Alice's Adventures in Wonderland : A Feminist Bildungsroman

Abstract: This thesis has two aims. The first one is to elucidate how Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) functions as a Bildungsroman, and the other one is to demonstrate how the novel also has a coming of age aspect based on feminism. Whilst Alice matures in the traditional sense, she also in parallel does so as a stronger female fighting for gender rights with signs of feminism. The feminist angle as well as the surreal world of Wonderland makes the novel a not very obvious Bildungsroman in a genre dominated by male protagonists. For Alice to be a young female child who ends up in a fantasy world thus makes her a very fascinating character. The central hypothesis of this thesis is that what Alice is exposed to and reacts to in Wonderland generally reflects the genre of a Bildungsroman and also specifically a feminist Bildungsroman. Theoretical framework is based on the ideas of Franco Moretti, Mikhail Bakhtin, Thomas Jeffers, Carol Lazzaro-Weis, George Eliot and Elizabeth Drew Stoddard, as well as novels by Eliot and Stoddard. This includes dynamic protagonists, unpredictable development, symbols of modernity, the quest for universality, and minor characters who make sure that the protagonist develops, as well as feminist struggle by means of disregarding the ‘cult of true womanhood’ in a genre and society dominated by men.