Every single chapter thus far, theres been a disturbing level of antipathy towards this curious innocent little girl. She seems so normal to we readers, for she has the same thought process that we do. Whereas the ever so insightful characters in Wonderland analyze and process life in a different way than young Alice. It could be in this way that Alice seems to keep insulting them: she just doesn’t function like the atypical inhabitants of Wonderland, so they are offended by her questions. After all, nobody in an insane world would question the insane.
Unfortunately, there is an easy answer to all the rancor being thrown around. It may be that the cute little story with strange characters is just a quick glimpse into the future for little Alice Liddel. The transition from child to adult is always a difficult one. It is filled with adjustments from formulas for, well, everything to queer behavior and ugliness. This transformation may be tough for a child educated of polite conduct and routine to acclimatize to and Carroll is simply trying to send Alice her first vision of the world outside the nest. Its a cruel world, a strange world and a world which does not have a set formula or journey for life.
Alice is a pretty tough cookie though! Almost everybody has expressed anger or aversion to poor Alice so far in the text. As horrid as they are being to her, she keeps trucking along through her adventure, always learning more peculiar things, always expanding her mind. This is the attitude that she must keep in order to survive in her real world.
This is EXACTLY what I was thinking throughout! Little Alice is, to use your word, a trucker. I think that, once I had reached the caucus race I would have been ready to hit something. The way that they treat Alice and the way she takes must stand for something though. Maybe an inside joke between Alice and Carroll for her rather push-over personality? This “ordering-about” of Alice comes back when the Gryphon is talking to her, and although she doesn’t like it, she does nothing about it. Maybe, once again, this is what the real Alice is like. In Rivu’s blog, he mentioned that maybe he had put no personality in Alice, but maybe, it is there, it is just subtle. Congratulations.