Victorian Visual Culture

Charles Robinson, 1907.

While there were many illustrations throughout The Annotated Alice, one that caught my attention in particular was Charles Robinson’s drawing on page 24, depicting Alice and her pool of tears. The image is in stark contrast to Tenniel’s illustration on the next page, mainly due to Robinson’s choice to embrace Alice’s pre-adolescence with a shapeless, high-collared dress while Tenniel stays consistent with his choice of a cinched waist and a crinoline. More than that, what drew me to this image is Alice’s overt unhappiness. Of course, she is unhappy, as she is frustrated and crying in the scene Carroll has written, but most other illustrations depicting Alice in a highly emotional state(that are used in this publication of the story) tend to shy away from showing the overwhelm that Alice feels within the story and lean toward serenity and beauty instead. In Robinson’s image, Alice is a fully understood child whose imperfections allow her to understand her world differently. 

She sits in the pool, staring at her own reflection while attempting to wash away her tears, seemingly lost in her emotion at this moment. The mysterious white rabbit doesn’t exist in this heightened state, and therefore irrelevant, and the shrinking potion isn’t physically needed for us to understand Alice’s state of mind. Her physical being can speak for itself.

I agree with the overarching sentiment we came to in class, that Tenniel’s “adultifying” takes away from the power of Alice. I also agree that his illustrations are a misunderstanding of the Alice that Carroll writes about. That’s why I kept thinking about Robinson’s work: he understands the child as the magical story, rather than Tenniel’s ordinary child in an otherwise magical land. Her naivety and capacity for overwhelming emotions gives power to an otherwise nonsensical world. I understand the Alice in Robinson’s illustrations because she isn’t perfect or “adultified”, she is simply herself, and whatever results from that are allowed to happen without interference from adults. I think that Robinson is able to capture a greater part of Alice in this illustration that Tenniel ever manages to.