Through the Looking-Glass - Classic Text | Alexandria
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, often lurking under the simpler alias Looking-Glass, is more than a mere children’s story; it's a phantasmagorical journey through a world governed by reversed logic and chess-like movements, a mirror to our own reality that challenges the very nature of sense. Published in 1871 by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, it serves as a sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, further propelling young Alice into a realm of perplexing encounters and philosophical quandaries.
The seeds of this looking-glass world were sown years before its publication. Dodgson, a mathematics lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, first spun the tale during a boat trip in July 1862, entertaining the Liddell sisters, Lorina, Alice, and Edith. While the first book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, arose from that particular excursion, Through the Looking-Glass emerged nearly a decade later amidst a rapidly changing Victorian society, marked by advancements in science and growing debates about logic vs. imagination, influencing its thematic depth and engagement with reason and absurdity.
Over time, Through the Looking-Glass has become a multifaceted text, analyzed through lenses of mathematics, linguistics, and psychoanalysis. Figures like John Tenniel, whose illustrations shaped the visual landscape of Alice's adventures, profoundly influenced the book's interpretation. The poem "Jabberwocky", a highlight of the book, demonstrates Carroll's masterful manipulation of language and meaning by creating memorable nonsense words, demonstrating his genius in creating both logic and surrealism. Adaptations across various media, from film to theatre, have consistently reimagined Alice's journey, each reflecting the prevailing cultural anxieties and aspirations of its time. The Red Queen's race, in which one must run as fast as possible simply to stay in the same place, has become a powerful metaphor for the futile efforts within competitive systems.
Today, Through the Looking-Glass endures as a cornerstone of children’s literature and a fertile ground for scholarly debate. Its themes of identity, language, and the subversion of expectations continue to resonate, sparking new interpretations that reflect our contemporary world. As Alice steps through the looking-glass, we are compelled to ask: how much of what we perceive as reality is merely a reflection, a reverse image, of something far more complex and elusive?