is portrayed as a quaintly logical girl, sometimes even pedantic, especially with Humpty Dumpty in the second book. According to Through the Looking-Glass she is seven and a half years old, but seems to conduct herself like a somewhat older child. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland takes place on May 4, Alice Liddell's birthday. Through the Looking-Glass takes place on November 4, her half-birthday (and Alice states that she is "seven and a half exactly.") In April 1887, Carroll wrote in "Alice on the Stage":

What wert thou, dream-Alice in thy foster-father's eyes? How shall he picture thee? Loving first, loving and gentle: loving as a dog (forgive the prosaic simile, but I know no earthly love so pure and perfect) and gentle as a fawn: then courteous—courteous to all, high or low, grand or grotesque, King or Caterpillar, even as though she were herself a King's daughter, and her clothing wrought of gold: then trustful, ready to accept the wildest impossibilities with all that utter trust that only dreamers know; and lastly, curious—wildly curious, and with the eager enjoyment of Life that comes only in the happy hours of childhood, when all is new and fair, and when Sin and Sorrow are but names — empty words signifying nothing!^[2]

Character outline

Alice is popularly depicted wearing a pale blue knee-length dress with a white pinafore overtop, although the dress originally was yellow in The Nursery "Alice", the first coloured version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In the illustrations for Through the Looking-Glass her hair is held back with a wide ribbon, and in honour of Alice, such hair bows are sometimes called Alice bands, particularly in the UK.

As Alice was first drawn in black and white her colors would vary from artist to artist; it was Disney who made blue the most popular color for her dress and blonde for her hair. However, Alice has been coloured by Tenniel in a blue dress, with white stripes at the bottom, and her pinafore outlined in red; this look has, perhaps, become the classic and most widely recognized Alice in Wonderland dress in later works.

Tenniel drew Alice in two variants: for Through the Looking-Glass her pinafore is more ruffled and she is shown in striped stockings, an image which has remained in much of the later art.

Interpretations

Morton N. Cohen suggested that although Alice was physically modelled after Alice Liddell, Carroll drew Alice's characteristics from himself.^[3] Alice's journey through Wonderland is a "double-layered metaphor" of the problems faced by children in Victorian society and Carroll's negative childhood experiences.^[4]

Disney version

Alice
First appearance	Alice In Wonderland (1951)
Created by	Lewis Carroll
Voiced by	Kathryn Beaumont

Alice is the main protagonist of Disney's animated film Alice In Wonderland. She also appears in many episodes of Disney's House of Mouse and in the direct-to-video releases Mickey's Magical Christmas: Snowed in at the House of Mouse and Mickey's House of Villains. Alice can be seen as a meetable character in the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. Alice can also be considered an unofficial Disney Princess, seeing as she appears in many instances of Disney Princess art, videos and other media. In the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Alice is mentioned as "Allyson Wonderland" on some graffiti written on the bathroom wall in Toontown.

Personality

Alice is portrayed as being very curious. She's often seen daydreaming and gives herself advice instead of listening to the advice of others. The closest thing Alice has as a friend is Dinah, her cat, and not even she understands Alice's dreams of finding "a world of her own". Alice is well mannered, polite, courteous, mature and has an elegance and gentleness of a young woman, although once she falls into Wonderland she finds it harder and harder to maintain her composure. She is shown to be determined, but her determination is often overpowered by her temper, seeing as she doesn't give up on finding the White Rabbit until she gets frustrated, and is easily put off by rudeness.

She is depicted as a fairly beautiful young girl with blue eyes, thick blonde hair and fair skin. She wears a blue knee-length dress with a white pinafore overtop, stockings, petticoat, white tights, a black ribbon to keep her hair out of her eyes, and black strap and round toe shoes in "Mary Jane" style.

For the voice of Alice, Walt Disney wanted one "that would be English enough to satisfy British audiences and preserve the feeling of an English literary classic, but not so English that it would put off American audiences". He found that in young actress Kathryn Beaumont. Within hours of her audition, Disney gave Beaumont the part.

Like many Disney animated heroines, Alice was portrayed by a real life actress as reference material for the animators. This was performed by Beaumont, the voice of Alice. Alice was drawn looking a bit older than her story book counterpart, about 11 or 12, but still keeping the wonder and child-like quality of a young girl.

Kingdom Hearts Series

Alice (アリス, Arisu^?) is seen as one of the most important characters of the video game series Kingdom Hearts. She is the first Princess of Hearts we meet in the game and her world, Wonderland, is also the second Disney-based world we visit. Alice also appears in the sequel, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, as a figment of Sora, the game's protagonist's, imagination.

2010 Disney sequel

Tim Burton is directing a sequel, due for release on March 5, 2010. This adaption features a combination of live action and motion-capture digital animation, and follows Alice (Mia Wasikowska), who is now 19 years old, as she attends a party only to be proposed for marriage in front of hundreds of snooty society types. She follows the White Rabbit (Michael Sheen) into Wonderland, where she is needed to slay the Jabberwock.

Appearances in other media

Box of American McGee's Alice

Besides the books and the Disney film, Alice has appeared in many other works. In the 2000 PC game American McGee's Alice, Alice is portrayed as an older, dark-brown haired girl with emerald green eyes. In the game, Alice is a tortured young woman, who at a young age was orphaned when her parents were burned alive in an accidental fire caused by her cat Dinah. Afterward, she falls into a catatonic state, and is condemned to Rutledge's Asylum for treatment. There she remains for many years, faced with her own survivor's guilt and the mistreatment of patients in the mental hospitals of the time. Then, the White Rabbit arrives in her cell and tells her she must return to Wonderland and save the creatures there from the tyrannical Queen of Hearts. By doing so, she not only saves Wonderland, but her own sanity. American McGee's Alice has Susie Brann voicing the titular character.

In Frank Beddor's novel, The Looking Glass Wars, an adaptation of the Alice books, Alice is re-imagined as Alyss Heart, the rightful heir to the throne of Wonderland and a warrior princess with magical powers of her own. The preface of the story is that Alyss fled to Earth where she met Lewis Carrol and told him her story. He turned it into a nonsensical fairytale in which he even misspelled her name.

The Czech surrealist Jan Švankmajer retold the story in a very dark 1988 film titled simply Alice. Woody Allen's film Alice, while not a direct adaptation, did follow a woman who has a series of surreal adventures. Alice also appears as a college-attending teenager alongside Wendy Darling, Dorothy Gale, and Susan Pevensie in Chicago of 2005 and 2006, in the comic book series The Oz/Wonderland Chronicles. Alice also appears as an aging woman in Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's pornographic graphic novel Lost Girls.

In the Tokyo Disneyland DreamLights version of the Main Street Electrical Parade, Alice is voiced by Kat Cressida. Kristýna Kohoutová portrayed her in Svankmajer's Alice (her English dub was done by Camilla Power). In the Japanese version of Kingdom Hearts, she was voiced by Mika Doi.

Notes

References

• Brooker, Will (2004). Alice's Adventures: Lewis Carroll in Popular Culture. New York: Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-1433-8
• Cohen, Morton N.. Lewis Carroll: A Biography. 

External links

• Character description of Alice

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland at Project Gutenberg