Through The Looking Glass

The looking glass and its reflective world are symbolic of transition, transformation, identity, and perception. The looking-glass world represents a reflection of Alice’s everyday reality and her inner creativity. When Alice first crawls through the looking-glass portal, the room she enters is so similar that Alice thinks it is a simple reflection of her home, until the moving chess pieces reveal that this world is fundamentally different. Her home’s setting transitions into a new, strange house filled with living chess pieces and a huge chessboard setting outside. The setting, as described above, is a symbol too, and it is another example of transformation. The chessboard from her living room transforms into an entire realm, the landscape of squares Alice travels through. Likewise, by the book’s conclusion, the characters are revealed to be transformed versions of things in Alice’s reality. For instance, Alice concludes that Kitty had transformed into the Red Queen, Snowdrop the white kitten into the White Queen, and the mother cat into Humpty Dumpty: “‘Now, Kitty!’ she cried, clapping her hands triumphantly. ‘Confess that [the queen chess piece] was what you turned into!’” (195). Her tangible pets are reflected in the Looking-Glass world as transformed characters, taking new shapes and identities while still acting as Alice’s companions. Her subconscious changes her ordinary world into something new and inventive: the looking-glass realm.

In the looking-glass world, Alice’s perceptions and beliefs about manners, language, logic, and possibility are challenged. The White Queen, for example, challenges her beliefs about how time works:

‘That’s the effect of living backwards,’ the Queen said kindly: ‘it always makes one a little giddy at first—’

‘Living backwards!’ Alice repeated in great astonishment. ‘I never heard of such a thing!’

‘—but there’s one great advantage in it, that one’s memory works both ways.’

‘I’m sure mine only works one way,’ Alice remarked. ‘I ca’n’t remember things before they happen’ (136).

Time in the looking-glass world is inverted, just as images are in a mirror. To the White Queen, time and memory work in the opposite direction from how Alice experiences it. She moves backward through time, from Alice’s point of view, rather than forward, “remembering” and reacting to events before they happen. While Carroll is playing with ideas of inversion as an extended concrete pun on the “looking-glass,” the topsy-turviness of the world also profoundly transforms Alice. Part of Alice’s growing maturity requires her to learn to accept things she does not understand and embrace things that she thought were impossible. The mental flexibility she acquires through her journey allows her to recognize that imagination and reality are not opposites, but can co-exist.

The beautiful Garden of Life Flowers is a fantastical symbol and satire of social judgment. The garden has a chapter dedicated to it, revealing its importance in the story’s overall symbolism. In the looking-glass world, flowers, like humans, have conversations and engage in loud banter. Their commentary is focused mostly on appearances: “‘Said I to myself, “Her face has got some sense in it, though it’s not a clever one!” Still, you’re the right colour, and that goes a long way,’ the Rose said. [...] ‘I never saw anybody that looked stupider,’ a Violet said” (105-06). The flowers are preoccupied by shallow things such as Alice’s appearance. Their harsh judgment of Alice mirrors the frivolous judgments of Victorian society. The flowers engage in polite but absurd conversations and arguments, which may reflect Carroll’s views on the social etiquette and conventions of this era. The author mocks society’s rituals, as the flowers jest, joke, and argue until the Tiger-Lily tree shushes them, symbolizing yearning for meaningful conversations instead of drama and superficial judgment. Alice ignores their rudeness but also does not protest against it, reflecting the expectation in Victorian society that children remain deferential to adults. The fact that the “adults” in this case use their superior social position to denigrate a child’s appearance to her face exposes the immaturity of so-called grown-ups.

The talking flowers also contribute to the dreamlike and surreal atmosphere, as one of many impossible phenomena Alice is surprised to find. Like many other characters, places, and customs, she even questions how they exist. In contrast, the flowers think Alice is some strange version of a flower, judging her as “pointy” and “wilted.” The plants’ existence and flower-centric viewpoint emphasize the absurdity and illogical nature of the looking-glass world. They are a transformed version of Alice’s world’s plants, a creative and human-like take on plants.